By Ben Joravsky
The roots of his teaching style are planted in the late 50s, when he was a restless white teenager from the northwest side who listened to black AM radio stations and manufactured a phony ID that got him into south- and west-side jazz and blues clubs. At Taft High, he joined a band (“D.D.T. and the Dynamiters–the lead singer was Daniel Dawson Trinski”), played rock ‘n’ roll, and hung out with other doo-wop devotees–like Jim Jacobs, who went on to write Grease. “The gym teacher asked us to write about someone we really admired,” says Bruner. “I think he was expecting Abraham Lincoln. But I wrote about Bill Haley and Jim wrote about Little Richard.”
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After high school, Bruner moved to a flat in Old Town and joined a band called Ronnie Ross and the Sidemen (“Our first gig was a Mafia-type bar in Cicero”), which eventually led to a meeting with a drummer named Maurice White, who went on to found Earth, Wind and Fire. Bruner enlisted White to play in his band backing the Sheppards, a popular vocal group. “We played at every ballroom on the south side–the Grove, the Grand Ballroom, the Rum Boogie Ballroom, the South Shore Ballroom, Times Square. We were making pretty good money, but the whole time I’m going to art classes because I was trying to be practical. I saw music as sporadic, but art could get me a job I do every day.”
For two years he was a public aid caseworker. “I discovered I missed teaching,” he says. “It wasn’t just a deferment thing. I actually wanted to teach.”
“Ral Donner was a sensational singer. He was singing opera when he was five,” says Bruner. “He sang Elvis songs at the Apollo and he went over big. He bought himself a purple Cadillac with the money he made. But he got ripped off by the record companies. He died penniless of cancer sometime in the 1980s. I remember seeing that purple Cadillac parked outside his parents’ house over on Newark and Devon long after he died. You could write a book on Ral Donner. The poor guy never had any luck.”
“It seems like everyone he knows is famous or was almost famous or should have been famous,” says Caitlin Cunningham, a junior. “He’s got these crazy ideas, like he wants to pour paint over the buildings. It’s just different.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Cynthia Howe.
