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LEFT: Jim Pritchett. ABOVE: Jim Pritchett plays his drums this past summer at a charity concert in the Bonner Springs, Kan., area. Pritchett, a building mechanic at Northeast High School, was recently inducted in the Kansas Music Hall of Fame with his band, Green River Ordinance. Submitted photo
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Most of the students at Northeast High School haven’t a clue that walking among them in the hallways of the school every day is a piece of Midwestern music history.
Jim Pritchett, NEHS building mechanic, was inducted this month into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame with his 1960s-era band, Green River Ordinance. The 60-year-old Prairie Village, Kan., native has been playing the drums for 45 years.
“I was pretty thrilled about [being inducted],” Pritchett said. “For it to come up was pretty killer. To be in the Hall of Fame with people like Melissa Etheridge, it was like, this isn’t happening.”
Pritchett learned a year ago that his band was being considered for the honor. Then about two months ago, he found out they’d been selected. The induction was March 6 in Lawrence, Kan. Green River Ordinance performed during the ceremony, along with fellow inductees, Oleta Adams, Conny & the Bellhops, The Moanin’ Glories, Plain Jane, The Morning Dew, The Pott County Pork & Bean Band and Tree Frog.
Pritchett started playing drums at age 15. He’s a smallish man, and he said he was a scrawny kid, looking more like 12 when he graduated high school at age 17.
“When I played music [girls] actually paid attention to me,” he said. “That was pretty cool.”
His freshman year at Emporia State University in Emporia, Kan., (the school was known as Kansas Teachers College at the time), Pritchett was auditioning for another band when the guys from Green River Ordinance heard him and hired him on the spot. The band gained some regional status, playing gigs in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Texas.
It was 1967 when Pritchett joined the band, and he said it was a different era for live music — there were more bands and more venues, and it was easier for a group to make some money playing. Green River Ordinance could find a gig most any night of the week.
The band played, as Pritchett described it, “hard-edged dance music.”
“We played what I would call pretty progressive music,” he said.
This was around the time the hippie movement was underway, and Pritchett said sometimes he and his bandmates would face threats from hippie-haters.
“We were long-haired freaks,” laughed Pritchett, who still wears his hair in a ponytail today. “The girls liked us, the boys hated us.”
In 1970, Pritchett was drafted into the Army, and that was basically the end of Green River Ordinance’s three-year run playing together.
Although he was pulled out of college to serve, Pritchett said the two years he spent in the Army turned out to be a good thing. He worked in communications and gained skills he’d later use laying fiber optic lines and as a mechanic.
“I wouldn’t change that for nothing,” he said.
When Pritchett returned to Kansas City, he met his wife, and they went back to Emporia, where he finished his business degree.
Pritchett has two sons, both of whom are musicians, as well. Jeffrey, 26, plays in two Kansas City bands, including Seed Love, a reggae band that is rising in popularity.
“If you want your kids to play [music],” Pritchett said, “give them something to bang on. At Northeast, we have kids here who don’t have money [to buy instruments], but there’s always a way to do it.”
Pritchett has worked for the Kansas City, Mo., School District for 11 years. His wife also works for the district as a special education teacher. Pritchett has been at NEHS for three years and said he likes the school.
“People really care,” he said.
A few of the students know he’s a drummer — one boy in the drum line carries drumsticks around and will ask Pritchett to “play something fast” from time to time — but in general he said it would be an awkward subject to bring up to say, “Hey, I’m in the Kansas Music Hall of Fame.”
As he’s getting older, Pritchett continues to play drums and sing. He substitutes for different bands around town, though it is getting more and more difficult moving his equipment. He’ll always keep playing for his own enjoyment, though.
“It’s something you can’t stay away from,” he said. “It’s an addiction.” |
