Cass Tech photo essay

[Joe]

An institution with a long and rich musical history... its difficult for me to name a Detroit jazz musician who doesn't or didn't have some connection to Cass Tech... and while that history is not explicitly addressed here, a nice tribute to the place it once was...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2013/03/04/detroit_urbex_using_photomontage_to_compare_the_history_of_cass_tech_high.html

Edited March 5, 2013 by Joe

[Dan Gould]

That's a very effective series of photos. Thanks for sharing.

[Noj]

My thanks as well. The images of the ruins of Detroit are depressing. A once great metropolis, crumbled.

[ghost of miles]

An amazing school indeed... I'm sure that Mark Stryker will have something to add to this conversation. Is DuSable High still open in Chicago? Crispus Attucks is the equivalent school in Indianapolis; there was a similar school in Los Angeles, I think, but I can't recall it right now. Hopefully somebody will eventually write a well-researched history of the black schools and teachers that provided such a good grounding for many of the jazz artists that we love and admire from the mid-20th century scene.

[BeBop]

In 2011, I went back to my (and John Handy's and Michael White's...Frank Robinson's, Bill Russell's) old high school. Converted from public to some special charter. Certainly no more than a shell of the dynamic (in the best and worst senses of the word, I suppose) place it once was. Its website talks about being "founded in 2005"; talk about losing your roots/history!

[Joe]

An amazing school indeed... I'm sure that Mark Stryker will have something to add to this conversation. Is DuSable High still open in Chicago? Crispus Attucks is the equivalent school in Indianapolis; there was a similar school in Los Angeles, I think, but I can't recall it right now. Hopefully somebody will eventually write a well-researched history of the black schools and teachers that provided such a good grounding for many of the jazz artists that we love and admire from the mid-20th century scene.

In LA there was Lloyd Reese (Dexter, Mingus, Dolphy all studied with him), but I believe he gave private lessons and was not affiliated with any particular school.

Maybe (Thomas) Jefferson HS in South-Central?

[Jim Alfredson]

Moving.

[John Litweiler]

An amazing school indeed... I'm sure that Mark Stryker will have something to add to this conversation. Is DuSable High still open in Chicago? Crispus Attucks is the equivalent school in Indianapolis; there was a similar school in Los Angeles, I think, but I can't recall it right now. Hopefully somebody will eventually write a well-researched history of the black schools and teachers that provided such a good grounding for many of the jazz artists that we love and admire from the mid-20th century scene.

In LA there was Lloyd Reese (Dexter, Mingus, Dolphy all studied with him), but I believe he gave private lessons and was not affiliated with any particular school.

Maybe (Thomas) Jefferson HS in South-Central?

Don Cherry attended Jefferson - who and how many others?

DuSable HS in Chicago is now a 300-student school, one of 2 or 3 or more stuffed into the campus of the original DuSable HS. The way Chicago public schools have been reorganized is amazing, not in a good way. The tenor player David Boykin was teaching music at DuSable a few years ago, I think another jazz musician teaches music here now.

[Joe]

An amazing school indeed... I'm sure that Mark Stryker will have something to add to this conversation. Is DuSable High still open in Chicago? Crispus Attucks is the equivalent school in Indianapolis; there was a similar school in Los Angeles, I think, but I can't recall it right now. Hopefully somebody will eventually write a well-researched history of the black schools and teachers that provided such a good grounding for many of the jazz artists that we love and admire from the mid-20th century scene.

In LA there was Lloyd Reese (Dexter, Mingus, Dolphy all studied with him), but I believe he gave private lessons and was not affiliated with any particular school.

Maybe (Thomas) Jefferson HS in South-Central?

Don Cherry attended Jefferson - who and how many others?

DuSable HS in Chicago is now a 300-student school, one of 2 or 3 or more stuffed into the campus of the original DuSable HS. The way Chicago public schools have been reorganized is amazing, not in a good way. The tenor player David Boykin was teaching music at DuSable a few years ago, I think another jazz musician teaches music here now.

According to the internet Roy Ayers, Ed Thigpen and Dexter Gordon all attended TJ. Not yet able to find mention of a specific teacher there along the lines of, say, Chicago's Walter Dyett or O.W. Fredrick.

[BeBop]

Another educator of some reknown (that I heard about from multiple sources while in Alabama) was Fess Whatlety. "Among his famous students were Herman Blount (Sun Ra), Sammy Lowe, Cleveland Eaton, James L. Lowe, Herman Grimes, Murray Harper, C. Julian Parrish, Walter H. Blythe, Wilson Driver, J. B. Sims, and Edward A. Brown"

[Lazaro Vega]

Northwestern in Detroit is another vaunted program, with stories of Tommy Flanagan racing Sir. Roland Hanna to the rehearsal room because who ever got their first practiced on the better piano. I think Bags went there, too. Bassist Rodney Whitaker, who went there, is up on that school's history.

Harry Begian, who conducted the bands at Cass Tech., was here at Blue Lake for years. He said he came into the music program there a few years after Howard McGhee was at Cass.