Missing the live music of my friend Wayne Crume

As I was working on my side hustle last week (the events calendar for this newspaper), I couldn’t help but notice now many wonderful music events are on the near horizon.

It got me to thinking about our old friend Wayne Crume, who provided a bulk of the live music our family listened to for some memorable years.

Wayne was born in Kenna and grew up in eastern New Mexico, but lived away from here from the early 1950s to about 1980 when he and his wife, Carol, came back home to the High Plains.

A born entertainer if ever there was one, Wayne quickly fell into the niche for which he is remembered by many in our area: delighting audiences by singing and playing his sometimes bawdy renditions of songs old and new, including many he penned himself.

With a battle-scarred guitar, a harmonica clamped into a holder around his neck, and access to a piano keyboard, Wayne was a one-man band. Add a lightning fast wit and ability to adapt song lyrics on the fly, and you had the recipe for fun.

His first long-running gig was at the bar at the Clovis Holiday Inn, but when the Crumes moved to Portales in the early 1980s, some wise person had the foresight to lug an upright piano into the back room of the old Tastee Freez restaurant.

Wayne held court there every Saturday night for years.

He tamed down the lyrics from his bar repertoire and loved taking requests from his regulars who filled the booths at Tastee Freez where we could nosh on fried foods, tap our toes, and sing along.

His fans ranged from babies (including ours) to folks who wandered in with canes and walkers. Wayne called almost all of us by name. If you weren’t one of his friends when you arrived, you would be by the time you left.

As far as I remember, he never relied on a sheet of music and couldn’t read a note of it even if someone had brought one in. His gift was natural. If he’d ever heard a song, he could replicate it and leave you grinning.

Wayne’s sister Rowena and her husband Top Preuit were ranchers who lived west of Milnesand, and two of our best neighbors.

If Wayne was at one of their brandings, after the work was done and lunch had been shoveled in by a hungry crew, we could count on him to fish his harmonica out of his pocket and take over Rowena’s well-worn piano. He could never resist a captive audience. I don’t remember anyone who ever minded a lick.

In the next two weeks alone, between Portales and Clovis, we have a slew of musical offerings starting at 7 p.m. Tuesday with dueling events: the Clovis Community Chorus Christmas concert at First Methodist Church in Clovis and the Eastern New Mexico University brass concert in Buchanan Hall at ENMU’s Music Building in Portales.

Eastern’s annual holiday concert is at 7 p.m. Thursday in the ballroom of the Campus Union Building, and next Sunday (Dec. 8), we can catch Tuba Christmas at the North Plains Mall at 2 p.m. (a yearly gathering of area brass aficionados), followed by “A Mariachi Christmas” at 3 p.m. at Clovis’ Marshall Auditorium, courtesy of the Clovis Community College Cultural Arts Series.

Those are only five of many scheduled music opportunities on tap as we glissando into the holidays, including numerous live gigs by local bands at restaurants across the region.

They will all be lovely, and I hope to be at many … but I’ll always miss our old friend Wayne Crume’s tickling the ivories in the back room of the Portales Tastee Freez, bringing homespun entertainment to a generation of us who will never forget him.

Betty Williamson would love one more Saturday night at the old Tastee Freez. Reach her at:

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