A Repertoire of Enthusiasm : Group’s Old-Time Tunes and Instruments Strike a Chord With Senior Citizens

It’s a good thing Frances Grunnet plays the piano by ear.

“At my age, I can’t see to read music,” says the 92-year-old band leader.

Grunnet heads a 16-member music group that plays old favorites on old instruments--for audiences of old-timers.

Her band sets arthritic toes a-tapping when they belt out tunes such as “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and “When the Saints Go Marching In” at retirement homes and senior citizen centers around Los Angeles.

“You can tell the audience is having fun,” said 84-year-old Harry Fulterman, who plays a bass fiddle like no other.

“It’s an old washtub,” Fulterman explained--not that anybody in the white-haired crowd at a show the other day in the Mid-City area needed to be reminded what the galvanized tub was used for in the old days.

“I went to school for four years to learn how to play this,” Fulterman joked.

Next to him in the rhythm section, Ida Nagin nodded. She was playing a washboard with a spoon.

“I went to the same school he did,” said Nagin--who described herself as “an octogenarian--and that’s as far as I’m going to go.”

Grunnet launched the group she calls “Jest for Fun Players” five years ago at the Westwood Horizons retirement hotel in Westwood, where she lives.

The band soon boasted dancers and singers as well as musicians. Its members decided to take their act on the road when professional arts and crafts instructor Jeri Monteiro assured them that they would be a hit with other seniors.

They are. At a performance at a convalescent hospital in Encino, one man in the audience who hadn’t spoken in two years because of a stroke suddenly burst out singing “God Bless America” when the band played that tune, Grunnet said.

“We sometimes play for people who are very sick,” said 90-year-old Harold Kreisberg, a singer who serves as the band’s emcee. “You can see their faces light up. That’s our satisfaction. They ask us to please come back. That’s our payment.”

“We see people transformed,” agreed percussionist Anne Gross, 88. Added tambourine player Jean Ratner, 89: “It’s fun when you see toes wiggling to the music from patients who are in bed.”

The reaction was warm at the Westside Jewish Center as a crowd of senior citizens cheered dancers Gertrude Glaessner, 86, Morris Hattem, 79, and husband-and-wife hoofers Cora and Walter Ebeling. They are 79 and 84, respectively.

Rose Orenstein, 80, stepped from the audience to dance with Hattem. “This couldn’t be any better,” she said of the show. Agreed 88-year-old onlooker Molly Kantor: “This is wonderful.”

Band members weren’t letting that kind of talk go to their heads.

“Gimme an A,” Fulterman yelled to Grunnet as the band prepared to play the “Darktown Strutter’s Ball.” “I’ve gotta tune this thing up.”

Before he could adjust his one-string instrument, Kreisberg interrupted. “You missed a note!” he shouted to the washtub player.

“How do you know?” Fulterman shot back.

The crowd roared.