Music keeps Hempfield bass player swinging

At 84, Dale Yates can still swing with the best of them.

The Hempfield retiree never takes to the dance floor. Instead, he’s on stage with the band, providing a deep resonant tone on the upright bass he has been playing since 1953.

“It keeps getting heavier every year, but I’ll keep on playing as long as they want me,” Yates said, as he moved the bass from its home in the corner of his family room and demonstrated the inimitable tones the massive instrument can produce in the hands of a skilled bass player.

Yates will be doing his part to reprise the tunes of the big-band era with the Wally Ginger’s Orchestra at 1 p.m. on July 4 at the Westmoreland County Arts & Heritage Festival at Twin Lakes and again on Sunday Aug. 11 at Cedar Creek Park in Rostraver.

Glenn Miller’s signature “Moonlight Serenade” is a personal favorite Yates always manages to work into the play list regardless of who he is accompanying . Woody Herman’s upbeat “Wood Choppers Ball” is another favorite.

Yates retired from West Penn Power after 35 years as a draftsman. Along the way, he and his wife, Marge raised three sons at their Beech Hills home.

Music never paid the bills, he said, but it has always been an integral part of his life.

At Sewickley Township High School, he played the tuba and was later recruited to play the bass in the stage band.

In 1953, he bought the bass he still plays at Volkwein’s in Downtown Pittsburgh for $375.

“That’s about the cost of a new set of strings today,” Yates said.

As a young man, he took to the road for his music. Years ago when his band was opening at a resort in Elgin, Ill., he had a chance to rehearse with the Tommy Dorsey band when its bass man missed a train. Yates said he was prepared to go on stage with the band when the missing bass player showed up.

He said the director offered to let him play that night, but he opted to step back and watch the master.

“He taught me more in that one night than anyone else,” Yates said.

A scrap book brimming with set notes, thank you cards and photos including a yellowing newspaper clipping from the Irwin Standard, dated February 1955, documents his life in various bands that have played across the region over the last six decades.

There was the Buddy Kirk Orchestra, Don Hensler and the Velvet Tones, the Senior Citizens Band with John and Paul Merlino, The Moonlighters, Wally Ginger’s Orchestra, the Penn Township Community Band and various polka bands, along the way.

“I’ve had so many bands, I can’t remember them all,” Yates said.

And then there were the countless Friday and Saturday nights they played at halls and night clubs across the region —at the Monroeville Fire hall, the Lamplighter Restaurant, the Barn in Mt. Pleasant Township, the Jeannette American Legion and at Bobby Dale’s, when the Hempfield supper club was located behind what is now the Giant Eagle Plaza on Route 30 East.

“It was wonderful to sit and watch them all dance. They were all dressed up in long gowns, every Saturday night. It was something,” Marge Yates said, recalling those Saturday nights at Bobby Dale’s in the 1970s.

Over the years, the bands began playing benefits at nursing homes and retirement communities. Their sounds resonated with residents who grew up with them.

“Once when we were rehearsing at Redstone (Highlands in Greensburg), I saw a man crying and I asked what was wrong. He said that those were the songs he danced to with his wife and she was no longer around,” Yates said.

That is the power of music.

It is a power that fuels the bass player’s passion after all these years.