
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 12, 1990                   TAG: 9004130568
SECTION: NEIGHBORS                    PAGE: S-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SARAH COX SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

HE HAS FULL-TIME JOB AS ROANOKE'S MUSIC MAN

Joe Corne's avocation turned into his vocation somewhere along the line. It's a line filled with music - teaching it, playing it, organizing bands - and trying to determine just when and how his present occupation came about is as elusive as some of the notes he hums as he talks.

"I guess you could just say that I'm the person people call for their music Corne al connection - I'm sort of a musical helper in the valley," Corne said. "I don't charge to help. If a person calls me and asks me for a certain accordion player and female singer - the one that every time she opens her mouth a bird on a stick flies up in the air - I'll say I know that act."

But he does charge to play, something he did steadily for 18 years as the bass-playing member of the Regents, the Hotel Roanoke's Regency Room band. And when the hotel closed last November, he turned his supplementary work of playing at private parties into a full-time job.

It all started back in the early '50s, Corne said, after he graduated from the Shenandoah Conservatory of Music. "I began as a string teacher and orchestra director in the Burlington, N.C., city schools," he said.

For 15 years, Corne developed a string program for about 300 junior, intermediate and senior high school students a year. And then, in 1968, he said he ran into Andy Hull, who later became the music supervisor for Roanoke schools.

Hull was trying to get a government Title I project started - "the government would buy 100 string instruments for an integrated orchestra program," Corne explained. "He wanted me to come here [Roanoke] and start a junior high program of string music - half black and half white." Corne took it on, becoming an itinerant teacher at Ruffner, Madison, Monroe and Jackson junior highs.

"After the project, I melded into an orchestra program in Roanoke city schools. I was one of four string teachers." He retired in 1985, or so - "That's close enough for jazz," he said, estimating his 30 years of service.

But then there was his avocation, which he never quite put aside. Back in North Carolina in the early '50s, he said he occasionally played - mostly string and electric bass - for the Duke Symphony, the University of North Carolina Symphony and the North Carolina Symphony in Chapel Hill. "I was playing with trios and jazz groups at the same time. A general player for all types of society music."

He brought his calling with him to Roanoke, and said that when the Hotel Roanoke opened up its new Regency Room in 1971, he helped organize the trio for weekend entertainment.

"It became so popular - it was the first place to have liquor by the drink - that we went to playing in the Regency Room seven nights a week. I was the guy that organized a stable of players - the piano, bass and drums - drawing from good music teachers and local musicians in the valley.

"I'd say half of them were teachers. We would call ourselves a society group for cocktail and ballroom dancing, playing old Glenn Miller, jazz, rumba, cha-cha, the waltz and movie love themes. All these players could improvise as well as read music. We stayed here year after year; we stayed solid - 12 players, sharing with each other, seven nights a week for 18 years."

Corne can hum with the best of them - he punctuated his reminiscences with bars from some of the favorites from the Regency Room. "Number one - the theme from `Dr. Zhivago' - we called it Dr. Chicago; `Moon River' - Brown Liver, get it? We'd make up names. Or, like they say in North Carolina, `You Liiiite Up My Life.' `Stardust.' Something from a Broadway show - `Cats' - dadada-dum . . . We'd pick it up from something we'd hear on the radio. Ears are our radar structure. A musician's No. 1 force is his ears."

And meanwhile, they were playing at parties, too. "We developed into a popular group all over the valley. People would ask for specific players, and since we were a team, we always worked out a situation," he said.

They branched out, Corne said, playing all over North Carolina and Virginia, at places like the Greenbrier, The Homestead, the Charlotte Country Club, the Martha Washington Inn, the Jefferson Club.

Because of their connections over the years, Corne said, business didn't change when the hotel closed. "In my particular business - people-pleasing - there are very little financial problems if the product is good."

His business, Joe M. Corne, which has been licensed in Roanoke County since Jan. 1, 1989, is a simple, home-based operation, using a WATS line. "Everything is done with pencil, paper and typewriter." In retrospect, he said he would have done more advertising in the Yellow Pages and newspaper, and put posters around. "I'm thinking about it very seriously now that I'm not teaching."

Business, he said, is seasonal. It's heavy from the end of March to the end of June, and from the end of August to the end of October, with wedding receptions and regular parties. The holiday parties start up in late November. He plans to go "bigger and better in the valley."

But if the hotel comes back . . . "in a year or so, [then] I'm sure we'll be invited back to form a group." His voice picks up like a hot jazz tune. "I believe Hotel Roanoke will be back with a great format."

He said he misses the hotel. "We took it for granted. What I miss most is the people contact. We'd make people enjoy the evening," he said.

by CNB