I marvel at how life often comes full circle

Ours was a routine bi-weekly meeting of the editors and art director at Modern Drummer magazine. We were in the publisher’s office to flesh out the next few issues: interviews, columns, music, photographs, and letters to the editor.

One letter to the editor asked, “Whatever happened to Maurice Purtill?”

Maurice “Moe” Purtill played drums with Glenn Miller’s Orchestra (1939-1942) appearing on pretty much all Glenn Miller’s hit records.

“I know the answer to that one,” I piped up. “Maurice Purtill is dead.”

A decade earlier, I told my MD co-workers, I lived in Huntington, N.Y., managing The Cheese Shop. Next door to us was a longstanding butcher shop. I’ve forgotten the name. One night, at close of business, I was standing out back behind The Cheese Shop smoking a cigarette. One of the butchers, Freddie, was out back too.

We started shooting the breeze and the topic of drummers came up. Probably because I was a drummer. Freddie asked if I’d ever heard of Maurice Purtill.

I said, “No.”

“Maurice Purtill was Glenn Miller’s drummer,” Freddie said. “He was from Huntington, N.Y.”

Familiar with Glenn Miller’s music, from my Greatest Generation parents, and from my own listening, I was not a Miller fan. Those old records, even the full length vinyl LPs of Miller’s original 78 rpm records, were meant for dancers. They were not jazz records, as such, and I was mainly a jazz drummer fan at that time. Also, the studio recording techniques in the late 1930s and early ‘40s were limiting to drummers. Judging Maurice Purtill solely on a couple of hearings of “Little Brown Jug, “In The Mood,” or “Moonlight Serenade,” left little, if any, impression on me of his drumming skill.

“Was Purtill a good drummer?” I asked my butcher friend. “Oh yeah,” he said.

“Whatever happened to Maurice Purtill?” I asked. “He died,” said Freddie.

Fast forward a decade to the office meeting at Modern Drummer where my statement on Purtill was accepted. We published the reader’s letter with my very brief response: “Maurice Purtill is dead.”

Two weeks later, to my surprise, my boss dropped an open envelope on my desk. The letter inside said, in essence, “I’m not dead.” It was written by Maurice Purtill, living only ten miles away.

That was a fact-checking lesson I’ve not forgotten. I wrote Mr. Purtill an apology and printed a correction in the magazine. I wish now, assuming he would have granted my request, I had interviewed Maurice Purtill, but I didn’t.

I left Modern Drummer in October 1983, gradually phasing out my public drumming and drum writing. But in April 2014 I decided I had a responsibility to place in the public square, materials I had from drummers — audio interviews, letters, photos, and so forth — that would otherwise end up in a landfill alongside me. So I started a blog.

My February 13, 2016 blog post briefly recounted my Maurice Purtill story along with a fantastic YouTube video of Purtill playing killer drums with Glenn Miller’s Orchestra on “Bugle Call Rag.” I wish I had known of this “Bugle Call Rag” video in my Cheese Shop days. Wow!

One more letter in response to my Maurice Purtill blog post arrived on my desk, by email, on December 10, 2016:

Mr Fish, I am sure that you already know this, but my dad died Mar. 9, 1994, after a brief illness.

[Signed], Bill Purtill

Bill Purtill is Maurice’s son. We spoke by phone, he sent me photos of his parents, and I hope to see him in Florida soon. Perhaps I’ll have a second chance to write about Maurice Purtill after all.

I marvel at how life often comes full circle.

Scott K. Fish has served as a communications staffer for Maine Senate and House Republican caucuses, and was communications director for Senate President Kevin Raye. He founded and edited AsMaineGoes.com and served as director of communications/public relations for Maine’s Department of Corrections until 2015. He is now using his communications skills to serve clients in the private sector.

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