Norman —
Bob Mansfield’s 50 years in the hairdressing business on its own would be enough to fill a life with stories, friendships and a lot of hard work.
But that only scratches the surface of the colorful life of this Norman man of many talents.
Hair and now
When you’re in the business of doing hair, you get to know a lot of people. Sometimes better than you might want to know them.
Mansfield said he’s heard so many stories over the years it’s hard to remember all of them. “You’re sort of like the poor man’s shrink,” he joked about how what he hears in the salon, stays in the salon.
Mansfield celebrated his 50th anniversary in the business March 3 at Impressions, the Campus Corner salon where you’ll still find him five days a week. He shows no signs of slowing down even as his 70th birthday arrives.
“I’ve been happy with it, it’s really quite a thrill to help people out,” he said, “It gets them on the road to success with their hair and their looks. It can make a difference in their lives.”
He started in the business in 1960, shortly before his parents began what at that time was the city’s largest salon in 1961. In 1986 he came to the Campus Corner location where he continues to work.
Two customers have been with him the entire 50 years and many others for much of his career.
“There are also a couple of shut-ins I go to, they used to come and now just can’t get out anymore, so now I just come to them,” he said. “After a while, the customers become like family.”
Christine Dodd-Steward has been a client of Mansfield’s in recent years but has known him for many more years than that.
“He’s been a wonderful friend and person to know,” she said.
For most of his career, Mansfield worked six days a week, taking Sundays off. He since has “graduated” to only working five days, allowing him Mondays to himself. After many years as an owner, Mansfield these days is the employee, working for Impressions owner Larry Walker. He’s happy to be free of the added burden of being in charge of the entire business.
“When I owned my own business, it was kind of like a marriage,” he said. “I had been wanting to get back into the music more and had hoped to be able to continue with the hairdresser business also. This is allowing me to do both.”
And it’s likely he won’t be slowing down anytime soon, from his music or his passion for hair.
“I hope not to,” he said. “I will probably still be doing hair while I’m walking in there with a walker because I love it that much.”
Music man
You walk into Mansfield’s office, and while the posters from shows he has sung in hang on the walls, sheet music is scattered about and memorabilia collected over decades of musical passion are present all around, the eye is drawn to something else first.
Accordions.
A digital accordion sitting in one corner of the room is the only one like it in the state of Oklahoma, purchased at an international accordion festival in Las Vegas.
An older, smaller accordion sits on a bench near a third, which he later demonstrates with a precision only found by years of practice and passion.
Mansfield is a songwriter, producing many of the songs for his band Gypsy Wind, which features a lot of polka music and the smooth sounds from his accordion.
Like many other tasks in a technological world, songwriting has been made considerably different by the use of computer programs to produce sheet music, rather than just handwriting on paper.
Mansfield uses a computer program called Sibelius, which allows for sheet music to be produced much more quickly than in the days of writing it out by hand.
He was influenced by Middle Eastern music several years ago, seeing and learning a little about the qanun, a stringed instrument used in a lot of music from that region.
“It has 92 strings and three sounds per pitch,” he said. “It’s a complicated instrument.”
Inspired by some of the sounds from the instrument and the musical genre itself, he has borrowed it in his songwriting for Gypsy Wind.
His inspiration for writing songs comes from many sources.
“In our polkas, I’ve taken a couple of Brahams’ themes and rewritten it and put it together for my group,” he said. “I think he would like it. They stole music from the simple music and then put their version to it and that’s what I do. I may take a classical piece and rework it and bring it into our use.”
He’s also been an accomplished singer for many years, still performing on a regular basis for The Oklahoma Master Chorale, one of a number of singing projects he’s been involved with over the years.
He recalled a story about a quartet he previously was part of called Satin.
“A lady in Tennessee thought we were satanic,” he said after she apparently misread the group’s name before an appearance. “She was thinking ‘how did you get them on the program?’”
And more
Mansfield and his wife Lou live in northeast Norman with their three dogs, Agatha, Christie and Baby. He still finds time through all the other activities to garden and, as one might imagine from the names of his pets, do a lot of reading — “I finish a book a week,” he said, with a preference for high-action political intrigue.
He holds up Alex Berenson’s “The Silent Man.” “They’re just killin’ them off right and left,” he laughed.
He teaches music as well, with accordion students coming from as far as Springfield, Mo., to study under his tutelage.
He gives great praise for what music, and the arts in general, can do for young people.
“If you get a kid involved with music, their brains are going to develop at a different pace than if they’re not involved with music.”
And perhaps, they’ll end up with a lifelong passion, too. Or several.
Christian Potts
366-3544
cpotts@normantranscript.com
