The Deer Head Inn remains perched on the hill that runs through Delaware Water Gap as it has since 1865. The town itself only contains seven hundred some people, and yet the tiny borough houses one of the most unique music scenes to be found outside a metropolitan area.
This proves to be convenient though as the small town, nestled on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River has only a few key industries. In the summer there is canoeing, kayaking, and rafting on the Delaware, as well as hiking on the Appalachian Trail which makes a pit stop in town. Come autumn there are tourists, drawn by the Pocono’s lauded fall foliage.
And yet The Deer Head continues to sit with a commanding view of the town’s main road, which coincidentally runs down to Philadelphia where it morphs into Broad Street. It is within this Pocono castle that Bill Goodwin is crowned king, every Thursday night between the hours of 8 and 11 pm.
His throne is a small stool situated behind the house drum set.
The air is warm in The Deer Head and the lighting, incredibly inviting. Locals and tourists alike are drawn to the nearly century and a half old building on any given night of the week. Some come for the music. Some come for the food, which is impeccable, and some come still because it’s a place to drink among fellow jazz lovers. It is these jazz jams though that are most fascinating, the technicalities of which are handled by Mr. Goodwin.
“I came up playing jazz, which was kind of the music of youth rebellion.” He says over his dinner in the empty room adjoining the main bar area. He is quick to point out, though, that Jazz has since gone the way of Rock music. It is no longer played in clubs like it was originally meant to be, instead being surpassed by modern day techno and hip hop.
Bill’s love of jazz started at a very early age, stating that “I was exposed to all this stuff as a kid by my parents.” He wasn’t always interested in playing drums though, he started on piano at a young age. Claiming, “I wasn’t very good, but, I hung with that for five years.” Bill then went on to play saxophone, as a result of his listening to the jazz records of the time. He started on drums in junior high, playing his friend’s snare and a symbol. Mostly he just messed around with the simplistic set, playing along with records and generally “banging around.”
Around the age of 12, Bill saw “The Man With The Golden Arm” the 1955 movie starring Frank Sinatra. The Jazz musicians on the soundtrack like drummer Shelly Manne inspired him to get serious about the instrument. “I just flipped out” said Bill “Over his playing, and over the idea of becoming a drummer. Kind of from that moment on, it was sort of an epiphany I had… I just pursued it from that point on all through school.”
He made his start on drums playing “A lot of shuffles, sort of a rhythm and blues kind of thing… We would play basically jazz tunes but they would be jump jams.” They weren’t particularly organized, as it was nothing with “uniforms, or anything like that.”
“My first gig on drums was when I was 13, with just two other guys. The piano player was the son of a famous conductor… The sax player I was in school with, his name was ‘Happy’ Palmer.” With his line up set, they got to playing. “We knew blues, ‘Heart and Soul,’ and one other tune. He had to play for an hour or something and we just played the three tunes over and over. Like slower, faster, and it was the first gig I got paid for.”
After high school, Bill set out to become a professional musician. “I basically didn’t want to ‘work,’ and I knew I had a flair for it. I think I thought that I was a lot better than I was, and it probably helped. That kind of hubris that you can have when you’re 16 and 17 years old.” Many of his friends, who were excellent musicians in their own right, encouraged him to further his career as a musician himself.
“I didn’t really tour until I was twenty-one, then I went on the road with this singer. At that point I was doing well in Los Angeles. But I really wanted to travel.” That was in 1963 and he soon found himself travelling more and more, but not in today’s sense of touring. Mostly he would bounce between cities like Miami and Chicago, playing a month in each one. “I figured this is the great thing about travelling, you get to go meet people from other places. And in my case, finding the jazz scene and always thinking about making a connection with other musicians.”
“To me it was like living in a small town, you want to know everybody who lives in that town, and the jazz scene is sort of like that.”
Finally, Bill made the decision to move east to the Poconos, but why? “New York is the big game, it’s the jazz scene. I was one of the best drummers in Los Angeles, especially in my age group, and I was working with really good people, good musicians and well paying jobs. But I just wanted to see if I could do something in New York.” Bill decided to stick around in the Poconos, playing shows around the various resorts. Then Phil Woods came to the area and Bill began playing with him in his Quintet.
It’s fascinating, watching Bill play the relatively small house drum set. His face remains for the most part stoic, only cracking a smile on occasion. He uses every bit of the drum set, hitting the metal stands on which the drums and symbols sit from time to time, tapping out complicated rhythms. It’s certain he has come a long way from just banging around on his friends snare drum and symbol. But, improvisation seems to be the name of the game tonight at the Deer Head and the band is in full swing with Bill Goodwin at the helm.
Parking Meters Are Walking Sticks 