Electronic Orchestra

If you want to create a new sound, you may have to invent something to perform it. 

DL’s early interest was in electronics. His early passion was music. His adult idea was to create a way for his interest and passion to work together. Despite the critics, he persisted and achieved success. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND

DL’s father was not devoted to a steady career path, instead working a series of ‘odd jobs’ for hourly pay. DL’s mother was a cosmetologist (Editor – “Cosmetology” is the art and science of beautifying the hair, skin, and nails; specific job descriptions range from hair stylist to nail care to makeup artist for celebrities.)

When DL was very young, his parents divorced. He rarely saw his father again, until decades later. 

CHILDHOOD INTERESTS TOWARD AN ADULT CAREER

Growing up in a religious home, attending church at least once a week, early on DL became fascinated with the church organ and with the sounds that the church organist was able to draw out of it. 

One night DL had a dream that he had replaced the organist on the bench. “I woke up and told my grandmother and grandfather that I’ve got to learn the keyboard, because the feeling I had in that dream was something I hadn’t felt in my whole life,” recalled DL as an adult. 

EDUCATION

After high school graduation, DL enrolled in a historically Black college to study electrical engineering. He sang in the school chorus and even performed as a singer at a political rally. But he remained a college student for only two years, despite realizing that by leaving college, he would be immediately eligible to be drafted into U.S. military service while the country was involved in a foreign war.

MILITARY SERVICE

According to various historians with access to military draft statistics, Black college students, unlike most white students, were often not exempt from military service due to their college student status. 

Rather than wait to be drafted into the Army, DL decided to try to control his military destiny by enlisting in the U.S. Air Force, where he was trained as a ‘nuclear weapons specialist’ – requiring above-average mental intelligence – and served for nearly four years ‘stateside’ in Colorado and New Mexico, earning an Honorable Discharge. 

CAREER COMMENCES

Despite the lack of a four-year engineering degree, DL’s first adult, civilian job was as an engineer for Honeywell. When off-duty from his employment, DL ran a church music program and worked part-time in a music store. Soon he was getting booked as a nightclub act to sing and play various keyboard instruments, eventually earning enough from this ‘side gig’ to quit his day engineering job. 

DL spent the next several years traveling, often as a demonstration musician for Hammond, the organ company. He was already tweaking his instruments and equipment, looking for ways to eke out new sounds. At the same time, DL was making a name for himself as a studio engineer and musician, especially after he moved to Los Angles. 

When DL tired of hauling around so many keyboards to his different job locations – one day working alongside a famous musician, then a week later on tour as a member of the Beach Boys’ backup band, or performing his own gigs, shuffling up and down the West Coast with an ever-growing assortment of keyboards and other equipment. 

He could have just taken his trusty Hammond Concorde organ, itself not a small item. But DL was a ‘sound explorer’, constantly on the hunt for new sounds. If he found a keyboard with a particular tone to it, he had to add it to his collection. He was a one-man band; he aspired to be a one-man orchestra. 

His problem was about more than sheer weight. Each instrument had to be controlled separately, and there was then no industry standard for integrating them. An electrical engineer by training, DL decided to strip them down for parts and build something new. It took him three years of designing and fund-raising but eventually DL finalized the “Live Electronic Orchestra” commonly known as the LEO. 

This musical Frankenstein’s monster brought together pieces from three keyboards, a slew of synthesizers, control panels and a drum machine into a set of plexiglass modules. DL sat in the middle, like a musical air traffic controller. His design allowed him not only to choose the sounds he wanted, but also to mix them in real time. 

These days, people are used to the idea that they can produce virtually any sound they want on a laptop, which was far from the existing technology of possibilities when DL invented his music machine to create a symphony of sound at his fingertips. 

The LEO cost more than $100,000 and he never made another. Still, it was in popular demand to be played and heard. DL played six nights a week in San Francisco. One of his many fans was an engineer, who was so inspired by the sounds created by DL that the fan went on to develop the musical instrument digital interface, known as MIDI, the protocol that makes modern music production possible. 

CHALLENGE – COPING WITH CRITICS

Critics claimed that DL was not a musician, but a mere button-pusher. Members of a musicians’ union protested his performances, claiming that he would drive them out of business. He challenged their right to picket him before the National Labor Relations Board. DL lost. The pickets could continue to harass his performances until they grew tired of such protests, especially during severe weather. 

CHALLENGE – JOB CONFLICTS WITH RESPECT FOR UNIONS

The prospect of having to cross a union picket line protesting his music performance was too daunting for DL’s emotions, too much for him to cope with. He stored the LEO in his home garage and tried to put the whole experience behind him. Several years later, the federal government re-examined his protest against union picketing and decided in his favor, including awarding DL a financial settlement against the union.

CAREER SATISFACTION

A big part of DL’s success as a live musician was getting audiences to listen to him and not gawk at his keyboard rig. His technology was so clever, so seamless, that most people soon forgot about it entirely and allowed the music he created to sweep them away emotionally. Thus, DL was an unsung pioneer of electronic music, who paved the way for a billion beeps and boops to come. 

After storing his creation, the LEO (and later donating it to a museum), DL worked as a consulting engineer. One of his accomplishments was to be part of the Yamaha team that developed the sounds for Yamaha’s revolutionary DX7 – the instrument that defined 1980s ‘synth pop’ – and the team behind Roland’s TR-808, the most popular drum machine ever made. 

DL also taught music and technology at several colleges and universities. With his wife, DL brought music into elementary schools. 

Said DL looking back on his career: “I think music is more than entertainment. I think it has a stronger and more meaningful purpose in our lives. And I think what we’re here to do as individuals is help people unlock and find those things that are dormant.”

This career story was based on an obituary written by Clay Risen, published within the NYTimes on 12/17/22.