It’s been a true pleasure to read all these great memories from his family and friends. 

As an undergrad in his Humanities class in 1967, it quickly became obvious to me that Maury was a great teacher and scholar who loved to make us all laugh as he immersed us in his worlds of history, literature and music.   He knew I was a jazz drummer, and when I returned to MSU for a short stint with the Media Center’s film unit in 1975, he joined me and several others musicians for a free-form jam session - quite a stretch from Dixieland.  It was cool…I still have the recording on cassette.

In the 80’s & 90’s, working as a documentary filmmaker with PBS stations, I called him several times at his Vincent Voice Library for some historical music and speeches.   He always picked up his phone there saying, “Hello, this is the Voice Library…How can I make you happy?”  And he always did.

In 1998 I sent him a VHS tape of an Emmy-nominated documentary I made on the Holocaust, and a few months later dropped by his office at the Library with my wife and daughter as we were heading to northern Michigan, seeing him for the last time.  It was twenty-three years since I’d seen him.  He was unchanged, and joked about being pleasantly surprised that I’d made such a fine film.   I was glad my family had a chance to meet him.

How many hundreds, (or thousands) of us have only to think of him and smile?   Remaining so alive in so many hearts is an achievement few can hope to have…an incredible man.

the back of the photo reads "Maish holding Robin on the beautiful MSU campus." my darling cousing Caitlin recently mailed this to me, a wholly unexpected and precious surprise.

There are a few iconic tales, the sort of thing families pass down, and I’ll admit the one I’m about to tell is how I remember it; I, of, course, was not there.

My father was interviewing for an associate professorship with Holy Cross, a gig he wanted but not a school he wanted. He began the interview with “You know, I’m not so sure about that whole divinity of Christ thing.” Later in the interview, the part I remember best and the part I tell the most often;

“Mr. Crane, do you smoke or drink?”

“Not well enough to teach undergrads.”

Another family folklore thing I was around for but I still don’t remember. He said he had a gig the night I was born. His intro was something along the lines of “I have three kids now, my eldest daughter, Abby, she’s a cellist, Jon, a flautist (it doesn’t make sense, but bear with me) and my brand new son, Harry, he’s the pianist.”

I do have memories that aren’t funny, but I thought I’d fill the space where the missing F#*%ing Dis Custard joke went. A joke that made it all the more surprising when I stopped by his office once to find him bantering with Berry Gordy. He said he knew the guy but I thought he was making that up.  Wish I could remember a profound quote from that conversation but it was mostly like two kids taunting one another on a street corner. 

Dad used to travel to Ames Iowa with his friends Dave Meade and Russel Nye, to attend the annual Bix Beiderbecke festival.  In later years his friends' health faded -Russel Nye suffered a stroke.  Every Sunday thereafter Dad would drive Russell around the mid-Michigan countryside, sharing his observations and his presence.

Traditionally, the oldest person at the seder table asks the Four Questions of the youngest.
"Ma nishtanah halailah hazeh mikol halaylot?"
"Why is this night different from all other nights?" Albert Einstein, the oldest, asked my father, the youngest.
"Shebechol halaylot anu ochlin chametz u'matzah. Halailah hazeh kulo matzah."
"On all other nights, we eat either leavened bread or matzah; on this night--only matzah." my father answered.

Why is this night different from all other nights? Because on this night Albert Einstein asks a question to which my father knows the answer. 

Dad didn't just tell jokes, he spun them out of thin air and into existence. A stray word uttered would launch him into creative fervor. It became my private game first, to determine whether the story he was telling were true or the set up for a punchline, and second, to guess the punchline before he arrived at it. 

Haiku: We spent an entire evening condensing all of the great thems of religion, literature and cinema into the classic 17(?)  syllable Haiku format. Dad jotted his down on the back of a paper plate.

A game he excelled at was the Chattanooga Choo Choo game creating story lines resulting in a punch line that sounded sort of like the chorus "Pardon me boy.  Is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo?"  "Pardon me Roy is that the cat that ate your new shoes." 

 

My dad was a walking encyclopedia of jokes ranging from bawdy and blue to, I assume, clean, in theory at any rate, and jokes that spanned the last century from Vaudeville to modern stand-up. My siblings and I learned many of them either through Osmosis or in self-defense. Rare and delicate flowers that my sisters are they usually redden before getting to a punch line.

One evening in Los Angeles and the cool pacific breeze, um, cooled and breezed, my brother, father and I had a game wherein we just told punchlines in a round robin. The game was at it’s best about an hour in when my brother and I started making up punchlines to jokes that didn’t exist. My father was kind enough not to challenge, but, at least for my part I couldn’t bluff well enough to keep from laughing. My dad retired the game without, I think, making up a single punchline. 

Dads favorite joke of the last few years was "The P is silent as in Bed." Um, that might work better Aurally. 

Some songs I didn't know the real lyrics to until I was much older. In the song below I always heard my dad sing it --- Your Fathers rich and he's also good looking ...

So a bunch of us were in Dad's room last week, including the Doctor's PA and the Hospice nurse.  Some blood work had just come in and everybody was talking about creatin levels and alkaline phosatate levels etc.  Dad, who was trying to go to sleep with all this medical talk going on, announced in a loud clear voice, "I have P in my urine."

we trudged across the frozen wasteland to get to classes at the university of chicago in our winter uniform of worn jeans,pea coat,watch cap frayed gloves,galoshes.the professors were scary,the students were scarier.i spent most of the year in a semi-catatonic state.we took a class from author nelson algren who was frequently visited by author norman mailer.some years later,we went to a reception for nelson algren who had just delivered a lecture at MSU.when we told him that we had been in his class at chicago,he shook his head and said,"no,don't believe it.you're not ugly enough".

my dad calls the Gunson Street house every sunday, and you and grandma get on two different lines to share the news of the week, sometimes addressing each other about household matters in the middle of the conversation.  After awhile I'm told that you don't talk on the phone as much.  You may have been slowly losing your great and genius memory and your glowing way of stringing thoughts together more seriously than we realize, for longer than we realized, because you were so larger than life it was hard to believe you could falter.  Eventually, yes, there is no denying you are in the final stage of aging and that grandma and Harry need help.  When you were at Burcham Hills I still think we couldn't quite believe you were slipping.  At least I couldn't. I was imagining you giving the nurses hilarious back-handed compliments and charming everyone, talking about American history and fiction.  It finally caught up with me that soon I would never be able to see you again, so I got up the courage to ask for time off and get on a plane to MI.  I love you and Grandma so much.  I'm so proud to have sprouted from this tree of humor, intellectualism and liberalism.  I'm so glad I got to be back in the house on Gunson street and that I got to see you a few times at Burcham Hills.  The last time I visited, I knew it would be the last time I saw you.  I wasn't entirely sure how to act because it's hard to know what 'dementia' means -- i wasn't sure if you knew who I was or were just being polite to me, but either way, it was so so sweet to have you tolerate me being a boastful mom, something you'd never known me to be.  I put a picture of my son right up to your face and said "isn't he cute, grandpa?" and you said in your loud way "oh, he's adorable."  your hair and beard were long and gray and wooly like an old lion.  there was no other way to hug you except by putting my arms gently around your head and kissing you goodbye.  i loved the feel of all your long wild hair in my hands, something i never would have gotten to experience the touch of when I was you were still the king of the pride.

Harry,

I'm not addicted to music the way you are. In the car I listen to novels on tape. I can't

read when music's going unless its Muzak or something I can do without. Every

Friday I go down to the rare books room of MSU libraries, where a guitarist, an

accordianist, and sometimes a bassman await. We try to run through six new tunes

out of a fakebook, playing two choruses per tune, an in-chorus establishing the

tune, and a jazz chorus. We've been doing it for more than ten years and we've run

through seven fakebooks.It is ALWAYS a happy time.

When Freddy was fourteen he was huge and they had him playing the sousaphone in

the ACHS marching band. The band director, John Jaquish, was an American Legion buddy of my father's and he suggested that Bobby (age 8) and I (age 10) might enjoy summer

music lessons at two bucks a wreek apiece. Bob got some city drumsticks and I

got a city clarinet. We were not particularly talented but we plugged away. In high school

we played in the band and worked at dances. When I was 16 I took a 7-day-a-week

summer job playing saxophone and clarinet with an old man drummer and old lady pianist at

the Erin Isle Cafe. When I was seventeen I took a job at the Paddock International (International

was a code word meaning blacks were allowed as patrons as well as employees( Our pianist

was an incredinbly talented black lady from Philadelphia, Bobby (15) was on drums, and

Mort Peterson played bass. I'm guessing that we were awful, but it was 1943 and all

the real musicians were in the service. Freddy made up cards saying "Mush Crane, His

Loud Saxophone and His Lousy Orchestra." The following two summers I was in the Navy.

Fast forward a dozen years to 1955. I have a PhD and have been teaching college for

five years. I try out for a job with the house band at WJIM-TV for the "Country House

Matinee". There I met a brilliant guitarist named Teddy Birchfield and a wonderful bassman,

Tommy Crittenden. We each made ten bucks an hour, which was a hell of a lot in those

days. I have to join the union. I stay in for 52 years. I just quit this month. Tommy and Teddy

taught me all I know about chord changes. WJIMTV was the only station on the air in

Lansing in 1955. The show ran 2-3 PM five days a week. Housewives stopped me in

Krogers and acted  as uf they knew me. Mom learned to put up with it. I made enough

money from that and from working weekends in a Howell honkytonk Fridays and Saturdays

(our neighbor, pianist Art Carney, got us the gig) to pay off the house at 129 Gunson Street

in three years. For two years after that we saved on housing, enough money actually to

put down on the 5 bedroom bomb shelter where we live today. Your birth inspired us to move

to bigger quarters. I played on the only TV station in a town where there were many musicians more

qualified than me, but Lansing musicians all support themselves with day gigs. Teddy worked

nights setting type at the State Journal, Tommy was only casually employed. I taught a morning

schedule at MSU. I became locally famous and got a lot of work and got to know and be

known by the local jazz community. Fast forward to 1970, when the Faculty Club is holding

a roaring twenties party and asks me to put together a dixieland group. This is contemporaneous

with "Member of the Wedding". I put together the G 6 + 1 (I was younger then than you are

now), and over the years we replaced only those people who died (Brainard, Sidnell, Sandefur, Thornburg) or moved to Arizona (Reed). That leaves Faunce and me. I resigned as leader thirteen

months ago. Since tehn we've had two gigs. I got one. He got the other. We became a part

of the football scene for 30 years on campus and in venues from Boston to Honolulu, and

we're written into the hsiory of the U in articles and on plaques. I love to play but I never liked

the kindergarten teacher aspects of being a bandleader. I'm not a natural musician and at times

I'm not even a good musician, but Godammit, I love to play.I loved especially the week we followed the team to El Paso, and I was reunited with Bobby after forty years. He was a not-bad drummer;

actually I preferred him to Brainard.And, as I say, Right now I get to play at least fifty times a year. Aint no bad thing.