This afternoon I heard that Byron Linardos–Byron Lord Linardos–had died. I gathered myself together, went out back to our pond, sat down with some Bacardi Dark Rum (somehow Eric Von Schmidt had shown up) and some Greek olives, looked up at the clouds passing by and whispered “KaloTaxidi” (Have a good trip!) to my departing friend. As I did that a kingfisher appeared and just as quickly disappeared. An elegant crested bird–a master at what he does. Not unlike Byron. A few days earlier I had been stacking wood and suddenly Byron came into my mind. And I thought I should give a call. I knew he was coming to the end. A few months back I had stopped by to see him, but he didn’t want to see anybody. So he was with me when he died while I was stacking wood. He wouldn’t have answered the call. He had called me instead.
Byron Linardos with Jim Rooney at Club 47
Right from the start I knew Byron was special–how many people do you know who were named after Lord Byron?–but I didn’t know how special. It was January, 1962. The Club Mt. Auburn 47 had been closed for a few months by the police for various imagined infractions and was just reopening under new management. It had become well known before the closing mainly because a young folk singer named Joan Baez had started enthralling all within the sound of her voice there before leaving with her family for California. The Club was organized as a non-profit and had a Board of Directors gathered from the community. The two women who had started it had decided to move on so the Board cast about for someone to manage the place day to day. They came up with Byron, who had already had a hand in running a couple of coffee houses in Boston and Cambridge. He had grown up in Cambridge and was a mixture of a street-smart local and someone who had a passion for music and the arts. He was Greek-American — a great combination.
My musical partner Bill Keith and I started playing at the Club and Byron let us know right away that he liked what we were doing and gave us a regular weekly spot. He figured this out right away–that if you had a different artist (he thought of us as “artists” not “acts”) every night on a regular basis, an audience would build for each one. So the schedule would be like this for any given week: Tom Rush, Jim Kweskin, Keith & Rooney, Jackie Washington, The Charles River Valley Boys, Geoff Muldaur.
Then Byron had an inspired idea. Due to the weird Cambridge laws about having live music in a “club.” The 47 had been organized as a private club exempt from these rules. Which meant that everyone who came in had to become a member (for $1) and fill out a card with name and address. Which meant that Byron had a mailing list. Which led him to create monthly calendars with great old-time graphics which the members would receive (and, in many cases, keep to this day). Thus, there were no other advertising costs. It truly became a club for the members. All of us “artists” treated it that way too. We were there many nights a week. Byron made us all feel that it was our home.
We were lucky to have Byron also because he actually knew how to run a coffee house, serving coffee, tea and flavored soda drinks at a profit–not exorbitant, but real–
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In the Fall of 1963 the Club moved to a new location, 47 Palmer St, off of Harvard Square. This gave Byron a chance to help create a space which was simple and elegant–using the brick and granite in the basement walls, using tables and chairs out of handcrafted wood, white walls for art exhibits, an efficient kitchen space. The programming expanded to include Early Music and guitar recitals on Sundays, children’s concerts on Saturday afternoons, regular art exhibits and openings. Byron was able to fulfill his vision of the Club becoming a real artistic center in Cambridge.
However, Byron, of course, was never satisfied. He wanted more. He was Greek! Maybe a small theater, a restaurant, more possibilities. The Club was doing very well at Palmer Street. There were lines down the block , but the space was limited to what we were doing, and Byron finally decided that maybe he had done what he had come to do and it was time to move on. It was 1965. The Folk Revival that we were all part of was exploding. The artists that Byron had helped get up on their feet were now traveling around the country, doing concerts, making records. The Club was changing too. It was no longer possible to have a different local artist every night. They were away a lot of the time. The “club” atmosphere that Byron nourished and cherished had changed. It was now becoming a “Club” where you went to hear music. I think Byron didn’t feel comfortable with that change, so he moved on.
One of my great connections with Byron was because he was Greek. As a result of studying Greek for several years I was lucky enough to get a Fulbright Fellowship to go to the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. I was never much of a scholar, but that year made all the difference for me as I came to understand and appreciate the deeply creative and passionate energy of the Greek people over the course of thousands of years. I now could understand and appreciate Byron’s passion, his creativity, his restlessness, his love of music and the arts, his refusal to accept second best, second rate, second anything. In 1966 Byron, “Spider” John Koerner and I took a trip to Greece. We did it all–the Acropolis, the museums, the temples at Delphi, but most of all we went to hear these incredible Greek musicians and singers the Byron knew all about–the bouzouki master Yiannis Papaioannou, the singer and composer Mikis Theodorakis. One night we found ourselves in a small downstairs restaurant in Athens which catered to people from the island of Crete. Crete was never conquered by the Germans. The great writer Nikos Kazantzakis, creator of Zorba, was from Crete. It was a Sunday night when we came into the place. It was full of people in their Sunday suits eating and drinking at small tables while two musicians played in the corner. One was playing an oud, the other a one string upright fiddle called a lera. After people were through eating a group of men from one table got up and started a circle dance, slapping their heels, the leader twirling a handkerchief. They sat down and another group got up and one of them eventually jumped up on the corner of a table still covered in dishes and bottles and didn’t miss a beat or touch a dish. The place went wild. Byron’s mouth was open, his eyes popping. Still it went on. Another group got up and this fellow who didn’t look anything like Anthony Quinn’s Zorba–you wouldn’t have looked twice at him on the street–crouched down by the corner of a table, arms held high, fingers snapping, took the corner of the table in his teeth and lifted the whole thing, dishes, bottles and all, off the ground! That was it. The place went wild. Everyone bought everyone else a bottle. Byron leaned over and shouted at me, “If you had told me this, I never would have believed you!”
That kind of energy made Byron a restless soul. He loved his wife Catherine and his daughters Felice and Pavan, but he had a hard time staying at home. He had to be out. He was driven and addictive. Gambling and cards were a passion. He loved the night. But he also loved opera, art, classical music which he shared with Catherine and the girls. He told me once that he had taken Catherine and Pavan to see Glenn Gould who was going to do a recital at the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston. Byron was crazy about Glenn Gould. They didn’t have tickets and when they got there, there was a long line of people waiting for the doors to open. Without hesitating, Byron took Catherine and Pavan to the front of the line and knocked on the door. When it opened, he brushed past the surprised usher saying, “They’re expecting us.” That was Byron.
As I sat by the pond saying my farewell to Byron, the lines of a Hadjidakis song came into my mind. In English the words say in part, “The clouds they may bring the sleet and rain, let the rain come, the sleet come, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.” When Byron did the calendars for the Club 47, his signature image was of a man under an umbrella with the rain coming down. Byron is out from under the rain now. It doesn’t matter anymore. Kalo taxidi, my friend.
Jim Rooney