At 99, Velzoe Brown Doesn't Miss A Beat

By Peter Hartlaub, Chronicle Pop Culture Critic

September 22, 2009

Velzoe Brown just played jazz piano with her band for 70 minutes, and she looks more invigorated than when she started. After meeting with several fans, she finds a chair, draws a smaller crowd and tells stories for another half hour. 
"My dad played the cornet and he had a good voice. My mom played classical piano, but her heart was in ragtime," Brown remembers. "I spent my babyhood under the piano, going to sleep watching my mother's pretty little feet going up and down on the pedals."

That was around 1910. And no, a time machine wasn't involved. If Brown, who turns 100 in March and plays with Velzoe and the Upbeats several times per month, isn't the oldest working musician in the Bay Area, then lightning has been caught in a bottle twice. 

The quintet still sounds great - much tighter than expected with a leader who was born just a year after the first Model T came off the line - but the infectiousness of its senior member is the magic that puts a beaming smile on everyone's face in the packed retirement village where she's working today. Brown doesn't just want to play music. She makes you want to play music. 
"That's been one of my aims in life," Brown says. "I'll stop people in the street. And if they say, 'I can't play,' I'll tell them, 'Yes you can!' It is amazing how music lifts the spirits. Instead of just sitting there and thinking all kinds of negativity, just play something."

That's the message that she has spread to countless other musicians near her Santa Cruz home. Tracy Freeman hadn't played with a band in years when he moved next door in 1982. He's the Upbeats' drummer now. Freeman says even in her 90s, Brown still has a steady stream of students coming over for lessons. 

The Pollyannas

Born on an Omaha, Neb., ranch, Brown was accomplished at piano, drums and trombone at 16, when she hit the road with an all-girl musical group called the Pollyannas. Traveling by Studebaker, they played everywhere from New York to Santa Monica to Las Vegas in the 1920s.

After working as a traveling musician through the Depression and beyond, Brown settled in Santa Cruz in 1961. She still lives in the same two-story cottage on 1 acre, sleeping upstairs. Brown never married ("Never stayed in one place long enough," she explains. "Besides, I have Saturn in my seventh house."), but she says it's hard to be lonely when surrounded by good friends. 
"She's always encouraging people," Freeman says. "When people come up to her and say, 'I wish I could play piano,' she says, 'Well why not?' And when you see what she can do at her age, it's hard to disagree. ... One of her favorite sayings is 'Oh, to be 80 again.' "

The Upbeats, who are all in their 30s, 40s and 50s, include Freeman on drums, David Ford on bass and Penny Hanna and Tatyana Rekow on horns. Brown plays at local dance halls, retirement communities, lodges and occasionally a nearby jazz club. She plans to celebrate her 100th birthday at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz.

Eyesight failing

Brown also plays by herself or just with Hanna, and often has several appearances lined up in a week. Brown acknowledges that she's slowed down over the last two years - her failing eyesight is the biggest problem - but from a bystander's view it's impossible to notice. She sometimes plays with a microphone on the piano, and the Upbeats favor songs that she knows by heart. 

Her most recent gig, at the Oak Tree Villa assisted-living center in Scotts Valley, is like a scene from the movie "Cocoon." Audience members arrive early, sitting quietly. One man falls asleep in his chair. Then Velzoe and the Upbeats break into Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing (If it Ain't Got That Swing)," and within a few notes the retirement community is arguably the least depressing place in Santa Cruz County. Seniors dance, some in their walkers. Everyone seems to be singing along. After playing standards including "Blue Moon," "Long Ago (and Far Away)" and contributing a hearty and apparently improvised solo to "Spanish Eyes," Brown takes a break. 

Advice

Asked if she has one piece of advice for others, she comes up with five: 
1. Honor God. 
2. Follow your bliss. 
3. Keep your child heart. 
4. Radiate love. 
5. Laugh and be thankful.

"Keep your child heart is very important," Brown says. "Don't ever get disillusioned, no matter what happens to you. The child inside us is what keeps us alive."And even if you're not playing, she says, keep dancing. Brown loves seeing people come near the band and move to the music, even if the conga line includes a few wheelchairs. 

"That's my idea of heaven," Brown says. "A dance floor full of people."

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