Now, “Come a Ki Yi Yippie Yippie Yi Yippie Yay” isn’t exactly a boychoir standard. Boychoir repertoires are mostly classical and religious. When a boychoir ventures into folk, it’s usually something more melodic. But our new conductor had apparently decided that there was no better way to announce that a Texan had arrived than by having us perform “Come a Ki Yi Yippie Yippie Yi Yippie Yay” at his first concert.
Our parents were thrilled to be getting a former assistant conductor from the Texas Boys Choir, which everybody agreed was the best boychoir in the United States. It had once even been called the best boychoir in the world, by none other than Igor Stravinsky.
And that’s saying a whole heck of a lot for an American boychoir. Not many people listen to boychoir music these days, but if they do, and their own child isn’t in a choir, then statistically speaking there’s at least a 99.9% chance the choir they listen to will be European. And for very good reason. Nearly all American boychoirs are somewhere between mediocre and awful.
But it so happened that the Dallas suburbs would raise up one of the most talented boychoir conductors this world has ever known: a man named George Bragg. And the Texas oilionaires just loved him. Now they could prove their boys could keep up with anybody at anything, even at the kinds of arts that nobody could ever possibly expect Texans to be good at.
If you care to fight back against the European stereotype that Americans have no culture, there’s no better way to do it than to bring a bunch of little Texan boys to Venice to sing Gabrieli better than the European boys can. It was the ultimate blindside. Two Texas Boys Choir LPs from the late 1960s won Grammies, one of which is still widely available.
If you’ve heard well-trained boy singers, you know they have sweet, ringing, angelic little voices. Perfect for lilting melodies that build slowly to a dramatic peak that makes the tears well in your eyes and the hairs stand on the back of your neck. The boy singer in the movie Empire of the Sun is an example you might remember. And here’s a powerful recent Texas Boys Choir performance.
“Come a Ki Yi Yippie Yippie Yi Yippie Yay” is basically talking blues for cowboys. Not much melody. A simple two-line verse. A simple two-line chorus of nonsense words. And then repeat, again and again and again.
Our new conductor found a sheet music arrangement, pitched for children’s voices with piano accompaniment. I don’t remember the fine details, but I’m sure it was a simple arrangement, probably with the whole choir singing unison on the verses and then breaking into three part harmony for the “Come a Ki Yi Yippie Yippie Yi Yippie Yays”. Whoever did the arrangement must have been aiming at elementary school music teachers and thinking young kids would enjoy singing it the same way they enjoy singing “Ee Yi Ee Yi Oh.”
Keep in mind that choirboys are taught to enunciate dramatically, and American choirboys have their accents drilled out of them. Our previous director, the natively, ebulliently Italian George Fiore, taught us to sing even “rat” with an “ah.”
If the Texas Boys Choir had performed “Come a Ki Yi Yippie Yippie Yi Yippie Yay,” it would have been a surreal and otherworldly experience. You would probably think it was a very strange idea whose time had not yet come, and probably shouldn’t.
If you had heard us perform it, the Northwest Boychoir of Seattle of 1977, you would never be able to forget it. And you would so wish you could. Alas, we didn’t have the Texas Boys Choir’s perfect timing and pitch. Our version was atrocious. Abominable. Preposterous. Un-called for.
And there was another problem.
* * *
“Come a Ki Yi Yippie Yippie Yi Yippie Yay” is a brutal song about cowboys driving cattle on the Chisholm Trail, from ranches in Texas to a railway in Kansas. There the cattle would be loaded onto cars and shipped off to slaughter. Even Woodie Guthrie’s version, which was gentler than most, had lines like:
“Stray in the herd and the boss said, ‘Kill it,’
Hit him in the rump with the handle of a skillet”
Which means: a calf fell behind on a long cattle drive, the lead cowboy told a junior cowboy to put it down, and instead the calf got a beating with an iron panhandle. But that was the ugly truth: half a Chisholm Trail cowboy’s job was whipping the straggling calves into keeping up and killing the ones that couldn’t make it.
The version we sang was rewritten with anodyne lyrics. I don’t remember exactly how our version went, but I remember clearly that one line referred to “dogies.” “Dogie” is an old cowboy word for calf. Dogies appear often in cowboy songs, usually getting “punched,” which means branded with a hot iron, or straggling and getting a beating.
Now, if any cowboy-song experts ever happen to read this, they might think my memory is faulty. They might think I’m mixing up “Come a Ki Yi Yippie Yippie Yi Yippie Yay,” which nowhere mentions dogies in any of its well-known versions, with “Whoopie Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Dogies,” another famous cowboy song. Both were first written down on paper by the folklorist John Lomax in the 1910s, and both were popularized by Woodie Guthrie recordings in the 1940s.
But let me assure you, I am not making that mistake. Believe me, if you had rehearsed “Come a Ki Yi Yippie Yippie Yi Yippie Yay” for weeks and then performed it in live concert, you would never for the rest of your life be able to mix it up with “Whoopie Ti Yi Yo.” Those are two completely different songs.
Come to think of it, “Whoopie Ti Yi Yo” would have been a much better choice than “Come a Ki Yi Yippie Yippie Yi Yippie Yay.” “Whoopie Ti Yi Yo” is an old Irish ballad rewritten with cowboy lyrics. It has a beautiful, sad melody. Even Woodie Guthrie’s rough-cut version is pretty.
Anyway, where was I? Oh right, I was explaining how there was another problem. And it had to with dogies.
The problem was, our conductor was teaching us to sing “doggies.”
You may be thinking now that our new conductor was no true and genuine Texan. But he was. A native of Fort Worth, home of the Texas Boys Choir. Apparently, not every Texan is steeped in cowboy culture.
My dad, on the other hand, was a huge Woodie Guthrie fan. So I had learned at an early age the correct meaning and pronunciation of the word “dogie.”
As if I were in class and the conductor was the teacher, I raised my hand. He gave me an odd look, then called on me.
“Sir, it’s not doggie. It’s dogie.”
Some of the other kids started laughing. One of them repeated in a mocking tone: “Sir, it’s not dawggie. It’s dough-gie.” Soon the whole choir was doing impressions of me and laughing like crazy.
I should point out, in case it isn’t clear already, that I was a nerdy kid. I wore coke-bottle glasses that lay crooked across my face. And I was new, having just graduated from the training choir to the touring choir. I had just turned 11.
At first the conductor didn’t believe me. But he promised to check. At our next rehearsal, he announced that I was right. But I wished he had forgotten. By that point the mere mention of the word “dogie” was enough to kick off another round of giggling mockery.
“Sirrr, it’s not daaaww-gieee. It’s dough-gie. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Sir, it’s not daaaaaawgie, it’s dooooough-gie. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.” It went on and on and on.
So I was very glad when it came time to perform “Come a Ki Yi Yippie Yippie Yi Yippie Yay.” I knew that meant it would be rotating out of our repertoire, so we wouldn’t be rehearsing it any more. The performance didn’t go over well. After that, our conductor made us memorize the mass in Latin.
* * *
I never made any close friends in the boychoir. Not only was I nerdy, I didn’t fit in. I was one of the few plain vanilla suburban middle-class kids in the choir. I was in because my dad was a school music teacher, and my parents both liked choral singing so much they drove 45 minutes into Seattle every Sunday to sing in the Episcopalian cathedral choir. We lived in the outermost ring of suburban tract housing, just shy of the country. There were a few other kids with stories like mine, but we just never hit it off.
Somewhere between a third and half the kids in our choir were rich as shit. They came from old money families, or at least the oldest money Seattle has. They lived in cloistered neighborhoods I’d never been to, like Broadmoor, in sprawling mansions with live-in maids. They were always nice, but maintained a certain distance.
Another third to half came from up-and-coming families, usually with some connection to Europe. Most of those were usually nice, too, but some could be arrogant and mean. The worst to me was TJ Yurkanin.
TJ was a year older than me, big for his age, and one of the few jocks in the choir. His dad was a well-known restaurateur, owner of Andy’s Diner, a popular South Seattle steakhouse and bar made of actual rail cars. They were Ukrainian, a nationality I knew almost nothing about, except that it was a big and important place in the board game Risk, and it was part of the Soviet Union.
What made TJ such a problem for me was that other boys tended to follow him. So when he picked on me, there were always two or so other boys around him who would join in. He never got physical with me. He just made my time at the choir unpleasant.
Then finally, after a year, TJ retired. And my life at the choir got easier.
But then, after another year, when I had turned 13 and was getting ready to retire myself, he came back!
The choir was preparing its first tour of Europe, and I was excited. I wanted to see all those fantastic buildings. I wanted to find out if the legend was true that European girls have a thing for American boys. I wanted to see if I really could walk into any store and buy myself a can of beer. It didn’t occur to me that TJ would come out of retirement and tag along.
But Andy Yurkanin got wind of the trip, and apparently he had donated enough over the years to pull rank. TJ was 15, a head or more taller than any of the rest of us, and already a tenor. These days many boychoirs have tenor, baritone and bass sections, so they can keep boys singing straight through to 18, which I think is a fine idea. But in my day you retired when your voice changed, period. TJ was a weird anomaly.
But there was nothing to be done. His dad wanted him to see Europe, so he was going. We were just going to have to pretend he was an unusually tall alto.
And off we went, 23 of us, for three weeks.
If you’ve ever spent a long time in close company of a pack of adolescent boys with minimal adult supervision, I know your pain. If you haven’t, don’t. Just don’t.
Our conductor and accompanist weren’t naïve. As soon as we were done with the day’s performance, they were outta there. Off to some cultural event or fine restaurant or lively bar, I suppose. That’s what I would do in a position like that.
We spent most of our time under the supervision of another suburban middle-class boy’s mother, who apparently paid for her boy’s trip by agreeing to come along and serve as our chaperone. The poor, sweet lady. She really had no idea.
Imagine having wanted to see Europe your whole life, and then seeing hardly any of it because you were stuck babysitting an unruly, juvenile mob calling each other “fags” all day.
I felt so sorry for her, but also grateful. Because every day she would allot some time when the kids who wanted to go shopping could peel off on their own for a few hours. The rich kids wanted to shop, and she was in no place to tell them they couldn’t. So I went off with them.
This all didn’t work out so well for the rich kids. The French thieves were tipped off. They ransacked all the rich kids’ hotel rooms, and swiped all the expensive souvenirs. They didn’t bother with anybody else’s rooms. They also got all our traveler’s checks, which the chaperone mom was holding for us in her purse.
But the daily shopping expeditions worked out beautifully for me. At first I did it just to get away from TJ and the mob. I couldn’t stand to hear that damn “dogie” line even one more time. Then I realized that as soon as we were out of sight of the chaperone, I could split off from the shoppers and wander off on my own.
The legend was true! I walked into a shop and bought a can of beer! Then I gaped at a scary Amsterdam punk with a huge blue spikey mohawk and a safety pin through his nose (it was 1979). I gaped at the famous red light district window fronts. And then I skidaddled out of there when a guy in a suit and loud dress shoes seemed to be following me.
We took part in two choral competitions during the trip. The first, in The Hague, was a serious European boychoir festival. They put us in their B category. We came in last. The second competition, in Wales, was against village school choirs. There I think we came 7th out of 20-something.
Oh that was a good day. The weather was beautiful, the countryside setting was gorgeous, and unlike most events we took part in, more than half the participants were girls. Another legend was true! The Welsh girls really liked American boys, even the ones with crooked, coke-bottle glasses. Two of them asked me to sign my name in pen on their arms. They tipped me off that the food tent had shandy, and you could take one can each time you went through. I must have been through there twenty times.
When we finally got on stage late that day, fifteen seconds into the first song, the boy next to me started giving me the elbow. I gave him the eye. He gave me the elbow again, and he gave me the eye back. Finally it dawned on me what was happening. I’d heard about this phenomenon, but I had never experienced it first-hand. When you’re plastered, you can’t hold a tune. So I lip-synced. My little contribution to our relative success.
The last stop on our trip was London. So I guess it was fate that my conflict with TJ had to come to a head there.
We stayed at a school that was out for vacation, which had a sport field. So naturally, we took advantage to play kill the carrier.
When TJ got the ball, it seemed like nobody would be able to tackle him. Most of the other kids didn’t want to put their all into it. They were afraid of how roughly TJ might throw them off.
Nerdy as I was, I was a scrappy third of three sons, not much afraid of boys a mere two years older than me. So I went for him. I got his legs into a lock-hold. There was nowhere he was going but down, I thought.
But TJ stood firm and kept struggling. Finally, he yanked one leg loose. And then he stomped down as hard as he could, right on my big toe. I dropped to the ground, curled up in a ball and yowled in agony. He sauntered away. No one else came after him.
The next day I couldn’t fit my shoe on. I had to be taken to a hospital for an X-ray. But no bones were broken. Only my ego was shattered.
* * *
When I came back from the hospital, TJ had to give me a forced, phony apology. And then the trip was over, and I never saw him again. But he did continue to influence me in a couple ways.
The next year in school, in the eighth grade, I was assigned to read Lord of the Flies. It’s a book about a boychoir that gets stranded on a remote island with no adults. They quickly invent a new pagan group identity and savagely attack the boys who don’t join in. None of the characters were a close match for TJ, but I read that book with absolutely no shock or doubt in my mind about its premise. If our choir had been stranded on an island without adults, something similar would have happened.
Years later, when I was finishing high school and applying to university, TJ came briefly into my life again, without him knowing it. He helped save me, without meaning to, from becoming a frat boy.
My mom’s brothers were both in fraternities, at Willamette University, a small private liberal arts college in Salem, Oregon. And mom tried to persuade me that fraternities were a good thing, and that I should consider joining one at the University of Washington, the big state university in Seattle.
I was getting lots of letters from UW fraternities trying to recruit me, because I had a high grade point average in high school and high scores on the SAT, the test Americans take when applying to university. Truth be told, the average UW frat member didn’t really want to be among the academically minded. They just wanted a few token geeks to prop up the house GPA average. UW frats are old-boys clubs for young men. Not all, but many members lived up to the asinine stereotypes you’ve heard about them.
For example, later while I was at the UW, police called to a frat found a group of young recruits standing in an unlit room, stripped to their underwear and slathered in peanut butter, together with several sheep, which were described in the official police report as “agitated.” Neighbors reported hearing the older boys shout “Get in there!” and similar orders.
I don’t think the frats at Willamette were ever anything like that. And I didn’t know what UW frats were like. My mom was very persuasive. So I opened up the letter from the UW chapter of the fraternity one of my uncles had been in.
It was very professionally written. By the end of it, they almost had me convinced they were a serious group of young men, concerned above all else with academics. Then I looked at the names of the fraternity leaders. Chapter chairman, never heard of him. A few other positions, didn’t recognize them. Rush chairman, the one in charge of that year’s recruitment of freshmen: TJ Yurkanin.
* * *
I can’t remember what it was that got me thinking about this old story. Some part of it somehow came up in a conversation with my wife, who by the way is Ukrainian. And then the rest of it all just sort of followed of its own accord. And it made me curious whatever became of the Yurkanins.
So I did what you do these days. I Googled them.
I was surprised to find that TJ has since 1991 been living in the same outer section of suburban housing developments southeast of Seattle that I grew up in. His house is just eight minutes drive from the one I grew up in.
I was also surprised to learn that TJ had a younger sister who married one of the sons of William Gerberding, the UW president of my day.
Gerberding and I had an odd almost friendship. I was a bit of a trouble-making anarchist at university who did things like organize a small flag-burning to protest that President Bush (the first one) had made it illegal.
I wanted to be part of the test case before the Supreme Court. Bush’s lawyers found some rougher-looking punks and genuine communists for that purpose, and lost anyway.
I met and talked with Gerberding several times around then, and he gradually opened up to me. He had a reputation for catering to big-money donors, but he told me he was reconsidering the Republican views he had held most of his life. I had no idea his son was in a relationship with TJ’s little sister.
It was actually the little sister, Bronwyn, who first moved to Fairwood, about eight minutes drive from the house I grew up in. Apparently she and TJ are half Welsh. She bought a house there newly built in 1989, just after she finished university. I have no clue why a well-off 23-year-old woman from Seattle wanted to live in Fairwood. The suburbs have sprawled further southeast since I was growing up, but there’s still a bit of the country in that area. She quit-claimed the house to TJ in 1991.
TJ took over management of Andy’s Diner in about 1996, when he was a bit past 30, according to his father’s account to the Seattle Times. But TJ “didn’t love the restaurant business” and “said it was too many hours.” So Andy’s Diner was sold in 2000. The picture here is I think from after then. Today it’s a Chinese restaurant called the Orient Express.
Then TJ got a job as an account manager at Neopost, a seller of mailing equipment with a location in Tukwila. Tukwila is a warehousing hub in the valley directly south of Seattle, half-way between Fairwood and Seattle.
Pendleton is best known for its wool sweaters. I had one growing up, and Jeff Bridges’ most famous film character wore one. And Pendleton is famous for its rodeos. Modern-day cowboys still abuse calves, these days for fun and sport (forward the video to around 1:20). But I don’t think any modern cowboys still use the word “dogie.”
TJ’s dad is still a partner in the A & J Commissary, a commercial kitchen located across the street from his old diner. It’s targeted to caterers and others who temporarily need a kitchen approved by the Health Department. I’ll end this with a 2012 picture of TJ from the A & J Facebook page. He’s on the left.
