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Getting in tune Korty doc salutes John Allair—the most famous piano tuner in the world by Jason Wals h
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fter screening John Korty’s new documentary, viewers may find themselves thinking—”Man, I want that piano tuner’s autograph.” It’s not every day one wishes to meet a piano tuner. But the subject of Korty’s John Allair Digs In! is no everyday piano tuner. The 25-minute film—which holds its premiere at the Rafael Nov. 10—dubs him “Marin County’s original rock ’n’ roller”; Huey Lewis calls him “the godfather of this whole Marin County music scene”; Maria Muldaur describes his playing as “a rambunctious, irrepressible amount of joy.” Allair lives in a modestlooking Petaluma home; he dresses in jeans and buttondown silky short-sleeve shirts. He’s got thinning silver hair. And he’s Marin’s answer to Jerry Lee Lewis, “The Killer.” This latest doc by Korty— The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Who Are the DeBolts (and Where Did They Get 19 Kids?)—further cements the West Marin director as Marin’s quintessential filmmaker—capturing not only one of its true characters, but placing him entirely within the context, and at the apex, of the county music scene and its roots-rock obsession. If the Marin Rocks exhibit ever happens, there’d better be a corner set aside for John Allair. Allair says in the film that he was born in Oakland “a long time ago,” and around age 12 became interested in boogie-woogie piano. Soon he and buddy Pete Lind were playing Fats Domino covers on the Marin County rock circuit—or, rather, they were the Marin County rock circuit. “John Allair was the first rock ’n’ roll musician in Marin County,” rock journalist Joel Selvin says in the film. “Anyone that grew up in Marin in the ’50s, that attended sock hops or other early forms of rock ’n’ roll entertainment—they were entertained by John Allair.” (Korty makes good use of old concert posters—“John Allair and Combo” playing the Star Hall in San Anselmo in 1960, another from a 1962 gig at the Bermuda Palms in San Rafael.) By the 1970s, the concert posters become more impressive, as Allair winds up in Touloos Ta Truck, a Grateful Dead side project with Phil Lesh and Terry Haggerty of the Sons of Champlin. In 1973, Allair 22 PACIFIC SUN NOVEMBER 11 – NOVEMBER 17, 2011
and musician Steve Mitchell opened at the Lion’s Share in San Anselmo for a new guy in town named Van Morrison. Wowed by Allair’s prowess on the keyboards, the “Moondance” singer asked him to join his band—but the piano player turned him down. “I wanted to keep my duo,” Allair says. The quiet life playing Marin clubs and tuning rentals at Marin Piano and Organ seemed to be all Allair wanted out of life. (In the ’80s he’d hook up with Morrison again, touring several times with the Irish legend and playing on a dozen or so of his albums.) The musicians he’d played with were almost as famous as those he’d tuned pianos for—Keith Richards, Neil Young and Tom Waits among them. Korty’s softly whimsical style is reminiscent of the short films of Les Blank (Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe) and, like the Berkeley filmmaker, he even has a funny “food” scene with Allair dancing around the pond at the Marin French Cheese Company while devouring a chicken drumstick. Local scenes are all over this film—footage from recent gigs was shot for the film at Rancho Nicasio and the Station House Cafe, delivering glimpses of the soft-spoken piano tuner ripping up versions of “Shake Dance,” “Long Legs” and “The High Place in Your Mind.” “Obviously, it’s never been about money or fame, but I get a little bit of those once in a while,” Allair tells interviewer Jonathan Korty (son of the director and a member of Vinyl). “But mainly I still get as excited as I did when I was 12 listening to boogie-woogie piano... it’s just the excitement of creating music and playing music in front of an audience—music never ends, it’s unlimited.” And for those expecting any hint of regret from Allair at wiling away in semi-obscurity for 55 years on the Marin scene, don’t hold your breath. “I don’t need much,” says Allair at the film’s close. “I do some yoga in the morning, play harpsichord a little bit, take a hike, go tune a piano, watch a movie from my Netflix—what a life!” Indeed. < Check out www.johnkorty.com or www.johnallair.com.
China Camp State Park, at San Pedro Point in San Rafael, served as the shooting locale for Blood Alley (1955), about a cynical American merchant marine captain who, after escaping from a communist prison, steers 180 anti-Mao villagers out of China on a stolen river boat. Blood Alley was the first project for John Wayne’s Batjac label. The film was originally intended to star Robert Mitchum, but when the notoriously mercurial actor shoved the film’s location manager into the icy China Camp waters, director William Wellman insisted Mitchum be given the boot. After being turned down by Humphrey Bogart and Gregory Peck, Wayne himself stepped into the lead role. The film featured Lauren Bacall as Wayne’s stoic-but-vulnerable love interest.—Jason Walsh
ViDEO
Allosauruses reportedly walked out on the film in droves.
Hustle and phloem Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is a film of huge ambition, and it’s been polarizing audiences ever since its Cannes win. I come down with the lovers, but sympathize with the haters—there’s just no middle ground. A film that lives in the eddies and whorls of its story like no film ever has, Tree follows the fortunes of the O’Brien family, led by mother Jessica Chastain and patriarch Brad Pitt, as they’re dealt successive blows—death, career failure and an eldest son’s sudden and brutal alienation from his father. Decades later the man (Sean Penn), now a successful architect, still bears the scars. Malick infuses his manicured Texas town with trademark ambrosial imagery, nature and regionalism, the wispy cottons and polished woods of a bygone time. But in moments of great pain the film often leaves for a wider perspective—and I mean anywhere— settling on a river scene from prehistory, or traveling through arteries with blood cells or being a celestial eyewitness to the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This would be monumental narcissism in a lesser director, but Malick is a pit bull for emotional truth, and here he captures the strange casting about for meaning the mind does—sometimes across geological eons—when faced with tragedy. He sometimes stews decades before making another film, so be sure not to miss this one.—Richard Gould