BEST NATIVE AMERICAN ALBUM: Ethnic flutist Peter Phippen recalls St. Lawrence County roots
Watertown Daily Times - New York
By LARRY ROBINSON
MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2010
PARISHVILLE — The earthy tones conjured by Grammy Award nominee and ethnic flutist Peter Phippen are rooted in rural St. Lawrence County, where he was born and raised.
Mr. Phippen, who grew up on Buckton Road in the town of Stockholm, has been nominated for a Grammy for his album "Woodnotes Wyld: Historic Flute Sounds from the Dr. Richard W. Payne Collection."
The recording received a nod in the category of best Native American album, instrumental or vocal.
"Before I went to school, one of my best memories of my mother was of when I was about 5 years old," he said. "She took me up an old woods road where there were two maple trees and an old stone wall and she threw out a tablecloth."
After having a simple picnic lunch, he said, his mother asked him to sit quietly and listen.
"We sat there and she made me listen to the wind in the trees. she made me listen to the birds singing, and I could hear the wind in the grass all around me. It was something I will never forget. That is what is in my music," Mr. Phippen said.
His journey from his rural north country roots to a seat at the 53rd Grammy Awards on Feb. 13 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles has been a long one.
He said as a student, he started having troubles as early as elementary school, leaving teachers scratching their heads.
"I was a horrible student at Parishville. I hated school," Mr. Phippen said.
When he reached the fourth grade, the young Mr. Phippen was taken to see music teacher George W. Cox, a Navy veteran who recently had traded in his military uniform for a teaching degree. Mr. Cox said he was asked to straighten out the young troublemaker.
"He was a crazy kid. The teachers were interested in getting him focused on something, anything, so they sent him to me," Mr. Cox said. "So I handed Peter an old E-flat tuba and he took the thing home and about three days later came back and he was playing it. So then I gave him a real horn, and he kind of went on from there."
Going on from there included Mr. Cox helping Mr. Phippen learn to play the bass guitar.
"I was a bass player, I started teaching him the bass in 6th grade and he just picked it up and went right to it. By the time he was in 9th grade he had far surpassed any kind of technique that I ever had." Mr. Cox said.
Mr. Phippen left the north country shortly after he graduated in 1974.
He bought his first bamboo flute on a whim while his wife was shopping for furniture, and took it outside on a stormy night.
"There was a thunderstorm and I took that little bamboo whistle outside and played along to the thunderstorm, that was a pretty interesting hour and a half," he said.
Mr. Phippen, who now lives in Wisconsin, is not Native American, but said he is instinctively drawn to the haunting melodies of indigenous flutes from around the globe. He's spent more than two decades perfecting his technique.