Susan Barton:
CLASS OF 1960
Campbell High SchoolClass of 1960
Campbell, CA
Rosemary Elementary SchoolClass of 1956
Campbell, CA
Susan's Story
Howdy from Las Vegas! As you may remember, I play the violin. After graduating, I went to San Jose State as a music major, but I really wanted to be a psychologist~I actually did get a go at that in the early '80's, when I went back to school at Sac State. I took 42 units in two semesters, got a 4.0 and then went back to Vegas to play (the violin!), as well as counsel individuals suffering from substance abuse. I got married the first time in 1963 to a fellow musician, but that didn't work out too well, so we went to Las Vegas to get a divorce. Luck has the strangest way of hunting me down on occasion! A friend of my husband's had a girlfriend who was a nude in 'Viva Les Girls' at the Dunes. The group which performed right before her show was called The Four Femmes. They had been using a male violinist for several nights because one of the girls had to go back to Florida. I fit the gown, so I got the gig! That was in 1965. When that job ended in August, I got another one at the Sahara Tahoe. I was officially a 'Fiddler on the Hoof'! In 1967 we toured the Far East for three months. What a trip-in a lot of ways. The realities of war hadn't begun to sink in until I stood at the top of Victoria Peak looking down on the Bay of Hong Kong at all the war ships. We flew to Bangkok from there. I noticed shadows on the ground flying next to us. I was told they were fighter jets escorting us safely across 'enemy' territory. Later, we performed in a hospital at Yokuska Naval Base in Japan. I'll never forget looking out over that room full of young men in various stages of physical trauma-some without limbs, some bandaged head to toe and all wanting to hear songs like 'God Bless America'.
We ended the tour in Honolulu, where we performed for a couple of weeks. I had heard that there was an opening in the symphony, so I auditioned. Much to my amazement, I got in!! I played three seasons with them and then became lead violinist for Don Ho, plus string contractor for an agent who was booking all the big acts that came in. I had the good fortune to contract the strings for Elvis's show broadcast live from Hawaii. That was pretty exciting!
Very long story short, I left Hawaii in late 1973 to open the old MGM Grand, which is now Bally's. I sort of a...Expand for more
lternated with that gig and shows. It was great! I got to play Sammy, Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Elvis-pretty much anybody who used strings. The music business has had its up and downs since then, but it has always been good to me. I became the solo violinist and string contractor for weddings at Caesars and Paris in 2002. I just recently decided to turn that job over to my business partner. Weddings had dropped off quite a bit and most of them are performed outside. If you have ever been here in July or December, you know how miserable that can be, especially when the temp is 120 or 50 with a wind chill!! I have actually played over a thousand weddings, most of them 45 min. of solo violin. Not easy! Also, kind of poetic justice, since I have been married more times than I care to discuss!! My last husband, to whom I was married for 15 yrs., passed away from a rare form of cancer in 2002. My heart goes out to everyone who has lost a loved one. It's rough.
In 1992 a friend of mine asked me to join her at the Las Vegas Academy for Performing Arts and International Studies-a public magnet school. What a delight!
I had never really taught, mainly because I didn't want to put some poor kid through what I went through growing up. I can hardly complain now, but it sure did seem like torture at the time! Anyway, I became the paraprofessional viola coach (paraprofessional means that you teach entire classes of kids for less money than you would make playing 15 minutes as a professional-but it's all for the love of the kids, so the administrators tell us). I do love it. It turns that there are a lot of kids who love it too. I've been teaching privately and coaching since then. This past summer I put together a little string orchestra. We toured at some of the really beautiful assisted living places here. I discovered that they're practically on every street corner! School has started again, so I'm putting together my studio and scheduling the days when I teach class. It's quite a lot of fun! When I was on that tour of the Far East, we all stopped on a street corner in Singapore to have our palms read by an older gentleman who had set up shop there. He told me that I would have no children and many children. It's amazing how that has worked out.
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