This Music Man Makes Half Notes Whole Again

Chuck Madere wanted the exciting life of a professional musician, hoping he would catch on with a top band.

“I can hold my own,” said the former Marine who played clarinet and saxophone in a military band, “but I’m not a super expert player and it takes that kind of talent to make a living playing an instrument.”

Most of the top players have inbred talent, “but I didn’t have that ability,” admitted the Anaheim resident and businessman, who got his first clarinet lesson at age 10.

But Madere had a talent for repairing instruments and after his discharge in 1950, got a job for 75 cents an hour in a band instrument factory in Fullerton. “It eventually turned into a career for me,” he said.

Although he has found happiness repairing instruments and enjoying the independence of owning his own business, it’s not like being on the road with a top band playing for hundreds and maybe thousands of people.

“It gets kind of lonely at times in the shop and sometimes I get depressed,” said Madere, 52, who works seven days a week. “I even worked on Thanksgiving.”

He finds happiness in his solitude by listening to jazz and classical music while he works--”I really don’t like rock or country music although I appreciate any kind of music as long as it’s good”--and during the summer plays for the Anaheim Community Band.

“It’s not quite the same as a big band but I have fun,” he said. “It helps me get a feel of what it might have been.”

The job of repairing instruments demands not just technical ability, Madere said, but also the correct attitude.

“You can’t teach people to repair an instrument unless they have the right thinking and the right attitude,” said Madere, who knows how to play every instrument he fixes. “People don’t seem inclined to understand why and how they work and why they shouldn’t make mistakes.”

After hiring three workers, all of whom failed him, Madere has concluded he has a one-man shop. “I am that man,” said Madere, who still prefers playing the clarinet more than all the other instruments. “You usually favor the instrument you start on,” he said.

Most of his business comes from music stores, school districts, professional musicians, military bands and colleges. He does not sell instruments. “This is strictly a repair show,” he said.

Madere said he has repaired instruments that have been mistreated, dropped, stepped on, sat upon, thrown against a wall, run over by cars, vandalized, burned, scarred and broken.

“You name it and it has happened to an instrument,” he said.

One enterprising vandal caused him the most trouble.

“He stumped me by causing all three valves on a trumpet to stick after he managed to place pins in them,” he said. “I finally had to take the trumpet completely apart to solve the mystery.”

Patricia A. Pierce, 26, moved from her mother’s Anaheim home and this year is getting her first opportunity to put up her own Christmas tree, a handsome seven-foot-tall flocked beauty.

More importantly, she decorated the tree with 200 antique lead-topped blown-glass ornaments, most of them in the shape of an orange. They had been handed down by her grandmother, Olivia Wilson, who was born in 1895 and died 12 years ago.

They were entrusted to Patricia’s mother, also named Patricia, who kept them until her daughter moved from home. “They all know I will take good care of the ornaments,” she said.

“It’s like seeing history,” added the younger Patricia, who will be married on St. Patrick’s Day.