Tuesday, August 13, 2002

Trenton Times

Striking a nostalgic chord

Ken Lelen's passion for golden oldies turns out

all-vintage shows — right down to the instruments

                                                                                               Staff photos: Mike Nixon

   Musician Ken Lelen’s vintage instruments, from left, 1920s Galiano parlor,

                  1937 Gibson HG-00, 1936 Martin 00-18G, and 1940 Gibson A-50 mandolin.              

By Elisabeth Hulette — Staff Writer

Forget remakes, remixes and cover songs — the musical hits of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s still sound best the way they were originally written. That, at least, is the opinion of Ken Lelen, a singer-guitar player who has turned a passion for the golden oldies into a musical career.

Lelen's plays and sings favorite songs from yesteryear, but with a key difference — he uses antique guitars, matching a song's date with a guitar made in the same year. Because many gigs are held at senior facilities, his audiences appreciate him for the memories the songs awake. Lelen has even dubbed his act "vintage music on vintage instruments," and designed it, one program director said, "for vintage audiences."

The old songs are a new twist for Lelen. Until a few years ago, he worked as a reporter and editor for 27 years for newspapers and magazines. When he felt burned out from journalism, he thought about a career in music. At first, he planned to do something managerial in the classical side of the music business. All that changed when he discovered vintage guitars.

Lelen picked up his first antique instrument in J. B. Kline's music shop in Lambertville, NJ five years ago. It was a Bacon & Day guitar made in 1938, and Lelen calls it "the guitar that led me down the road to ruin." From there, he amassed a collection of 20 antique guitars, several of which he proudly displays at his performances, everything from a 1932 Gibson L-00 to a 1943 Martin 000-18.

Ken Lelen of Washington Crossing NJ plays vintage guitars and

sings blues and ragtime tunes from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

Here he holds a 1937 Gibson HG-00.

The guitars are half of the show, lending a performance an "authentic acoustic sound" that has "aged, mellowed and matured." According to Lelen, the physical makeup of the guitars improves with age, the glue solidifies and the woods expand and contract with temperature and humidity changes. The result is a warm, rich sound — something that cannot be duplicated in new guitar production.

The songs he performs are the story's other half. Lelen attributes his love for vintage songs to his mother, a Bobby Soxer who ran away from home to join a roller skating show in 1946. "A Bobby Soxer in the 1940s was a rebel," he says, and Lelen grew up listening to his mother's jazz, blues and ragtime records.

When he began putting his act together, Lelen searched for music books with songs he recalled hearing as he grew up. Of these, he continues to choose love songs from the 1920s to the 1940s, each of which reminds his vintage audience members of their time spent courting back when the songs were written: "I'm playing for my parents, my  grand-parents and great-grand-parents," he says.

And they remember. Lelen says his favorite part of performing is connecting with an audience. "People respond to songs they haven't heard for years, even decades."

After some events audience members approach Lelen with their own memories of the songs he performed, eager to tell stories about the times they heard the songs, where they were and what they were doing.

One of Lelen's favorite stories is one such incident where a lady in Red Bank, NJ told him that she and her sister had heard the popular singer Kate Smith introduce the song, Dream a Little Dream of Me, in 1931 in Boston. A man in another of Lelen's audiences in Bethlehem, PA said Smith gave her performance in the Metropolitan Theater on Tremont Street, and he helped build it.

Lelen works the stories into his act, telling them between songs along with bits of history about the music and guitars he uses. The result is part concert,  part history lesson and part antique show — just the right mix for striking a nostalgic chord time and time again with his audience.

At one Philadelphia performance, as Lelen launched into his rendition of Love Is Just Around the Corner, feet began to tap, heads began to nod, lips mouthed the words to the song, and sighs of contentment sounded all over the room.

When he played the 1931 tune, All Of Me, a red-headed woman leaned over to say her cousin used to come over and sing that song with her guitar: "We didn't have a radio. She was better than a radio." And when she heard the song It's Been a Long, Long Time, she recalled "the GIs sang this while they were away."

What's next for Lelen? He is planning to expand his circuit to include senior sites between Florida and Massachusetts. And he's looking to move into theaters by adding a jazz fiddler, bass player and mandolin player to his act. Meantime, the character of his music remains the same — pure acoustic on guitars that "sound the way they did 60 years ago." After all, it is that sound his audiences remember.

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© 2002 Trenton Times – Trenton NJ