Working in Clark County: Yvonne Payne, pianist, owner of Ebony Notes

The exact details of when Yvonne Payne, 73, started playing piano are a little hazy to her now.

In the early 1950s, she was living with her mother in a part of Longview where she said African Americans were concentrated due to discriminatory rental practices. She would tag along with her mother, who earned money cleaning a woman’s house. The woman owned a piano.

“That was too many years ago,” said Payne, who now lives in Hazel Dell. “I guess I was playing on it and this lady started me in piano lessons.”

She said that the woman contacted a local piano teacher named Esther Hill, and paid for Payne’s lessons.

More than 60 years later, she is one of the few black female business owners in Clark County, with Ebony Notes, which she started in 1986. She’s a solo pianist for local weddings, restaurants and other places that seek piano services.

‘As Time Goes By’

On a recent Tuesday, she had booked a performance at Glenwood Place Senior Living. Payne toted a suitcase with binders of sheet music, and her own stool, because she likes to sit a bit higher than the standard piano bench.

Residents gathered in Glenwood Place’s plaza for a happy hour — complete with a selection of wine and snacks — while Payne played familiar melodies in the background. She started with “As Time Goes By” by Herman Hupfeld, made famous by the 1942 film “Casablanca.”

“I’m going to probably be performing a lot of the old tunes they recognize from the ’30s and ’40s,” Payne said, before taking a seat at the home’s Gulbransen piano. “I’ve had some come up to me almost in tears; they say ‘I remember that song from when we got married.’ ”

She plays at other area senior facilities, and a smaller fraction of her business comes from helping at Ridgefield School District choral concerts. She also offers lessons, but only to adults, once a week at her home in Hazel Dell.

“I tell everyone the gray hair is from teaching kids who wouldn’t practice,” she said.

Ebony Notes took a hit when The Hostess House, a venue where she frequently booked wedding gigs — her favorite — closed last year. Payne said she made about $10,000 last year and also has income from her late husband’s Social Security.

Though most of her clients are appreciative, she said, “Sometimes you’ll have people say, ‘Oh … can you volunteer to play?’ I’m like, ‘I got bills like you got.’ ”

At Glenwood Place, residents enjoyed the calm piano tunes in the background as they sipped on glasses of chardonnay or rose. A few stood up to dance.

“I think it’s just nice to get out of the routine sometimes,” said Cleda Holcomb, 85, who has lived there for a month. “When you’re retired, there’s not a lot going on. I love the music, no matter what it is.”

Piano comes first

Payne said her first musical job was when she was 15 years old, performing for a ballet studio in Longview. She kept taking lessons from Hill; the woman whose house her mother cleaned kept paying until she died.

After that, Payne would help out at her piano teacher’s house in exchange for lessons. She eventually moved on and pursued a degree in music, attending Lower Columbia College in Longview before transferring to the University of Washington. Then she and her husband purchased a house in Felida in 1979.

“I didn’t have a piano at the time, so there was about four years that I didn’t have access to a piano,” she said. “But we ended up buying a house in Vancouver. That was the first thing I said, ‘We’re buying a piano before we’re buying furniture.’ ”

Long before the days of Facebook and Instagram, Payne took time to build a solid base of clients through in-person networking.

She joined the local Chamber of Commerce, where she was able to make connections and get referrals. She made a name for herself performing regularly at Cafe Al Dente before it closed, she said.

A diagnosis

Some residents at the happy hour were hopeful for slightly faster tunes, to shift a slower waltz to more of a boogie. But Payne’s hands would suffer. She’s struggling after receiving a diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“So I’m playing but not as much because of the weakness in my arms and hands,” she said, adding that she received the diagnosis in October 2018.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, its formal name, is a progressive disease that attacks the nerve cells that control muscles.

But it’ll take more than that to pry her out of her seat at the piano.

“I’m not giving up,” she said. “I’m a Christian, and I’m devoted to praying for healing and a miracle. I’m keeping the faith and trusting and believing that this will be healed.”