Chapter 5
December 1, 2007…….Family Enters, Stage Right
My phone rang and it was my son, Joshua. He light heartedly said, “Guess who I have in my car?” Oh good, my sister had arrived safely and they were on their way. I was relieved. I only had two more hours to be alone.
I talked with all my friends and family throughout the day. I searched some more for Red’s phone and finally found it. He hadn’t taken it with him. He’d hid it under the seat of my truck. Wow, wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t died and we’d had to spend the morning looking for the darned thing before we rushed off to the Keys. He’d have been frantic.
But he wouldn’t be frantic anymore; no more worries, no more stress, no more driving, no more late-night gigs, no more hangovers, no more anything for him in this lifetime.
My sister in law called and expressed their desire to see my husband’s body to perform the proper sending off ceremony in the Jewish tradition. Fortunately, when I called the funeral parlor I found his body was still intact. His father, his brother and his sister were able to view the body and satisfy their religious duties.
His family members stopped by my home on the Suwannee after their private ceremony. They wanted to sit and talk for a while about my husband’s childhood and the stresses he had been under throughout his entire life. He had unwillingly spent several summer’s with his grandmother in Florida due to his asthma. He graduated ahead of his class and had left home immediately to pursue his music career.
I gave his sister the fiddle which had belonged to his grandfather. I remember the first time I heard him sing his original tune, “The Old Man and the Fiddle.” I’d asked him if the words were true. Well, the fiddle did belong to his grandfather and he did learn how to play fiddle on it. However, the story line of the song was his life, not his grandfather’s, “You never can tell, I might stay if you give me a little more whiskey.”
Nat asked if he could have the Gallagher guitar, Red had played that one when the two of them played together back in the 80s. I went to the closet to get the Gallagher guitar; the first guitar Red had ever ordered and purchased. I had traveled with Red to the Gallagher Guitar store in Wartrace, Tennessee and met the Gallaghers. I loved to listen to Red tell the story of how he’d placed the order with Papa Gallagher.
He would start his story by saying, “I wanted the ebony finger board and Mr. Gallagher looked over his glasses at me and explained slowly, in his thick Tennessee accent, ‘that’s gonna cost ya extry.’”
My husband, then, an 18 year old musician, swallowed hard and asked how much extry. “Fifteen dol-lars,” was Mr. Gallagher’s reply. Red decided to go for it and paid the extry.
I would miss that story and all the other stories of Red’s life I’d listened to over and over throughout the years. I never got tired of the stories or of his music. I wished I had written them all down.
His sister wanted one of his guitars too and I realized I couldn’t afford to give everything away. I would need to sell some of his instruments to help me pay my bills. The life insurance agent said it could be a year before I received any money. I told his sister my dilemma and she said she would happily pay me for one of his guitars. They would come to the house after dinner on Sunday so she and her husband could go through and choose one. They would take it with them and we would determine a value and she would send a check when they got back to New York. I could hear Red telling me “business is business.”
Shortly after his father and siblings left I started work on Red’s funeral program on my computer which was not cooperating at all. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get the screen to give me a booklet that folded the normal way, in landscape style. I decided to stop fighting with it and go with the flow and make it fold the long, narrow way. It would certainly be different. But that was appropriate. Red was different than anybody I’d ever met.
My sister and my son arrived. I welcomed their presence. We hugged and cried and visited and they offered to help me complete the preparations for the following day.
I told them I was struggling with finalizing the verbiage on the program I was creating. With their help, we completed the story of his life and put a photo on the front and printed enough copies for the first of many services.
We’d kept in touch with his immediate family but much of his extended family knew little about his current life. He’d been too busy living it to try to keep in touch. They had all been busy in their lives and were always going to try to make it down to the Keys. Now it was too late. So often people let time slip away, relationships disappear and then someone’s gone.
His fans knew he was a great entertainer but they didn’t know the whole person. I wanted them to know he was more than just the best, damned fiddle player and entertainer they’d ever heard.
I took the bio I had written for him on our website and added some personal things and took away the publicity stuff and came up with the following for the memorial program which would be distributed to his family, friends and fans around the world:
Lawrence Aaron Seidman
Born and raised in Wantagh, New York, Larry played his first fiddle
in the back of his parent’s station wagon.
His father showed him how the bow made sounds as it went across
the strings and sat him in the very back of the car for the long drive
to southern Florida. He found, with lots and lots of practice,
he had a gift to play anything with strings on it
and left the northeast as soon as he was finished with school.
Traveling across the country, making money, making music as he went,
he settled in Montana for awhile and
then on to the Ft. Lauderdale area in 1978.
Also known as Fiddlin’ Red, his list of credits reads
like a "Who's Who" of professional music.
During his distinguished 35 year career he shared the stage
with famous groups such as Alabama, George Jones,
Waylon Jennings, Ronnie Milsap, Willie Nelson,
John Anderson, The Captain & Tenille, The Hot Walker Band,
The Conch Republic Royal Minstrels,
John Hall, Jonathan Edwards and many others.
He toured and performed extensively throughout Europe,
South America, Russia & Cuba. Besides his virtuoso fiddling,
Red made beautiful music on his mandolin, acoustic
and electric guitar and bass.
The grin on his face while he was entertaining
made it obvious he enjoyed what he was doing as much as
everyone watching him enjoyed his performance.
As a staff musician for the Hogs Breath Saloon in
Key West for 7 years, playing on a stage with a live cam,
his fans and friends all over the world would sit
at their computers intently watching and listening to every note,
every joke, every wave and personal greeting.
He would try to make sure he said “hello” to everyone.
In addition to his love for music he loved traveling,
fishing and sailing,
spending lots of time in the Bahamas and the Florida Keys.
For a brief time he acted as Captain of the Calypso Gypsy,
a sailing vessel in the Boy Scout program.
The kids truly loved his wit, his music and his kindness.
He enjoyed flying airplanes, playing golf, riding horses
and lived life to its fullest.
He always used to say, “Everything in moderation, even excess!”
In 1996 he decided to take a break from the “jukebox” life
of cranking out song after song after song and
settled in northern Georgia.
He bought his property in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains
and worked at Gold City Corral,
driving carriages, leading trail rides and being a cowboy.
He began building guitars again and left us with two beautiful,
unfinished masterpieces.
Red met Diane in 1998 and was going to hire her
to build a house for him, but decided to marry her instead.
They traveled and worked in the Florida Keys,
their home in Talking Rock, Georgia and
their lake home on the Suwannee River.
He always had a kind word, a smile and a handshake or a hug.
If this booklet were to list the people who loved him,
the pages would reach the clouds, just like his hearty laughter.
We will all miss him so.
My old printer miraculously printed hundreds of programs despite the low ink level and the colors in his photograph were perfect on each and every one.
Later that evening I was looking through the owner’s closet in my bedroom for some of his original music to play at the service the following day; we rented our home out to help pay the mortgage so I had built a closet we could lock where we kept our personal stuff stacked on shelves.
Something fell off the top shelf, hit me in the head and fell onto the floor. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I recognized what it was; the missing DVD. Bruce and Red had recorded a DVD the same time they recorded their “Live at the Hog’s Breath” CD years ago. The Live CD was their best seller and the DVD had been missing since 2001.
I brought it out into the living room and set up my husband’s laptop so I could check to make sure it really was them on stage. I located the speakers and plugged everything in and we watched the first few minutes of their performance. I couldn’t watch anymore but I knew
I would take it to the restaurant after the service so we could set it up. Red could perform for his family at his own memorial. I wonder how many people are able to have that kind of wake.
My sister and my son fixed dinner for us Saturday night and we all went to bed before midnight. I spent another sleepless night, tossing, turning, crying and just not believing what was happening. I wondered if I would ever believe he was gone.
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