Life Member.Clarinet
(7/20/1918-10/22/2014)

By Duane Metcalfe, son

Edwin (Eddie) Metcalfe, my dad, singer, clarinetist, saxophonist, arranger of music, ardent supporter and Lifetime Member of the musicians union Local 47, died in Oro Valley, Arizona of natural causes Oct. 22, 2014. Dad started his entertainment career at age 10, in Pittsburgh, where he was born, on radio station KQV acting in radio plays. He moved on to KDKA, acting and singing on “Uncle Henry’s Radio Rascals.” Dad picked up his first sax at age 11, learned to play well, and started clarinet at 13. He said, “If you’re going to play a woodwind, you should start with the clarinet; it’s a lot easier than saxophone.” Words he made me live by as an adolescent wanting to be “just like Dad.” I lasted six years. Then I took up singing, instead, just like him. It was even easier. Eddie was playing with dance bands around Pittsburgh by the time he graduated high school. He played with Fran Eichler, Dick Barrie, Leighton Noble, Tommy Tucker and Maurice Spitalny. He married my mother, Tootie, in 1939, and had my sister in 1941. The Army drafted him in 1943. While in the Army he booked post band dates and produced Army radio shows at Fort Bliss, El Paso. Eddie rejoined Leighton Noble after the Army. I was born in ’47. Spike Jones heard good things about my dad at this time and offered Dad a job. My sister remembers the day our dad had his horns painted purple at Joe Siracusa’s, the drummer and percussionist, because that’s what Spike wanted. Dad hated it. His horns, he said, always had a lavender sheen to them even after he had the paint removed. Dad as part of his giving back to the community, saw opportunity in joining the Local 47 musicians union band, participating in park concerts around the Los Angeles area and playing in a couple of Rose Bowl parades. He wore out a set of evening dress shoes in his last parade as well as learning that playing clarinet well in the cold with white dress gloves on is not easy. My sister and I remember a couple of union-sponsored summer picnics we attended. There were long, strung-out baseball games being played, and someone remarked, “Remember we’re musicians not baseball players, how good could we be?” Dad also played weekend gigs around Southern California with the Tommy Jones Band, and with the Los Angeles Rams Band… you know the football team? Dad had a part-time Saturday job in the early ’50s helping a guy make mouthpieces for saxophones. Dad knew nothing about machinery so he didn’t last long at the job. When he sold his horns in the late ’90s the guy who bought them said the mouthpieces that went with the horns were worth more than the horns. Dad was seriously saddened by that comment. Those were his original horns, meticulously cared for over 70 years. No one seemed to care except him. Dad saw that television, new on the scene, was going to replace a lot of entertainment opportunities in the early ’50s. Dad started a career in radio/TV spot sales at KTTV-TV, Hollywood. Elton Rule, past ABC network president, and Dad started KABC-TV, Hollywood on the same day. Dad ended his radio/TV career in 1989, retiring from WPTA-TV as a VP/General Manager in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He and my mother moved to “the sand” – Arizona, because neither could agree on a beach or golf course. The golf course, eventually, won. Mother died Christmas 2000. After a couple of years “batching” it, Dad reunited with Betty Phares, past acrobatic dancer, who toured with her dance troupe with Spike and subsequently later acted in a couple of Three Stooges shorts. Dad’s last couple of years were quiet and without serious medical issues. Yes, he had older-people issues; heart and dementia. Thankfully he remembered the good times and few bad times. He liked to point out, “Entertainment is my life.” He said the morning he died, “I feel better than some but not as good as others.” Eddie was 96.