By BILL BERRY
of The Gazette
There's a pile of work awaiting due diligence here on the old south side this morning, and there'll be more by day's end.
But I'm not thinking about that right now. I'm thinking about John "Big Johnny" Ullrich, and the memories are so sweet. A lot of folks associated with music in these parts knew something about Johnny Ullrich, 56, late of Wausau and Chicago. Oh, he was a dreamer, and some of his dreams came true. Like the Great Northern Bluegrass Festival, which drew thousands to the Mole Lake area in northern Wisconsin during a run of annual events in the 1970s and early 1980s.
That's how I met Johnny. I was a cub reporter at the Wausau Daily Herald in the mid-70s, and he was this big, strapping dude, promoting the event. He was awash with excitement about life and music. I figured anytime I could write about music, it wasn't work. Johnny was already bald by then, but I still had hair atop my head. I went up to the festival on the Mole Lake Reservation that year, took some photos and did a story. This was not work.
People come and people go. The years went by, and the bluegrass festival ran its course, and I forgot all about that article until Johnny Ullrich came bursting back into my life one October day in the year 2000. There he was, at the front door, the same big, happy-faced dude, roughed up a bit by time. He pulled out a copy of that article from a folder he juggled in an armful of materials. He thanked me for the article. I had to look at it to remember what he was talking about. It had been nearly a quarter century, dammit.
Johnny came bouncing back for a few months then, as he promoted some musical shows to benefit the Wausau Performing Arts Foundation in the name of his late father, who went by the same name. Johnny's old buddy, fiddling genius Vassar Clements was on for performances in Wausau and Mosinee. Other musicians were hitched up, too, guys like guitar virtuoso and former Stevens Point resident Mike Dowling, drumming legend Clyde Stubblefield, and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band alumni John McEuen and Jimmy Ibbotson. When he chose, Big Johnny could call in his cards.
I helped him out with some of the promo work, and, oh, what a time that was. One night he came firing into the house and rushed over to the stereo system to play some dubs he had of Vassar and the boys. "Listen to this, listen to this," he said, gesturing in excitement at the stereo as Clements cracked into that curious niche where country and bluegrass and swing meet. "Sure, I'll take a beer," he said.
Then Johnny put on a precious CD copy of an old album by The Safety Last String Band, a local '70s bluegrass outfit that played haunts like the Whiting Hotel, when it was still a hotel. Johnny was a fine musician, trained in the classical vein. Stand-up acoustic bass was his instrument on stage, though he knew others.
Big Johnny sat down on this slouchy futon on in our family room that night and closed his eyes. It looked to me like he had left and gone back in time. For all I know, was on stage with that band again, at that moment. That's how deeply he went into the sounds. He looked ready to cry or laugh or both.
On another night, we had a sort of a hootenanny over at the house. Several musicians gathered around the woodstove, taking turns at tunes. Johnny arrived, but without his big bass. "Oh, I forgot. I'm sorry, Billy." That's what he said. Later on, he picked up a 12-string guitar, and out of nowhere, pulled out this intricate acoustic blues song, which he picked and sang darned-near perfectly. Now, a 12-string guitar is a substantial instrument, but it looked like a little ukulele with Big Johnny wrapped around it.
I didn't go to the Wausau show, but my wife and I did make it to Mosinee's beautiful little community theater, the Creske Center, one bone-cold winter night. That was when Clements and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band boys had at it. You never heard such musicianship, especially if you didn't go, and there were a lot of empty seats, and music lovers had to ask themselves if they were crazy or if it was those who, once again, had failed to show for something so special. The band didn't care about the empty seats, and neither did Big Johnny, and when the boys on stage needed a bass, there he was, right in time, carefully hugging that granddaddy of instruments. At the intermission, those who were there looked out and saw someone they knew, and then someone else, and there were other familiar faces, too. Johnny brought his mother, Doris, over for a hello. In her 80s, this longtime supporter of the arts was as happy as her son.
Johnny got his down on the south side of Chicago Sunday night. Five guys reportedly came at him as he closed up the business, and one of them shot him in the chest. Robbery gone bad is the suspected motive.
He had for a long time made a living in the purchase of used police cars, which were reconditioned and sold to Chicago cabbies. Johnny explained to me one day that these cars already had 100,000 miles on them, but they were so beefed up that the cabbies piled on a couple hundred thousand more. He gave me his card, which I still have. It shows that he worked for Cheyka Motors of Schofield. It proclaims: "John Ullrich, "Friend of the Cabbie," "Over 15 years experience."
Lately, Johnny had been working at a taxicab livery service down on the South Side of Chicago, in the Bronzeville area. Johnny's mom told a Wausau newspaper reporter that she had talked to him a bit earlier on Sunday night, after the Packers game, which had disappointed him greatly. She said she knew he'd be feeling bad about that.
Big Johnny was always passing along little gifts - CDs and tapes of Vassar Clements and Dowling, photographs, clippings, little thank-you notes on event programs, calls to wish a Merry Christmas. All those little gifts are more precious today.
There's an old saying that goes, "We always have time for the things we put first." Did that today. Did it for you, Big Johnny Ullrich.