Tandyn Almer, enigmatic composer of ‘Along Comes Mary,’ dies at 70 By Matt Schudel,February 16, 2013 (Page 2 of 2)

By 1965, he had written “Along Comes Mary,” which was picked up by the Association. Something about the tune — its rhythmic complexity, its soaring harmonies, the intricate wordplay of its lyrics — impressed more than just the teenagers who danced to it.

“Let me put it this way,” Puterbaugh said. “Leonard Bernstein in 1967 thought enough of him to bring him to the attention of the world in the CBS special ‘Inside Pop.’ Two of the people he spotlighted were Brian Wilson and Tandyn Almer.”

On the program, Bernstein lit Mr. Almer’s cigarette and praised his sophisticated use of the Dorian mode, a musical scale often used in classical music and jazz.

George Benson, Hugh Masekela, Cal Tjader and other jazz musicians recorded “Along Comes Mary,” and amateur musicologists tried to unravel the complicated lyrics, with their internal rhymes and images of youthful alienation.

When vague desire is the fire in the eyes of chicks

Whose sickness is the games they play …

And when the morning of the warning’s passed, the gassed

And flaccid kids are flung across the stars.

Was the song about a girl named Mary, the Virgin Mary or, as many thought, the effects of smoking marijuana?

Even today, Jim Yester, who sang “Along Comes Mary” on the Association’s original recording, occasionally reads the lyrics to audiences before singing the song.

“It is mind-blowing when spoken, as opposed to being sung,” Yester wrote in an e-mail. “An amazing set of lyrics. What it is saying . . . your guess is as good as mine.”

If anyone asked Mr. Almer, he wasn’t coy about the meaning: Yes, of course, it was about marijuana.

‘The next Dylan’

The success of “Along Comes Mary” made Mr. Almer almost a minor star.

He recorded an album of 11 new songs for Warner Bros. and released a single, “Degeneration Gap,” in 1969 that featured his driving piano and his clear, if unrefined, baritone voice.

“Everyone thought he was going to be the next Dylan or Elton John,” recalled Joseph Deaguero, a musician who introduced Mr. Almer to Wilson, of the Beach Boys.

“Tandyn was totally an eccentric, but he was in a league of his own. You listen to his music and say, ‘God, this guy was really good.’?”

He was handsome and talented, but before the spotlight could find Mr. Almer, he retreated from it. He was paralyzed by stagefright, and the album that could have made him famous was never released. He seemed to prefer it that way.

He was a staff songwriter for A&M Records for a while and collaborated with Wilson and others on two songs for the Beach Boys, “Marcella” and “Sail On, Sailor,” the latter of which echoes with the internal rhymes characteristic of Mr. Almer.

By 1974, though, Mr. Almer “got frightfully despondent,” Deaguero recalled, and left Los Angeles, never to return.

“He packed up everything,” Deaguero said, “and I took him to the train station.”

After finding his way to Washington, Mr. Almer wrote songs in the 1980s and 1990s forHexagon, a political satire revue. In the late 1980s, he rented a room in Northern Virginia from jazz saxophonist Herb Smith. He practiced in the rehearsal rooms at Northern Virginia Community College’s Annandale campus, where Smith teaches.

“He’d jump on the piano, and I couldn’t get him off,” Smith said.

Mr. Almer played music day and night, sometimes going without sleep for four days or more.

“He used to tell me the music got better the longer he stayed awake,” said Thomas Bernath, a bass player who occasionally rehearsed with Mr. Almer and who is now cataloguing hundreds of tapes found in his apartment. “He didn’t feel like playing until he had been awake for two or three days.”

Mr. Almer often read books on science, and he began attending local meetings of Mensa — the high-IQ organization — in 1977. Several people said he had occasional long-term girlfriends, but he never married.

“He wasn’t shy at all,” Bernath said. “He was, unbelievably, a happy guy. There was never any complaining or gnashing of teeth about money.

“He was so sensitive — not in the way of having his feelings hurt. But I almost felt he could read my mind. I’ve never been around anybody who was that perceptive.”

Although he briefly drove a taxi and had a job building computer circuit boards, Mr. Almer lived almost entirely on intermittent royalty checks. Whenever he came into money, he’d buy a new musical keyboard or, sometimes, a used Lincoln Continental.

He was an erratic driver and was often in accidents. Smith said he once got Mr. Almer out of jail after he was arrested for disruptive behavior on a Fairfax County bus.

“He was not sad, really, about these calamities,” Smith said. “His bipolar, whatever that is, it never did affect me, and it didn’t limit him. I always dug Tandyn being around.”

One day, Smith noticed that Mr. Almer had cut his shoulder-length hair. He wanted to look presentable, he said, for his first visit in years to his mother, June Minetor, who is 94 and still lives in Minneapolis. His half-brother, his only other survivor, lives in Rochester, N.Y.

In recent years, Mr. Almer corresponded with acquaintances on Facebook and began to reconnect with old friends. Mostly, though, he stayed in his room, playing music that no one else could hear. He left a body of work of at least 75 songs and possibly as many as 300.

“There are some incredible songs,” said Puterbaugh, the music writer who got to know Mr. Almer in the final years of his life. “It’s hard to speculate why some of these brilliant compositions never saw the light of day.”

“The psychodramas and the traumas [are] gone,” Mr. Almer wrote in “Along Comes Mary.”

“The songs are left unsung and hung upon the scars.”

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