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Story published: Tuesday, May. 06, 2008

Opinion: Richie Pratt appreciates Olathe.

Tod Palmer

sports editor

Growing up in town primarily during the 1950s, Pratt made a name for himself
on the football field. “Big Daddy” was a massive offensive lineman, tipping the
scale at close to 300 pounds.

A 1961 Olathe High School graduate, he would go on to plow the road for Gayle Sayers during “The Kansas Comet’s” playing days
at the University of Kansas.

“He made me look good,” Pratt said. “He had so many moves. The defensive guy would be tripping over himself and all I’d have to
do is lean on him. And Gayle, of course, he’d accelerate by.”

Sayers was a master at setting up his blocks, Pratt said.

“If you missed a block, it means you were blind,” he continued.

Drafted by the New York Giants, Pratt, who was the city’s first all-state football star, played one professional season before a knee
injury ended his career.

Now, the first thing you need to understand about Richie Pratt is that the jovial jazz-playing drummer seldom feels at odds with the
world. You have to be at peace to play jazz from the soul; it doesn’t work any other way.

Seriously, have you ever met an uptight jazz musician?

If football was over, fine. He was ready to pursue his life’s ambition anyway.

“I was lucky because I knew what I wanted to be in life from the very beginning,” Pratt explained. “I knew I wanted to be a musician.”

The drums always fascinated Pratt, who grew up with jazz blaring in the house from the day he was born. He couldn’t take his eyes
off the percussionists at Old Settlers parades.

Football, as it turned out, was a means to an end — his ticket to KU’s Fine Arts School. It even got him to New York, where Pratt
would settle in and build a hefty résumé.

He played several Broadway shows, worked with the Joffrey Ballet and American Symphony, spent three years with the New York
Jazz Quartet and accompanied legends like Lionel Hampton and Benny Goodman.

At times, it was almost like football, driving a crowd into a frenzy with a rhythm and beat much like the tumult caused by a long
Sayers touchdown run.

With good reason, Pratt proudly admits to his blessings.

His time in Olathe is chief among those blessings, Pratt said.

“As I was growing up, the community was a very caring, loving, tight-knit community,” Pratt said. “There was a cohesiveness there.
Fortunately, not only myself but most of the kids there got to experience that warmth.”

He felt protected and nurtured in Olathe, which remains Pratt’s wistful utopia — a striking distinction considering he lives in
Honolulu.

But Pratt’s never forgotten that sense of caring and community. “That’s what I carried in my heart,” he said.

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He remembers the town turning out in droves for a Jayhawks upset victory against Syracuse University.

It meant the world to him, especially when a teacher who would become a lifelong friend, Ralph Dennis, strode into the locker room
after the game.

“I was bubbling with joy,” Pratt said. “First, there was the victory, but that was also proof of who my real friends were. Mr. D came in
and sat down and we talked, and I could see such pride in his face. That elevated me even more.”

For decades, Pratt worked on the perfect way to repay Olathe, the only way he could honor his well-spent youth.

“There were so many people who were a positive influence on me when I was growing up there,” Pratt said. “I knew I wanted to
write a tune about them, commemorating all the wonderful memories.”

After so many years relegated to a brief mention in the liner notes, which he never minded, Pratt finally put out his own album
Richie Pratt’s The New York Jazz Sessions on Valentine’s Day in 2006.

The second track on the album? It’s titled “Olathe.”

Pratt, who recently turned 65 and has battled vertigo since moving to Hawai’i in the 1990s, remembers hearing the alto flute and
instantly becoming enamored during his second Broadway show.

The fuse had been lit for “Olathe.” He wanted to capture that sound for his hometown tribute.

The melody and chord changes came to him easily.

“I heard the orchestration in my head, but I needed my friend Tom Pierson to draw it out,” Pratt said. “If I tried to orchestrate it, it
would take 100 years, but fortunately he was in tune with me.”

Gathering some of the finer musicians he’d come to know through two decades as a jazz drummer, Pratt couldn’t be happier with
the finished product.

“Olathe” opens with a relaxed flute solo before the sax, guitar and triangle involve themselves.

Nearly two minutes into the song, as the trumpet and drums take over, “Olathe” takes on a lively, vibrant feel that carries up to the
finale, but the song never loses its mellow undercurrent — just like Pratt never let go of the values he learned as a child.

Pratt’s album, The New York Jazz Sessions, is available at www.richiepratt.net or www.cafepress.com.

— Contact Tod Palmer at 764-2211, Ext. 140, or todpalmer@theolathenews.com.

© 2008, The Olathe News, A subsidiary of The The Olathe News 514 South Kansas Ave., Olathe, KS 66061 (913) 764-2211
McClatchy Company

http://www.theolathenews.com/103/v-print/story/111791.html 5/16/2008