Honoring the Teachers

[fasstrack]

 It is important. And I have been lucky to have great ones, on and off the stand.

This is from a post I made earlier on a jazz guitar forum. I put it here in the hopes it may stimulate some discussion of other members' teachers:

 ...But the guy who taught me the most about composing, repertoire and being a rounded musician was the late John Foca. John was a jazz accordionist as a teen, but had to stop due to back problems. So he played organ in a club date band weekends and taught 40 hours and more a week out of his Mill Basin, Brooklyn home. They called him Johnny Solo in the club date biz, because his given name sounded like a curse over the mic. He was a composition and theory major at the Manhattan School, and studied under one Ludmila Uelelah, who was not at all fond of jazz. He taught me about form and critiqued my pieces when I brought them in. He would suggest better chords and was the one who hipped me to avoiding unisons between lead voice and bass. He was a great teacher.

After a long teaching day his 'delinquents' like myself, Ralphie, Big Gary B. would knock on the door at midnight and hang out until he kicked our wild young asses out around 4 AM so he could finally get a little shuteye before beginning the next grueling teaching day. He would hold court and make sure we ate as we all had intense discussions about music and everything else, broke balls and asked questions about life.

Mr. John Foca taught me to be a musician and a man. I can still hear him saying, as he pinched my cheek, 'SHIMINUD! When are you gonna become a musician?

[kinuta]

I'm not a musician and play no instruments so my experience is language related.

Mrs Nihei at Nichibei Gakuin in Tokyo was my Japanese teacher and without doubt the best teacher I've ever had.

Cool, calm, methodical, relentless and supremely well organised.

She got results, gave me a firm foundation in the language and taught me how to teach in the bargain.

Edited September 11, 2016 by kinuta

[fasstrack]

No one else? I'm disappernted. 

I also studied with Marshall Brown, possibly known here for his Newport Youth Band (including an international version).

He had a workshop every Wednesday afternoon. Gene Allen and Hod O'Brien were there with us kids.

He recorded all the sessions, and afterwards would sit in his easy chair, pick his nose and critique guys' performance on the tape. That was a great idea, because recordings don't lie. He enumerated what he liked and didn't, and why.

An aggressive brusque man, he would grab the guitar out my hand, saying 'here, gimme that, kid'. He didn't play well, except in his own mind, but he played enough to dramatize a point. Or he would show me off to Hod, telling me to play Lush Life on his D'angelico.

 He's the guy that started me playing 4/4 rhythm guitar, because when I got there my comping, he observed, 'has no rhythmic impulse. Sounds like a f%^&ing washing machine'. The rhythm guitar thing was some of the best advice for a young player. I don't believe you can swing in your solos if you don't know 'the circle'. 

Humiliation and torture were part of his palette, too. He had a hapless piano student, Timothy. Once Timothy played an intro not to Marshall's liking, so he lit into him:

No, no, no Timothy! I don't want anything fancy. I don't want anything flowery. I don't want anything creative. (voice rising in a crescendo of wrathful, contemptuous hostility, with white spittle emerging from both sides of his mouth) I just want some fucking time, Timothy!!! Timothy would put his head---by now the color of a purple sofa---down. But he learned, as we all did.

Marshall's immense, thick-skinned ego sometimes interfered with good pedagogy, like when he would say 'as you know, Joel, no one plays more compositionally than me'. I'd be thinking 'right, no one but Pops, Bird, Pres...). He was not a great player, despite his brazen statements to that effect. What he was was a great thinker, and astute critic who could hear immediately hear what a student's weaknesses were and the proper remediation. He was a guy with a polar bear hide who brazened his way through life on brute force of his personality, but he taught us all well---and before us Ronnie Cuber, Eddie Gomez, Mike Abene and others as kids.

Marshall's intensity and antics, like his spittle shower on poor Timothy, would eventually lead to a stroke. He recovered, taught and played again, but finally succumbed to a worse stroke. I thought he was a hell of a man and great teacher for me, personality flaws be damned. He gave me my first real ensemble experience (I had been playing guitar duos, mostly in guys' apartments) and evidently saw potential since he took me on as a 'scholarship student'. I never paid a dime for that Wednesday workshop...

Edited September 13, 2016 by fasstrack

[fasstrack]

Should I delete this? No one seems interested. 

Or they are otherwise occupied, probably...

[ghost of miles]

Teaching certainly holds a pretty honored place here at IU, given how much David Baker did to build up the jazz education program.  Lots of love for teaching and teachers in Bloomington--hell, we voted to raise our taxes a few years ago to help out the arts programs in the local elementary and high schools, and are likely to do the same again this autumn!  On a related topic, I'd still love to read a book about all of the incredible teachers in the 1930s/40s/50s African-American school system who played such a big role in developing the musical talent of those generations. 

[fasstrack]

4 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

  On a related topic, I'd still love to read a book about all of the incredible teachers in the 1930s/40s/50s African-American school system who played such a big role in developing the musical talent of those generations. 

A good idea. They are heroes.

I'm so lucky. Aside from the aforementioned there was Chuck Wayne, Jimmy Raney, (unofficially but greatly) Eddie Diehl, Barry Galbraith, before that Carl Barry---and that's just guitar. For writing: Manny Albam, John Carisi (one lesson, then he went into a coma), and especially the great Bill Finegan (who I so adored, and who never charged me a dime for lessons). Every one a special person and a giant in some way---at least to me.

What can I tell you? Though I may not be a major 'success' in the way it is often gauged, I am tremendously rich in the people I've known who helped mold me.

Like I said, lucky as hell... 

 

 

 

Edited September 14, 2016 by fasstrack

[danasgoodstuff]

I took sax lessons breifly with Joe Cunningham of the Blue Cranes.  He did a great job transcribing Ayler's "Ghosts" for me.

[fasstrack]

9 hours ago, danasgoodstuff said:

I took sax lessons breifly with Joe Cunningham of the Blue Cranes.  He did a great job transcribing Ayler's "Ghosts" for me.

Wow! 

That reminds me of Andrew White's Andrew's Music. He took off maybe hundreds of Coltrane solos. He advertised himself as 'Transcriber, janitor, mail boy.

I wrote away for solos once. Some cost like $5, other short ones were like 7 cents. Weird.

I bet he worked his ass off on those solos, though...

 

[danasgoodstuff]

On 9/16/2016 at 6:33 PM, fasstrack said:

Wow! 

That reminds me of Andrew White's Andrew's Music. He took off maybe hundreds of Coltrane solos. He advertised himself as 'Transcriber, janitor, mail boy.

I wrote away for solos once. Some cost like $5, other short ones were like 7 cents. Weird.

I bet he worked his ass off on those solos, though...

 

The head, not the solos, just to clarify.  Still it's a better rendition of the fully developed head than I've seen elsewhere - Ayler continuously developed this, adding elements. Joe worked out fully as a single line - I'll have to figure out the counter-melodies Albert played later.

[fasstrack]

I stumbled into a JALC rehearsal (2004, before Time-Warner). They were rehearsing Peace, by Ornette, Wynton had written a chart with a great sax soli.

Sitting in a corner, quietly listening while stroking his chin, was a certain Ornette Coleman. 

I approached him and said:

'Mr. Coleman, at first glance your music wouldn't seem suitable for big band'.

He nodded, thought for a moment.

'That's the thing about music: It's so....'

I was hanging on his words, could hardly wait for him to finish the sentence. Was expecting a word like 'pliable'.

'Democratic', said Ornette Coleman...

 

 

[paul secor]

With Ornette, you could expect the unexpected.

[fasstrack]

On 9/18/2016 at 1:23 PM, paul secor said:

With Ornette, you could expect the unexpected.

And that's just what I got.

That was a beautiful day...