remembering Dean Crum - Updated
17 September 2006 | Uncategorized | 9 Comments
From The Nashville Jug Band in 1988 (taken from tape):
Shortnin Bread mp3
That’s Dean playing dualling (heh heh) banjos with John Hedgecoth.
From the Dead’s Skull and Roses album (from vinyl):
Not Fade Away / Goin Down that Road Feelin Bad mp3
A favorite cut of each of ours. I remember sitting in Dean’s car listening to it on a tape.
Dean was a great banjo player. Dean could play really fast, but he drove slower than any little old lady.
The pic is a publicity shot of him and his brother Don as kids in Indiana. They played on the Jimmy Dean tv show. I bought the photo the other day on ebay from an autograph dealer. I used the experience as an example of long-tail markets in my marketing class.
Dean was also a really nice guy. When my son Jack was 2 or 3, he was fascinated by Dean and his banjo in a room full of other musicians. Jack would stay right by Dean’s side and the first song I remember Jack ever making up was I’m a Banjo. I am sure Dean inspired the song; there weren’t any other banjo players around our house.
Dean was also a really good guitar player - when he was young he played like Jerry Reed; later he played whatever he wanted.
Dean was also a mystery writer.
And as I believe I mentioned, he was a really nice guy.
When Dean died his cousin Mike wrote a really nice piece in his column in the Bloomington IN paper. I wanted to link to it , but couldn’t find it.
Update - Here is Mike’s column mentioned above: Mike’s column about Dean
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Dean was a friend; didn’t know of his passing until I recognized his banjo at SPIGMA this past february and inquired why it was there without Dean; the reply was sobering. Saw a hard copy of your blog and wondered if you ever got a copy of the piece from his cousin mike?…dan loftin
Dean and I played little league baseball together in Ft. Wayne, IN.
He and I played a trumpet duet (Margie) at a grade school talent contest. It was easy for Dean but to my mind, the arrangement was most complex and challenging. Coincidentally, we finished second and I am convinced that it was because the winners had more participants and not that we were, in any way, less talented.
Even as a kid, he was a really nice guy.
I dated Dean for a few years in the early 70’s in Fort Wayne, IN. He was a nice guy! I didn’t know where he lived after he left Fort Wayne. I wondered if he went to Nashville to be a studio musician. I’m surprised he wrote mysteries. Where is Don? Would love to contact either Don or Mike, his cousin, to get some details. Thanks.
Kahy Rood Smith
So nice to see all of this. When we were kids, we were all best friends, but it was Dean and my brother, Wayne, and then Don and I. You know how kids are. Age is a big deal.
As we got older, Dean and I became very close, because we had so much in common - particularly the love of music and writing.
I still miss him every day.
I did write a column about him for the Bloomington (Ind.) Herald-Times, where I’ve worked the last … 30 years.
Our newspaper site is a pay site, though, so a link just takes you to a place where it asks you to pay.
I can e-mail through the paper’s web site, a link and PDF. So I can send you the story and how you work with it is up to you.
GHM, when you read this, let me know. I can shoot it your way.
[...] have gotten some comments and emails about another friend who has passed, Dean Crum. I now have a copy of Mike’s column about Dean that I mentioned in this blog. Read it [...]
I would like to contact Dean’s brother, Dave.
We worked together in Yuma, AZ. for
several years.
I’m sorry for the bad news but David has passed away also. I last saw him at Dean’s funeral.
I didn’t know David well. His personality seemed so different from his brothers’. He never talked much around family but his love for, and pride in, both Dean and Don, were obvious.
Dean’s passing and funeral service was the hardest day of my life. Even though I always saw
David more as a loner, he reached out to me continuously during the services in very personal ways, despite his own grief. I realized just how much that he was like their father, “my uncle”, Lonnie, the strong silent type. I wish I had told David while I had the chance how much his support meant to me.
We were all in shock at the time, and while the hole in my heart remains, I have grown to appreciate just how fortunate I am to have had a person “like”
Dean in my life for over 50 years. I feel particularly fortunate in that even those “like” Dean, aren’t Dean. He was the real deal and while he is no longer with us, I don’t think its possible to really appreciate just how much on-going impact
Dean has had on all our lives and the lives that we touch and on and on.
My biggest regret is not having the strengh(or courage) to speak at Dean’s funeral service. But, even now, its hard to not tear up as as I think of his passing. I let him down but only
Dean would never even have that thought for a moment. I can’t remember EVER hearing Dean speak an ill word about friend or family. Who else can anyone think of that you can say that about?
I was thinking about Dean later and wandering at what time in Deans life the readers might have known him. I noticed the observation above at his slow driving(which was so true that after about 40 years old, I always wanted to drive any where we went because he never seemed to notice how slowly he drove. I also knew the Dean when driving was new and an adventure to him. But, unlike most of us, he grew up and out of it.
When we were in college he had a ford mustang fastback, stick on the floor, with the new engine and classic style.(think “Bullit”) I used to watch him go through the gears effortlessly, up and down,with amazement. No one could take him off a light if he decided to have some fun. One day we went from muncie to ft wayne and averaged over 110, much of it on sideroads and in traffic. He was in out of out openings you could barely fit a car in. And never stopped talking. He was Steve McQueen.
That summer he had almost gotten killed racing motorbikes(with no experience)on a dirt track with the highway men he worked with. Slid his bike(and body) into a pole coming off a turn between experienced ‘men’ who raced every weekend.(think “Little Fas and Big Halsy” Nothing intimidated him. He was Robert Redford
When we were 30 I had a 78 trans am(think “Smokey and the Bandit”)and Dean and I drove from lauderdale to nashville averaging over 100 all the way (with stops)and Dean did all the heavy driving. He was Burt Reynolds.
Like most things once Dean had been there and done that, he bored of up. He never cared about proving anything to anyone else to show off his courage or skills or talents. Once he knew he could do it, that was all he needed to knew. He was Steve Mcqueen, Robert Redford and Burt Reynolds.That is, he was the real life version of the combination of the roles they played in movies in the prime of their lives. If you wanted to know Dean story, you had to be there with him when it happened. Otherwise he never talked much about it or lived in the past. Like I said, he was the real deal. So unique and yet so unaware of it.He always saw the good in others but never paraded the basic human goodness and accomplishments in his own life.
If the Dan Loftin who wrote a comment on this site on June 9, 2007 is the Dan Loftin who was in graduate school at UK during the 60s, please get in touch with me in Owensboro.