R.I.P. Barry Sears, a friend since kindergarten who changed my life over lunch
Barry Sears, one of my oldest and dearest friends, died unexpectedly in October. It was a profound shock amid a sad year of loss.
However, the service was every bit a celebration of this great man’s life, impressing even this crusty, aging pagan. Barry was a lifelong Christian, and he allowed his faith to constantly evolve throughout his life. He found his own place and helped found his own church, and I applaud it.
Music was a part of the service; Barry’s brother Scott selected Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park” to be played, as indicative of Barry’s fandom, as well as the “slice of life” positives the song still conveys more than 50 years after its release.
This started me thinking about the songs that Barry and I mutually enjoyed during the 1970s, drawn from the rock/pop canon, but with a surprise or two. He had band (trombone), and we both had choir. I played basketball, and he broadcasted the games with Lee Kelly on WNAS (our actual radio class time often was spent listening to tunes). There was music everywhere, and I believe I can speak for Barry in saying that we absorbed it like insatiable sponges.
I’ve settled on just 10 songs, and it might have been 50. Today is Barry’s birthday, which strikes me as a good time to revisit a small bit of the music that featured in our friendship. There is no particular order to these choices.
—
“Satin Doll” … Duke Ellington & His Famous Orchestra
When we were young, the Georgetown Optimist Club was situated in a very old, casually maintained and musty house on the east side of town. Our fathers were club founders and stalwarts. The house was fun to explore; upstairs was not used at all, with downstairs reserved for meetings and use of the kitchen. If there was a basement, I saw little of it because I was too scared to go down there often. An ancient upright piano, seemingly last tuned in preparation for singalongs during the WWII victory celebrations, was a spot where Barry and I would struggle to punch out simple melodies, with Satin Doll being the only one we ever really succeeded in locating.
—
“Your Auntie Grizelda” … The Monkees
From the 1967 album More of the Monkees, and with a lead vocal by the under-utilized Peter Tork. This song is a tad more about Barry’s tastes than mine; he had a fondness for the word “grizzled,” and Grizelda was a name that struck us as suitably grizzled. Listening to it for the first time in 30 or so years, I find that I definitely can recall the melody, and a few youthful memories.
—
“Oh Thank You Great Spirit” … Chicago
Intended by Chicago’s transcendent guitarist Terry Kath as a paean to Jimi Hendrix, and with a bluesy vocal that teenagers like us couldn’t yet manage. Kath’s performance aside, the 1975 song exhibits the strength of the band’s founding rhythm section; drummer Danny Seraphine simply does not get enough credit. This is the song than began playing in my head during Barry’s service.
—
“Crossfire” … Grand Funk Railroad
Grand Funk, known today as Homer Simpson’s favorite band, dissolved briefly in 1975 but reformed in 1976 to record the album Good Singing, Good Playing, as produced by none other than Frank Zappa, whose progressive musical milieu had almost nothing in common with a quartet of Michigan ruffians. But Zappa was a seeker of authenticity, and was enthused to find it here; he even played guitar on one track. While Barry was reserved around others, he could be hilariously improvisational privately; one evening at the Sears residence we were listening to the album, and later he inserted “caught in the crossfire,” with exaggerated vocal inflections as a sort of non sequitur, into a completely different conversation. I must have laughed for 20 minutes. I’ve no idea why it was funny, and yet I was helpless. You don’t forget times like that.
—
“Long Hard Ride” … The Marshall Tucker Band
The album was released in 1976, and by the following spring the title instrumental track became our “greet warmer weather while driving aimlessly” song. Barry may have had a car cassette deck by then; I can’t recall this being an 8-track. For years afterward, hearing this song meant spring had arrived.
—
“Poor Butterfly” … Red Nichols and His Orchestra
My parents had a 1960s big band era multiple-LP compilation album called In the Groove, which I committed to cassette around 1970. For whatever reason, this song resonated with Barry as much as me, and there we were, 5th graders walking around with Red Nichols (from 1931) in our heads while everyone else heard Steppenwolf songs handed down to them by their older siblings.
—
“Cumberland Mountain Number Nine” … The Charlie Daniels Band
Barry’s first (used) car had an 8-track player. He owned only one album on 8-track, Saddletramp (1976). Accordingly, money being tight, we may have listened to this album roughly 300 times before the madness set in. In spite of this, I consider it one of the better CDB albums of the 1970s, with lengthier songs, more jamming, and fewer cultural references. This track featured the vocals of lead guitarist Tom Crain. Barry and I both loved his playing. Once at a Louisville show (1977, I believe), we stood right by the stage in front of Crain’s stack, and in essence, were treated to his playing all night long.
—
“Couldn’t Get It Right” … Climax Blues Band
If I’m not mistaken, Climax Blues Band opened one of those CDB shows. This song was the British band’s first big chart hit in the USA. I was going through one of many periods of failed amorous pursuits (one ran into the next), and concurrently, it was the period of Barry’s legendary “that’s right” versus “that’s wrong” humor, hence a nickname many of us had for him: TR. He kept insisting to me that I needed to get myself “right,” and this song had an appropriately cathartic effect, enabling me to clean the slate and prepare for my next fiasco.
—
“People, Let’s Stop the War” … Grand Funk Railroad
Let’s face the music: Homer Simpson was onto something. GFR was a heartland “peoples’ choice” long before Mellencamp; supposedly savvy urban audiences paid no attention, except the band sold out Shea Stadium in NYC faster than The Beatles. So, forget Mark Farner’s wa wa pedal and Don Brewer’s powerhouse drums. This simple but effective protest song belongs to Mel Schacher’s bass; it begins quietly, then Schacher blows you away like the advertisement for Maxell cassettes. Barry and I played this one over and over, probably in 1976 (when I bought the LP, released in 1971).
—
“Mississippi Delta City Blues” … by Chicago
Chicago XI was the band’s last album with Terry Kath before his death, and this was the lead-off track. We adored it. I was impressed by singer, keyboardist and principle songwriter Robert Lamm, while much of the world was attracted to bassist and singer Peter Cetera. But Barry and I shared a fascination with Kath. In 1977, the third and final time we saw the band in Louisville during Kath’s lifetime, we both noticed the setup for Cetera’s performance of “If You Leave Me Now.” Kath, who was slovenly, bearded and wearing a hockey jersey and a touring cap, was handed Cetera’s bass. The singer, fair-haired, clean-shaven and pristine in a leisure suit, picked up an acoustic guitar. As Cetera sang angelically in the spotlight, Kath slouched in the gloaming to the rear, smoking a cigarette. Barry immediately pegged it as “Mr. Clean and Mr. Dirt,” after the liquid cleaner ads we’d seen so many times on television. Neither of us ever forgot this image.
The Russian band Leonid & Friends deserves honorable mention for this and numerous other eerily accurate covers of Chicago. They’re absolutely amazing. As recently as the summer of 2025, Barry and I chatted about a road trip to see Leonid & Friends play. Life (and death) got in the way; so it goes, and with a melancholy, wistful nod, here’s a song for the departure. Anyone who ever heard the two of us trying to “cover” Kath’s vocal on the original will understand.
