Archdeacon: Johnny and Davey – together again

Lifelong pals and two of Springfield’s favorite sons.

As part of a project to commemorate its history and greatness, the city began erecting bronze statues a quarter century ago of some of the most prominent, most accomplished, most praise-worthy people ever to call this place home.

In 2013, Davey Moore, the south Springfield boxer who was an Olympian and then the featherweight champ of the world, became the sixth statue when his sculpted likeness was set atop a huge rock in the middle of Gateway Wedge Park just off South Limestone Street.

His was the last statue erected ... until last Sunday.

That’s where Lytle took the public stage for the last time – Nov. 18, 1995 – and gave a spirited performance with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Just 27 days later he unexpectedly died from kidney failure while awaiting a liver transplant. He was 63.

No one in the crowd at that last show – where he once again honored Moore who had died from injuries he suffered in the ring while trying to defend his crown against the unbeaten Sugar Ramos at Dodger Stadium in 1963 – had any idea the smiling, gregarious Lytle, who lived up to his Fast Hands nickname that night, was ailing.

“I had gone to his house to ask him to play my wedding the following year,” Andrea Lytle King, Johnny’s niece, recalled Sunday. “He said he would, but when I was there I knew he wasn’t feeling good.

“I said, ‘Uncle Johnny are you sure you’re going to play tonight?’

“He said, ‘Yes, I’ll be alright,’ and then he asked Aunt Barbara – Aunt Babs as we knew her – to make him some tomato soup.

“We drove over to the Performing Arts Center and when he got on the stage and took those (vibraphone) mallets in his hands, it was like he flipped a switch. He was a pro. He was great!”

And before anyone dismisses this as familial aggrandizement, consider Lionel Hampton lionized Lytle as well, and so did the man universally crowned as “The Greatest” – Muhammad Ali – whose embrace lasted over 3 ½ decades.

Back when he was just 12 years old and still the gangly Cassius Clay, he had developed a fascination of Lytle’s fast hands and showmanship, traits that one day would be the cornerstones of his career, as well.

When Lytle was playing a club in Louisville, Clay started hanging around outside, hoping to see his hero.

“One night I snuck him into the place, and he stood backstage during a set,” Lytle told the Dayton Daily News’ Mickey Zezzo in 1982. “He just stood there with his mouth open.”

That began a lifelong connection between the two:

In 1974, Ali visited Lytle in Springfield after he knocked out George Foreman in “The Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire.

Then, in 1980, he had Lytle and Springfield boxing trainer Virgil Mabra visit him for a week at his training camp in Deer Lake, Pa. as he prepared to fight Larry Holmes.

As special as that bond was, it was eclipsed by the brotherhood he felt with Moore, who had grown up near him and palled around with him at Keifer Junior High.

Now the two are immortalized just three or so blocks apart.

Moore is depicted with his padded fists held at the ready in front of him.

Lytle is captured in a relaxed, seemingly contemplative pose. He’s leaning on one knee with his right elbow; his right hand is holding the two mallets.

Still, it would not have been too much of a stretch to have him in a boxing robe and mitts.

“Johnny Lytle had as much talent as a boxer as he did as a musician,” Mabra told Zezzo back in 1982.

“We were no angels when we started boxing, we were a little gang. But with boxing we had something to hold onto, something to believe in. We were a close group, like a family.”

Moore went on to be a world champ.

Lytle compiled a 50-3 amateur record as a welterweight. He twice won a prestigious Dayton Daily News Golden Gloves title and Mabra told Zezzo he once advanced to the semifinals of the National Golden Gloves Tournament in Chicago.

For a while Lytle served as Moore’s sparring partner and went 3-1 as a pro before switching full-time to music.

Asked once why he finally chose the mallets over his padded mitts, Lytle laughed:

“I can beat the vibes and they don’t beat back.”

He switched from drums to his sister’s xylophone and finally the vibraphone, which is where he found his fame as he toured the world; recorded over 30 albums – many of the songs he wrote himself – and shared the stage with stars like Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Nancy Wilson, Jimmy Witherspoon, Roy Ayers and Hampton.

Hammond became a doctor in Cleveland and Carter, after veering into drugs, ended up in San Quentin prison in California.

Moore visited Carter in prison and then managed to get a closed-door meeting with then California governor Pat Brown. A month later Carter was released and given a bus ticket back to Springfield.

As Lytle said in that 1979 interview: “We were taught to never to forget our friends.”

‘The Moore Man’

Lytle grew up in a musical family. His dad was a trumpeter, his mom an organist.

Several of Lytle’s eight siblings had musical talent, but by the way he mastered the drums and piano at an early age, he was seen as something of a child prodigy.

“Lionel Hampton wanted to take him on the road with him, but Johnny was just 15 and his family wanted him to stay here,” 97-year-old Preston Hampton (no relation to Lionel) said as we stood in the office of his Springfield home and pointed out pictures of Lytle, Moore and Ron Burton, his childhood friend and Springfield High teammate who went on to be an All-American running back at Northwestern and the first-ever draft pick of the Boston Patriots.

Burton played six seasons for the American Football League team which soon after was merged into the NFL.

Preston Hampton was just a few years older than Lytle and Moore. He oversaw some of the programs they were involved in at the Springfield YMCA and, as a youth counselor at the Y’s Camp Evergreen near Piqua, he mentored the pair there.

Hampton now has a drawing of Moore and Lytle done by John Legend’s father – Ronald Stephens – displayed on his wall near the famous photo of Moore talking to reporters after that fateful night at Dodger Stadium.

Once helped from the ring, he began talking to reporters in the dressing room, but soon said he wasn’t feeling well.

He lay down on the rubdown table, lapsed into a coma and never reawakened.

In a 1979 interview, Lytle said he was about to play a show in Boston when he learned of Moore’s death from a newspaper headline:

“It was unbelievable. I couldn’t play that night. I went home.”

After signing his first contract with Jazzland in 1960, Lytle later recorded for Pacific Jazz, Solid State, Milestone, Muse and Tuba.

He never signed with a major label because he wanted to control his product, but that limited some of the international exposure he should have had.

He wasn’t a stickler on contracts either and had no lawyer representing him.

And that helps explain why he came home from a gig at Red Foxx’s club in Las Vegas with no pay envelope. Instead, he had accepted five of Red’s suits as compensation.

Mike Morris – the head of the Springfield Outdoor Sculpture Committee since its inception and the project’s primary fundraiser with John Landess, the executive director of the Turner Foundation – served as the emcee of Sunday’s event.

He read a story that captured the reaction of Lytle’s wife Babs – they’d been married 43 years when he died, and had three children – when he couldn’t show her the money.

“I didn’t know he and Redd were the same size,” Babs was quoted as saying. “In real seriousness, they were nice suits … But they don’t buy no bread.”

Babs died in June at age 92. She’d been living with her son in Toronto. Johnny would have been 93 last Monday.

When he was alive, Lytle spent as much time as he could in Springfield.

“He never forgot where he came from,” said Dick Hatfield, a Springfield treasure himself, who has served as the community’s host for decades, was a longtime radio and TV staple in Springfield and Dayton, and once was named to Playboy’s list of the Top 50 Jazz and Pop DJs in the nation.

Hatfield knew Lytle well. He often interviewed him at his radio stations; emceed his shows; and had him as a judge for the annual community talent show.

Sunday he shared some heartfelt remembrances of him to the 100 or so people – including several Lytle family members – who attended the statue unveiling.

He emphasized how dedicated Lytle was to making sure Davey Moore was not forgotten in the community.

He founded and directed the annual Davey Moore Cultural & Arts Festival at Davey Moore Park and often entertained at it.

Soon after Moore’s death, Lytle wrote and recorded a tribute called “The Moore Man.”

“In 1970 Johnny asked me to emcee a concert he was having at Memorial Hall,” Hatfield said. “That night when the curtain opened he came out barebacked. He had on boxing shorts and laced up boxing shoes and boxing gloves. He held his mallets in his gloves.

“He wanted the city fathers and the community to give more honor to his lifelong friend.”

‘He helped put Springfield on the map’

As for Lytle, he has been both remembered – and forgotten – by the community over the years.

State Street where he had lived was renamed Johnny Lytle Avenue in 1997.

But after he was buried in Section 29 of Ferncliff Cemetery, his grave remained unmarked for 15 years.

Andy McGinn, a writer for the Springfield News-Sun, drew attention to the slight and eventually two women – Beverly Jackson, who had grown up next door to Lytle, and Roxy Barr – spearheaded a campaign to get an appropriate headstone on the grave.

A jazz singer herself, Jackson held a benefit concert at Jazz Central on E. Third Street in Dayton. Barr dealt with Dodds Memorials. And eventually a stone was put in place.

A mural of Lytle was put on the side of Mother Stewart’s Brewing Company in downtown Springfield two years ago and last year Springfield’s annual jazz festival put his name on its stage.

The statue project – with a price tag estimated at $110,000 a while back – was a more challenging venture and Morris said some additional donations are needed (all handled by The Springfield Foundation) before the books can be closed.

The sculpture has Lytle sitting on a stone base that Morris said was once part of a Champaign County train trestle over which Abraham Lincoln rode and which Major was able to acquire. An overhead light will illuminate the statue at night.

Major’s daughter, Sarah Major Mackert, an architect, spoke Sunday for her dad, who was on a prearranged trip out West spreading his mother’s ashes.

She summed up Lytle beautifully:

“To many of you here he was more than a name. He was a neighbor, a friend, a source of pride.

“His legacy is nothing short of extraordinary: Internationally renowned and beloved musician; former boxer; proud product of Springfield. He represents the spirit and soul of the city.

“Through his talent and charisma, he helped put Springfield on the map.”

Lytle’s 33-year-old grandniece, Camille Buford, smiled as she looked over at the statue, which had drawn a crowd after the ceremony.

She appreciates what the statue and such testimony provides people, especially younger ones, who know little if anything about Lytle:

“I’m excited about this piece of permanent art because it can help people continue to learn about him.

“They’ll see he not only was passionate about music and boxing, but especially about his community. He cared about people.”

And there was no one he cared for more than Moore.

Lifelong pals and two of Springfield’s favorite sons, they now stand in bronzed celebration just three blocks apart.

They finally are together again.