Darla Bartolin holds a poster of her husband, Bill, and the rest of the members of Blue Ash.
When the producers of the Amazon Prime Video television series “Daisy Jones and the Six” used Blues Ash’s “Jazel Jane” in an episode it was another example of how Blue Ash’s music still has legs despite the band’s lack of hit singles and arena-headlining tours.
It’s just too bad that Bill “Cupid” Bartolin isn’t around to see the music’s lasting impact, said his wife, Darla, and former band mate, Frank Secich. Bartolin died in 2009 at the age of 58.
“He would be immensely happy and proud because every time something would pop up he’d say, ‘Look at this,’” Darla said.
He has another opportunity to be happy and proud from Rock ‘n’ Roll Heaven now that Peppermint Records has released “Dinner at Mr. Billy’s,” an album of old Blue Ash tunes.
“It surprises me sometimes, with modern music, people still want to hear that (Blue Ash),” Darla said. “It was good clean fun, uplifting, danceable, singable music. It just feels good.”
Bartolin’s rock ‘n’ roll story started at age 10. The Brookfield boy was battling nephritis, a kidney inflammation, and couldn’t go outside, so his parents bought him a guitar, Darla said.
Bill Bartolin. Contributed photo.
Bartolin and Secich, who played bass and rhythm guitar in Blue Ash, knew each other as kids because Secich’s mother, Dolly, and Bartolin’s aunt, Mary Kosta, were good friends. The boys would play at Kosta’s farm in Hartford. They also crossed paths as rivals in a parochial school basketball league.
They hadn’t seen each other for a long time when their groups competed in a battle of the bands at Farrell High School in 1967, Secich said.
“He always liked my bands, I liked his, and he always wanted to be in a band with me,” Secich said.
The first version of Blue Ash included Secich, singer Jim Kendzor, drummer David Evans and guitarist Bill Yendrek, and they often practiced at Yendrek’s place on Merwin Chase Road in Brookfield. However, Yendrek quit. “He didn’t like the songs I was writing,” Secich said.
Secich’s mom suggested Bartolin. When Secich finally called, Bartolin told him, “I’ve been waiting by the phone for a week for this call,” Secich said.
This was about 1969. Yendrek, who had previously been in a band with Bartolin, endorsed Bartolin for Blue Ash.
“You’re (Secich) crazy, you write all these crazy songs,” Secich said Yendrek told him. “You should write songs with Bartolin. He’s as out of his mind as you are.”
Bartolin and Secich hit it off as writers immediately, often writing at Darla’s mom’s house in Farrell.
“At least one day a week we’d get together,” Secich said. “We’d just sit down and write songs. If anybody had an idea, we’d work on it.”
Blue Ash’s music became known as power pop, a designation also attached to the Raspberries, Cheap Trick and some of the early songs of the Who. It’s rock ‘n’ roll but with a certain light-heartedness, melodic sense and danceability.
The local music scene – and from Cleveland to Pittsburgh – was hopping in the late ’60s and early ’70s with bands like Glass Harp, Left End and Menagerie gaining large followings.
“We played a lot back then,” Secich said. “We played four or five days a week.”
Yet, Secich and Bartolin still found time to write, and the band had a deal with Peppermint Recording Studios of Youngstown to record two or three days a month. That recording time led to the band amassing more than 200 demos that are playing a big role in keeping Blue Ash’s music alive.
The classic lineup of Blue Ash was, from left Frank Secich, David Evans, Jim Kendzor and Bill Bartolin. Contributed photo.
Mercury Records signed Blue Ash and released the album “No More No Less” and single “Abracadabra (Can You See Her?)” in 1973. The band hit the road opening for Bob Seger, Iggy and the Stooges and Aerosmith, playing through the East Coast, Midwest and into Canada, and garnered positive press. However, Mercury dropped the band in 1974. Playboy Records then signed Blue Ash and put out the album “Front Page News,” but the label folded soon after.
Life as a rock ‘n’ roll wife was hard with Bartolin out on the road a lot, and away for many holidays and other important events, Darla said. The couple had married in 1972.
“Other people would put thoughts into my head. ‘How do you know he’s out there playing?’ ‘Because I trust him. We have this relationship. I cannot go to that place where you’re saying because it would make me a crazy person,’” Darla said.
It helped that the band’s manager, Geoff Jones, “was real good about keeping the boys in line,” Darla said. “There were no women backstage and no drugs. That was good for me because I was the only married one. It gave me a comfort level because I couldn’t always go see them play because I worked.”
Darla, who taught preschool at Brookfield United Methodist Church for 17 years, said she also empathized with what her husband went through on the road.
“I think people see the glamour of a band, but they don’t see the practice, the weather, the traveling, the inconsistency of a paycheck,” she said. “We were OK because I worked. I think it would be difficult these days to do something like that.”
The band went through a series of personnel changes, and Secich, Bartolin and Kendzor put the band to bed in 1979.
“After Blue Ash, he (Bartolin) had mixed feelings, kind of put the guitar away,” Darla said. The guitar “Got dusty for a long time. I think he was disappointed; maybe, a little disgusted, the way things went. When you have hopes and dreams and then they fall apart, you have to process that. It doesn’t get better overnight.”
Bartolin switched careers, studying electronics and getting into car parts management.
After his son, Sean, was born, Bartolin started getting his guitar out again, Darla said.
“His guitar was always his go to for happiness, for peace, for creation,” she said, sitting on the back porch of their home in Masury where she listened to him play many times over the years.
“It brought him and me joy. A lot of times we would just be sitting here and he would pick up a guitar and I would just listen. No words. Just listen. That was nice.”
Bartolin eventually started playing out again with the Blues Weasles, and in Thaddeus Wolfgang with Kendzor. Blue Ash reunited in 2004 when Not Lame Records combed through the Peppermint archives to release 44 songs on an album called “Around Again.” The band also wrote some new songs and played occasional gigs, and Bartolin also started playing in church praise bands.
After Bartolin died of cancer, when someone would bring up him or Blue Ash, “In the beginning it was a little tough because it touched my heart at a place in my heart where I still had sorrow,” Darla said. “But, now it’s like, it puts a smile on my face that he’s remembered and honored that way.”
Secich, of Hermitage, said he will always remember Bartolin for what a great guy he was – “I never saw him get mad once in my life – ever. He was always just happy go lucky.” – and how musically talented he was in ways that most people don’t know, such as his ability to play Spanish guitar, something not called for in Blue Ash.
“A lot of the great solos he did for Blue Ash, ‘Smash my Guitar,’ ‘Let There be Rock,’ he did those off the top of his head in one take,” said Secich, author of the rock books “Circumstantial Evidence” and “Not That Way Anymore.” “Tremendously talented guy.”
Darla said her husband would be tickled that people still remember Blue Ash.
“He just wanted people to hear the music,” she said. “That was his focus. The money would have been wonderful, but he was just focused on people listening to the music.”
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“Dinner and Mr. Billy’s” is available at Fat Hippy Records in Brookfield, and from online sources.
