April 18–25, 1996

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On the Corner

By Margit Detweiler

As an elderly woman passes on Walnut Street, Eddie Ryder follows her with the sound of his old battered trumpet. The 45-year-old musician bleats out the melancholy jazz standard "Misty," improvising into "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."

A few seconds later a little girl and her father walk by.

Ryder switches to the "Pink Panther" theme — a tune he's well-known for at this corner of 16th and Walnut.

The girl giggles as she passes. A few feet, and the father decides to turn around and put money in Ryder's trumpet case.

"Once some guy handed me a ten-dollar bill and said, 'You know 'Pink Panther?' Now every time I see him I play it for him.'"

"Aww, you ain't gonna hook me into playing the same old stuff," laughs Ryder's buddy Umar Hakim, who plays tenor sax by the PNC building on Chestnut Street. "I'm tryin' to enhance the music."

Though their philosophies about music may be different, both Hakim and Ryder enjoy the same part-time trade — as two of Philly's dozens of street musicians.

Playing music in the street is a time-honored tradition in many cities across the country, but in Philadelphia it's an integral part of music history. Playing street corners ignited the careers of many doo-wop acts, gospel shouters, jazz cats and even modern blues/ rock acts like G. Love and Special Sauce.

There's even something about the city itself that's musical.

A friend once noted that he'd never heard more people singing out loud, or whistling than he has in Philadelphia. I'd be inclined to agree.

Take a scene like the one I witnessed at Penn Center recently. You quickly understand that street playing (or in this case an indoor sidewalk) is the essence of what we've come to call The Sound of Philadelphia.

Sitting on a milk crate, John Churchville has his Roland keyboard propped on a metal ashtray. A lawyer by day, Churchville brings his keys down to the station about once a week, playing for fun and for charity. All that money in his San Francisco baseball hat, he says, will go to aid the Hope For Kids Fund Race.

As he swings into a pumping version of Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely," a SEPTA custodian and another man watch and grin — one man taps his umbrella to the beat. Churchville notices a friend , Tyrone Lyles, on his way home from work, and urges him to join in.

After hemming and hawing, Lyles agrees and, boy, what a treat. Still holding his briefcase, he soars over Churchville's harmonizing with a reedy Smokey Robinson-style falsetto. The crowd watching is mesmerized. The man tapping his umbrella starts to sing, too, as does a rattily dressed man, both in perfect pitch. The custodian starts jangling the keys inside his pocket as percussion.

The soul is steaming off the tiles.

"This doesn't happen in the suburbs," yells one man to commuters running to catch their train.

There are street musicians who are famous to those of us who live and work in Center City. The Peruvian singers in front of Liberty Place (though they haven't been spotted yet this season). Expert jazz saxophonist Byard Lancaster on 16th & Chestnut (though he's currently on tour). The three blind musicians who harmonize exquisitely on Chestnut Street. Then there's Sheila, also blind, who's always in front of Lickety Split on South Street, playing her recorder.

Sheila declined to be interviewed or photographed, but she has quite a reputation among locals as an often angry young musician who repeatedly yells at cars that blast their music too loudly. Sheila busks for money in a tin cup.

"She's not a street musician," says Lickety owner Bob DiDomenico, rolling his eyes. "She's tough. We fed her for the past five years, and she'd come in to use the bathroom. But we stopped about half a year ago."

Few stores are unhappy about the musicians who play in front of their stores. Most say it keeps the sidewalk traffic happy and bustling.

Sheila was one of the only women we found playing in the street, save for six-year-old Priscilla Cligskill — a serious little girl in a pink coat who will occasionally accompany and harmonize with her father Curtis.

Strumming his guitar with a rope as a strap, father Cligskill only picked up the guitar two years ago, but he's damn good. He comes from a long line of street musicians — his 96-year-old grandmother, who taught him to play guitar, still runs a street gospel service on occasional Sundays in North Philly. On this day Cligskill plays in Penn Station, but he also plays at Reading Terminal.

He lets Priscilla take the lead on their own version of a Deneice Williams hit: "Let's Hear it For The Girl."

Cligskill watches his daughter during the weekend, and she lives with foster parents during the week.

"Her mom's on drugs... I'm trying to get her in the church choir. I don't let her play too much with the kids in the neighborhood. She plays with us [her respective families]."

Currently unemployed, Cligskill is looking for work — perhaps a sanitation job, he says — but until then playing outside can be somewhat lucrative.

"I can make $35 a day."

When he performed in front of the Vet during the Eagles playoffs last year he said he made $47 in one half hour with a song he wrote, "I Believe in Eagles Green."

Eddie Ryder, who routinely counts the change in his pocket while I speak with him, says he plays about twice a week.

"Whenever I need a couple extra dollars, you know?"

Ryder, who has a part-time job working at the Union League on Broad Street, says he can do better on the street than he can moonlighting in clubs like Zanzibar Blue, Ortlieb's or Natalie's in West Philly.

"On a sunny day I can make a few hundred dollars down on Penn's Landing," he adds. "Even cops will give me a dollar once in a while," says Ryder. "They'd rather see me out here than begging."

Peddling is technically illegal, and so is playing in the street in certain situations. But it's rarely enforced.

According to a Philadelphia ordinance that dates back to 1897, "No person shall play a hand organ or other musical instrument between the hours of 10 p.m. and 9 a.m.; on any street or on any square or block where there's a hospital or other institutions housing sick persons; in front of any school while it's in session; in front of any place of worship when services are being held."

The penalty? It's not to exceed $5 for a first offense, $10 for subsequent offenses — if you don't pay, you could be in prison for up to ten days.

But License and Inspections spokesman Tom McNally, as well as a policeman in Penn Station who declined to give his name, say the law isn't really enforced.

"I won't bother musicians if they're not bothering anybody," says the policeman. "But if they're playing too loud or disrupting an area I'd tell them to tone it down or stop."

"We view these musicians as performing a service in some sense," says McNally, "and performing a charitable act in another.... When I go down to get my slice of pizza for lunch, there's often a guy who plays flute in the court. When he plays, 'How Great Thou Art,' I hum along with him."

Even Mayor Rendell has been known to hum along, according to City Hall courtyard saxophonist Richard Michael. Although one day Ed must have been having a bad day; he raised his window, says Michael, and called out for him to tone it down.

"Other times he loves it — he even tipped me once," says Michael.

Unfortunately, the mayor couldn't be reached for comment.

Not everybody loves music in the street, though.

"There are people that walk wide angles around you, so they can avoid you," says Cligskill. Still, he says, nodding to the people walking past him in the station, "Playing music gets you up in a new dimension — when I play my music I feel I'm equal to them."

Another advantage to playing "out" is the big sound you can make.

"A lot of cats who play in clubs gauge their sound on the street. You can test a song out, too. See what the response is. And you may be bringing it to people who might not otherwise hear jazz."

But you've also got to catch the weather reports in the morning. "The atmosphere affects the playing... the weather affects the tonality," adds Hakim. "Yeah, you know when you walk out of your house in the morning if it's a muggy day, your voice is going to be all groggy."

Just because you're in the street doesn't mean there isn't a sound check.

A young man in baggy jeans passes Ryder, who's playing a Lee Morgan tune.

"Play some James Browwwn!" shouts the man.

Ryder growls out the line "I Feel Good" and smiles, going back to his jazz song.

"Aw, you gonna kick it or what? Play some hip-hop, man," the boy jokes, but puts money in Ryder's trumpet case anyway.

Ryder thanks him and moves into a slow, haunting version of "My Favorite Things."

He tells me, "On the street you can do whatever you wanna do. If I sit here all day I can make the same thing playing a club — and I get to play what I want. "

"Now, I'm gonna haunt ol' Umar..."

Ryder strides out a little "Pink Panther." on his beat-up horn, hoping his friend on the next block will get the chills.