Sometimes being in the right place at the right time -- with your radio tuned into WNPR -- can lead to unexpected connections...
When WNPR's Where We Live first met Stanley Maxwell, we asked musicians Andy Chatfield, Mark Crino, Eric DellaVecchia, and Evan Green to explain the origin of their unusual name.
Drummer Andy Chatfield said that, as far as anyone could tell, Stanley Maxwell was a fictitious character, dreamed up by an outlandish Nantucket man the band had met almost 20 years ago.
"He regaled us with stories of his life," Andy said. "And he kept referring to, 'Oh, you know Stanley, Stanley Maxwell. He owns all the windmills in San Francisco.' We just thought it was hilarious... so, this character we should all know as Stanley Maxwell became the name of the group, and the windmill that he supposedly owns became our logo."
However, the morning after Stanley Maxwell's interview aired, Andy got a call with some unexpected information about the man the band is named after.
"I just heard the interview with you on Connecticut Public Radio," the caller said. "And I have to say, I’m completely in shock because my father is the Stanley with the windmills in California. I’m wondering if maybe you named your band after my father."
The caller was Debbie Charren. Debbie and her husband, Tim Diehl, live together in Northampton, Massachusetts. On the evening of February 27, Tim had been waiting to pick their son up from a bus stop in Cromwell, Connecticut, when a rebroadcast of the band’s interview began playing on his car radio.
"I’m sitting in a place where I would never be," Tim said. "There’s a McDonald’s there, in a parking lot. And I’m searching on the radio for some jazz or something, and this whole interview started. And as the interview was going I said, 'They’re talking about my father-in-law...It’s Stanley Charren, not Stanley Maxwell. Stanley Charren!'"
Tim went home and played the interview for Debbie, who, in a rush of excitement, tracked down Andy Chatfield’s contact information. The next evening, she left Andy several messages explaining that it was her father, Stanley Charren, who was responsible for the wind farms in the Nantucket man’s story. Not Stanley Maxwell.
Andy couldn't believe it.
"I definitely wanted to have our band meet her father and play some music for him," Andy said.
About a month later, on Sunday, April 19, the band loaded their cars and headed up to Dedham, Massachusetts to meet Stanley, Debbie, and Tim. Around 10 am, they arrived at NewBridge on the Charles, the quaint retirement community where Stanley now lives.
Inside the facility's small recital room, the band spent 45 minutes serenading Stanley in front of a crowd of his fellow residents.
When the concert was over, Stanley, Tim, Debbie, and the band made their way up to Stanley’s apartment. Inside, photographs and pieces of wind turbines adorned the walls and bookcases.
Stanley is 90 years old, and Alzheimer’s disease has made it hard for him to remember a lot of details about his life. But if there’s one thing that’s stuck his memory all these years, it’s his windmills.
In the mid-1970s, Stanley brought together a team of experts from Harvard and Yale and founded U.S. Windpower in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Together, they built the world’s first wind farm at Crotched Mountain in southern New Hampshire. The company later relocated to the San Francisco Bay area, and, in 1988, was renamed Kenetech Windpower.
Stanley retired from Kenetech in 1995. Little did he realize that, 20 years later, his legacy would live on in a jazz band from Connecticut.
"It’s a really strange coincidence that we were on Nantucket and heard this story," Andy said. "And it was funny enough to stick in our minds long enough to name a band after this supposedly fictitious character, you know, a full six years after we heard the story. And then fourteen years later, we’re still telling the story of how we named the band and someone happens to hear it on the radio."
Andy said the band is already planning its next trip to visit Stanley in Massachusetts.
Andy Chatfield contributed information to this post.
