Red Rock Serenades
by Dick Canby
When I first moved to Sedona late Summer 1961, the population was around 1,200, and there were only a couple of businesses in West Sedona. About the only industry at that time was movie making, and running cattle in the open areas around our village in the winter months, when it was too cold up on the plateau for the doggies. The only tourist interest in Sedona at that time was fishing Oak Creek, and in those days, it was not a stocked stream, and whatever you caught was native… and delicious. We were only a 1/4 season town in those days. Sedona pretty much locked up during October through May, cause there weren’t all the touristy businesses yet to attract people.
The Chapel of the Holy Cross had recently been built, and attracted some visitors, but the roads were all still dirt and therefore it wasn’t the kind of attraction it is today… and there was no commercial business being conducted at that time within the church (those were the days when it was a real church)… today it is just a commercial visitor’s attraction.
Tlaquepaque had not been built yet, and Poco Diablo was still to come (Sedona’s first resort). It was a wonderful little laid-back town, and everybody knew everybody else. We used to spend 30-45 minutes each morning at the Post Office in uptown Sedona back when it was a small hole in the wall close to where The Worm bookstore is today. We just gabbed and visited with friends cause nobody seemed to be in a hurry to do anything back then.
There was very little entertainment for the locals other than the local uptown bar, the Oak Creek Tavern (where today’s Cowboy Club is located), which boasted a 9-10′ standing and stuffed polar bear and only one pool table, The Rainbow’s End tavern way out in the next county west of us, and that wonderful roller skating rink up at Indian Gardens, which was a total blast, cause it was a slanted oval made with Oak panels. The teenagers would spend a lot of time there. Other than that, one would have to drive to Flagstaff to go to a movie house, or Cottonwood at the drive-in or their indoor theater in Old Town.
So the locals created their own fun. Glen Keller and his wife Marilou, and Don Pratt, his wife, Marian, and daughter, Susie, and many other folks started up what they called Red Rock Serenades. A fellow by the name of Bill Larock had a pick up truck with a camper on the back full of speakers, amplifiers, generators, etc. and we would spread these out on the Red Rocks (usually on the little hill to the north of Bell Rock Formation which we could get into on some old dirt roads. We’d build a huge bonfire and cook up grub while listening to Bill’s great music he was pumping out through the speakers. Sometimes we would sing along to songs we all knew.
One of the highlights at each R.R.S. was when after dinner, Don and Susie Pratt would climb up on a rock somewhere out in the dark and play duets on their trumpet and coronet. It was absolutely beautiful… and with the tonal differences between the two instruments, it was like listening to two voices in harmony. They would play lots of different pieces, and we would all enjoy the incredible entertainment back at the fire. These were the days when simple things held special places in our hearts, for it was the PEOPLE we were with that was important, as much as what we were doing.
At that same time many of us got together in the warm months and went “Pine Knotting,” around the Sedona area and up on the plateau. It would be an all day affair with people filling their station wagons and trailers with the “elbows” where branches came into the juniper trees and were hard enough and filled with enough sap, so that when the tree died and fell over, knocking these pine knots off and later throwing them into a fire acted like starters or helped get bigger logs going when they were added to the fire. We’d all pack up a picnic and had a grand ole time just doing something simple but fun.
As I recall, we had our Red Rock Serenades a few times a year, and they went on into the late ’60s and perhaps into the ’70s too. Eventually Bill moved to southern Arizona, and the group broke up. Not long afterward we got the Flicker Shack movie theater out in West Sedona which Mac ran all by himself for quite awhile, and we all loved having our own movie house so we didn’t have to drive so far. Of course in those days, whatever we got in the way of movies were usually 2-3 months old, since Sedona was still so small.
And then came the resorts and Tlaquepaque, the cattlemen stopped running their cattle in and around Sedona, more motels were built and gift shops, and before you knew it… Sedona was no longer that quaint little town that we all moved here to live in. The face of Sedona changed, and so did a lot of the visitors as we slowly became Scottsdale North.