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Arts & Entertainment

Charlie Moller's Musical Odyssey

A lesson in 1939 leads to a life enriched by music

A life filled with beautiful music got its start with a grammar school music lesson more than 70 years ago.

Over the years, Charlie Moller's earliest passion for playing music has matured along with him, contributing to respect for beautiful styles of music including Old Time New Orleans jazz and big band.

If you haven’t seen the accomplished clarinetist and saxophone player and Petaluma resident  in a band around town, you may need to get out more. 

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“I have found in life that things go pretty well when I show up with my clarinet,” says the 81-year-old Moller with a laugh. 

Moller took his very first clarinet lesson at Washington Grammar School the same day and with the same teacher as his friend and local big band legend, the late Ernie Small. 

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“We were friends our whole lives," Moller says of his friend who died in December 2009. "We actually started a swing band together.” 

At Stanford University, Moller played clarinet in the band and was Drum Major in the marching band. 

“I went to Stanford to study bio-sciences and did post grad work at Cal and then I got drafted,” he recalled. He served two years in the Army during the Korean War.

He was assigned to an armored medical battalion at Fort Hood, Texas, because of his science education. 

“They had me up at 6 a.m. setting up a huge M.A.S.H. tent out in the Texas heat and then throughout the day, we’d move it and re-set it up. It was crazy,” he recalled. 

Through a series of attempts to make himself less aggravated and more useful, he served as company clerk, where he got wind that he could be close to being sent overseas. He also knew that the new commanding general loved music. 

“I wrote my folks in Petaluma to air freight my clarinet and sax as fast as they could and that’s how I became the principal clarinet player with the 4th Armored Division Army Band and also lead alto sax for the post dance band a Fort Hood,” he said. 

From 1956 when he and his first wife returned to Petaluma and he went to work in the family business, Hein Brothers Quarry, he only played for pleasure. 

“I was too busy raising a family, building a house and working,” he said. 

But by 1991 while visiting his second wife Barbara’s workplace, Casa Grande High School, he noticed a little card on a bulletin board. 

“It said anybody that can play a musical instrument please join a new town band. So I  did.”

Moller is also an excellent instrument “doctor” and is well-known in music circles for his ability to spot diamonds in the rough at garage sales and get them into the right hands - often those of budding musicians. 

“Charlie is responsible for getting me to expand my musical horizons," said Teresa Meikle of Petaluma. "When I first met him, I had just taken up music again after a long break, and I was playing alto sax in the Petaluma Community Band. He's always encouraging musicians to try new things -- take up a new instrument, try out a new mouthpiece, and he's got the item to let you try it out.” 

Now principal clarinet player with the Petaluma Municipal Band, Charlie Moller has also enjoyed one or two year stints with Go Down Swinging, was principal clarinetist with the Old Adobe Municipal Band, lead tenor sax doubling on clarinet with Swing and a Miss big band and a tenor sax for the Kitchen Cut-Ups, among others.

He also plays with the Turning Basin Crew staging an annual concert for local Marines.

These days , Moller dedicates three days a week to rehearsals with regular performances as lead alto sax with Swing and a Miss,  as lead tenor sax doubling on clarinet with People of Note a big band out of Novato, or with Russian River Ramblers, a six-piece New Orleans Jazz band out of Healdsburg. 

At 81, he’s busier than most working musicians half his age and he’s enjoying every minute. 

“The Russian River Ramblers just did a four day gig at Sho-Ka-Wah Casino in Hopland.  Some people, nothing gets in the way of their gambling. But the people we played for in the bar, they enjoyed it. They appreciated what we were doing,” he said.

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