(Photo by: Cash Navarro.)

For nearly 24 years JCCC Professor Harvey Fitzer has been keeping the spirit of rock and roll alive here on campus, and one might even say he is the living embodiment. From teaching guitar to creating the rock and roll history course here at JCCC, to still kicking it on stage as part of a band he founded, Fitzer really is the rockstar of professors.

“In 1972 I went hitchhiking, and I found these friends from Florida, and they picked me up and I just kept contact with them, and kept going back and forth from New York to Florida,” Fitzer said. “I’m originally from New York City. Eventually I got a teaching job down in Florida, there at a college I taught at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida. I started living in Gainesville, that’s where Tom Petty [is] from, he and some of the Eagles, and it was a really nice music town.”

Like a rolling stone, Fitzer had rolled down to the sunshine state but this was no place for him to settle. 

“I met a woman, and she lived [in Kansas City], and we had a kind of a long distance relationship for a little while, and then it came to the point where, well, maybe we should take this further,” Fitzer said. “So she had a house up here, and I didn’t. And I said, well, I’ll move up there. I was getting tired of the heat in Florida anyway.” 

In 1992, Fitzer moved to Kansas City, but it wasn’t until the fall semester of 2001 that Fitzer joined the staff at JCCC, where he now works as a professor in the music department teaching guitar.

“When I was going to college, I always said to myself, ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be great if they taught the history of rock and roll’, because we had the history of jazz, and the history of classical music, but I just never knew that I’d be the teacher,” Fitzer said. “I was trying to get more credits, to teach more credit classes and I looked online, and I saw a bunch of schools offering it, K-State, KU… So I did it. It was kind of hard.”

Since around 2007 or 2008, JCCC has offered History of Rock and Roll Music (MUS 128) and Fitzer still teaches it, however due to demand, other professors have had to join-in and teach some classes.

“I start earlier when the slaves were brought from Africa to America. The Africans had their own kind of music while they were working, and that transferred over with the beats and also certain things that transferred over, like call and response. I then go through the 20s, and then eventually go through R&B in the 40s, and then really get to rock and roll in the 50s, and I usually take it to about the 1990s because that’s pretty much all the time we have for a level one class. So ending around the grunge era, and indies,” Fitzer said. “Rock started off with people like Elvis and Chuck Berry, and each era was kind of different from the next. That went into the 60s with The Beatles and The British Invasion, and then the whole 60s era was a whole different thing that was never seen before. A lot of it was due to the psychedelic drugs that were prevalent back then. It took over the whole generation, including the music, journalism, fashions, art, everything was influenced by that, because the musicians were influenced by that.”

Fitzer has a special fondness for the music of the 60s, as that was his childhood. Continuing on, he explained just how it was that he got into playing music– and it starts with him trying to join his school’s band in New York City around when he would have been in 4th grade. 

“First I wanted to play the drums, and they didn’t have any drums, so they just gave me a pad percussion,” Fitzer said. “You know, I didn’t think it was too much fun, just a pad. So I said, I want a real instrument. And so I took the trumpet, but [my band teacher] eventually told my parents, ‘he has no talent in music you shouldn’t spend any money or time on it.’ So I was very depressed. But then the Beatles came on The Ed Sullivan Show, and I said, ‘Whoa, that’s cool. Look at them. They’re having fun. They’re getting girls. Girls are screaming at them, for them. That sounds like a good lifestyle.’ So the next day, I was about 10 or 12, and I told my dad, ‘Dad, give me a guitar. I want to do that.’ So he did. We walked into a music store, and I picked out a guitar just like the Beatle guitar they had, and my dad asked, ‘You’re gonna learn to play?’ I said, ‘yeah!’ So I did.”

Not only did he learn how to play the guitar, he taught himself to play it. Now at JCCC, you can even join his guitar class or even take private lessons for credit. Ever since seeing that iconic Beatles performance on the Ed Sullivan Show, Fitzer’s life revolved around music. 

“I’ve always played in bands since I was about 15, and I finally can get a little bit good on the guitar,” Fitzer said. “So when I was a kid, we had bands we played in church dances and stuff like that in New York City. So I’ve always been either in bands or solo players at gigs. I later started this band, Drunkard Dream.”

His band (named after a line in The Band’s 1969 song “Up On Cripple Creek”) performed from around 2008 to 2014, and even released an EP entitled “Midwest Dust Devils,” consisting of their own original music which can be found on most major streaming platforms. Unfortunately as time went, the members drifted apart and the band split and Fitzer was stuck as a solo act for a while, that was until yet another strike of inspiration. 

“I went out to San Francisco with my wife on a work trip. I had never been to San Francisco, and I went to see the Dead House where the Grateful Dead lived,” Fitzer said. “It is like a shrine. Now, people go there all the time and just stand in front of it and take pictures. I looked up to the top at the attic window and I could swear I could see the top of Jerry Garcia’s head silhouette. Just weird. And I kind of said, ‘Jerry, should I start a dead band?’ And I felt him saying, ‘Yeah, go for it. Spread the word,’ something like that.”

Jerry Garcia was the lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead who had passed away in 1995 which is why this moment was so magical for Fitzer. It was this that inspired him to start yet another band, KC Bone, a Grateful Dead cover band. Since 2019, KC Bone has been playing at a number of venues across the Kansas City area.

Information on future performances as well as recordings of past ones is available on their website, kcbonesband.com.