Bechtel reminisces about many show biz careers

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer

Long before he was a billionaire, hotel mogul, or a late-night talk-show host, Merv Griffin was a recording artist and crooner with the Freddy Martin Band. The biggest hit of his life — and the only one he refuses to sing anymore — was a 1949 novelty number titled "I've Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts."

Dale Bechtel, an avid yachtsman, reflects on his musical career from the cockpit of his sloop, Mamie. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

"Down at a Spanish fair/ One evening I was there/ When I heard a showman shouting underneath the fair/ Ohhh, I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts, " warbled Bechtel, breaking into a spontaneous, a cappela recital recently aboard his 40-foot yacht, Mamie, anchored at the Ala Wai Boat Harbor.

"Griffin was a good guy," commented Bechtel after the serenade had ended. "He was funny, an avid show-biz type. He showed no signs of having any money. He was just our singer."

The memory comes from Bechtel's pre-Honolulu period. It represents only one of the many musical lives he has led. This particular incarnation is vague to Islanders who know Bechtel best as a Honolulu Symphony Orchestra first violinist, or as an itinerant public schools stringed instrument instructor, or as a frequent guest pops conductor, or as a musical director with the Honolulu Community Theatre, or even as a wandering Waikiki gypsy musician.

"I have been very lucky," he said.

On May 29, after 47 years, Bechtel completed his last full season with the Honolulu Symphony. He received a standing ovation. These days he is relaxed, looking back, more willing to recall his illustrious bygone Mainland days, during which he performed with some of the biggest names in show business.

But Karen Bechtel, the oldest of his five children from a 19-year marriage that ended in divorce, says that throughout her childhood, she was totally unaware of her dad's big band background with Freddy Martin and Russ Morgan.

"I didn't know anything about it until I was an adult and Sammy Davis, Jr. came to town, and everybody in his band knew my dad. And these were famous, world-class musicians. And people like Burt Bacharach would call him whenever they were performing in Honolulu and needed a string section."

Bechtel is a complex character. He is a classical violinist, pop musician, avid yachtsman, devoted dog lover, consummate beer swigger and opinionated curmudgeon with a barnacle-encrusted attitude ("The Department of Education is a shameful bureaucracy!" "From Aloha Tower to Diamond Head used to be all trees, and now you may as well be in Chicago!" "Amplified instruments are the worst thing that ever happened to music!").

Bechtel intends to continue performing occasionally with the symphony. But his enduring legacy may be that for two decades he inspired legions of talented ordinary kids to take up rosin and bow. Seven members of the current symphony orchestra are his former pupils, including his daughter Karen, a cellist.

Shortly after he arrived in Honolulu in 1954, Bechtel acquired a Volkswagen-load of busted, discarded violins from Damien Memorial High School for next to nothing, repaired them himself with rubber bands and Elmer's glue, and convinced the public school system it needed a traveling stringed instrument instructor.

Dale Bechtel once was a traveling strings teacher in public schools. His former students now play in the Honolulu Symphony. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

Bechtel's methods became legend. He was gruff, tough, overly demanding and prone to hurl blackboard erasers at anyone who messed up or wasn't paying attention. Yet just about anyone who studied under him admits he forced them to excel.

"You've seen that movie, 'Mr. Holland's Opus?,'" asks 20-year symphony violinist Tim Leong. "Well, Dale Bechtel is a real-life Mr. Holland. I just don't think there have been many people like him in the whole nation.

"We would get frustrated sometimes, sure, because we would have to work so hard. But I wouldn't say we'd get angry. Because he was always right. What all of us who had him have come to realize is that we were extremely blessed to have him as our teacher. He's a rare person."

The teacher himself is genuinely moved by his frequent encounters with former students.

"I just love that," he said. "Almost every day somebody yells, 'Mr. Bechtel, you taught me to play the violin! Do you remember me?' And I never do."

Born on March 2, 1921, Bechtel was the son of a Canton, Ohio, chemist and a homemaker mom who threatened to whack him with a buggy whip if he didn't practice his violin.

"In truth, she was about as threatening as a glass of milk," he said. Still, he didn't press his luck. By the time he graduated from Ohio State University, he was not only an accomplished violinist, he was an adequate marching band tuba player. His tuba talent landed him a military South American goodwill band tour that lasted throughout most of World War II.

He's not ashamed to admit that while others fought battles, he was having a ball blowing low notes in Rio (although he confesses to a tinge of guilt because, as he puts it, "the tuba is the easiest instrument in the world to play").

Bechtel began his big-band phase, which included numerous record and movie sound-track sessions with Universal-International Studios, around the same time he was completing his master's degree in music at the University of Southern California in the late 1940s.

Bechtel says the biggest musical influence of his life was not one of the greats with whom he worked over the years — a list that runs from Nat King Cole to Vladimir Ashkenazy to Frank Sinatra and beyond.

"I would have to say it was Vera Barstow."

Barstow, all but forgotten today, was a noted violinist and recording pioneer who worked with Thomas Edison early in the 20th century. She was not Bechtel's first, or even second, choice for a teacher. But when two noted male instructors he was scheduled to study under dropped dead before he could take his first lesson, Barstow became his only remaining option.

"And I thought, 'A woman!' I had made movies, I had recorded with famous people and played in big bands. I'm thinking this woman would be lucky to get a student like me. And she turns out to be this little old lady. I think she would be 130 if she were still alive."

No sooner had Bechtel picked up the instrument than Barstow informed him he was holding the bow all wrong. It got worse. She spoke to him as if he were a beginner and sent him home to practice in front of a mirror seven hours a day.

"I thought, 'Who's this old bag think she is?'

"But I went home and did what she suggested. And within two weeks, I was in love with her. I thought she was the greatest thing that ever happened. She was simply a marvelous teacher, and she didn't take any bull from anybody."

Barstow transformed him as a musician, he says. But she wasn't finished. Years later, after the lessons had ended, she touched him in another way that would affect him forever.

In 1961, Bechtel had a rare opportunity to buy a violin made by Antonio Stradivari. Alas, the $25,000 price was beyond the reach of a roving school teacher and nighttime fiddle plucker.

That's when Bechtel learned that Barstow was ready to part with her own violin, crafted in 1791 by Lorenzo Storioni, universally regarded as the last of the great Cremonese violin makers. Bechtel was familiar with the instrument because Barstow had loaned it to him on occasion. He offered to pay Barstow the $5,000 asking price. Naturally, she accepted her former pupil's offer.

Honolulu violin expert Nicholas Zou, himself a symphony violinist, knows Bechtel's Storioni well. His company, CK Violins, restored the instrument not long ago for the same amount of money Bechtel originally paid for it.

"That violin is unbelievable," Zou said. "Absolutely one of the best instruments in Hawai'i. It has a fine spruce top, golden-brown varnish and an Italian maple back. That particular violin, in that condition, I would say is worth at least $400,000."

In fact, a Seattle violin appraiser recently placed its value at $428,000.

Bechtel doesn't view the Storioni as the greatest financial investment of his life, even though it unquestionably is. He prefers to think of it as a work of art.

"I felt like it was not mine, that it belongs to the music world," he said. "I'm just the current custodian."

Possibly a slightly more conscientious custodian, of late.

"I used to loan it to anyone who wanted to use it for an audition. Then, after this last appraisal, I got to wondering if they were looking both ways when they crossed the street."