Jazz Radio 247

Bill Dobbins - Interview II

Contributed by Evan Dobbins

This the second of a three part interview with Bill Dobbins. The interview was conducted by his son, Evan Dobbins. This month, Dobbins focuses on issues concerning Higher Education, the development of rich talent in Higher Ed., and his philosophy on learning. This is a very in-depth and thoughtful documentation. We hope you enjoy reading this is much as we did here at JR247.

This the second of a three part interview with Bill Dobbins. The interview was conducted by his son, Evan Dobbins. This month, Dobbins focuses on issues concerning Higher Education, the development of rich talent in Higher Ed., and his philosophy on learning. This is a very in-depth and thoughtful documentation. We hope you enjoy reading this is much as we did here at JR247. Evan Dobbins/JR247: rYou began teaching at Eastman over 30 years ago. What similarities and differences have you observed in the abilities and attitudes of students ove the years? BD: Other than the tendency toward more passivity, as previously mentioned, students today simply can’t help but reflect the extreme “dumbing down” of our culture and its institutions over the last fifty years. During the first half of the twentieth century the greatest disseminator of popular music was the piano. There was a piano of some kind in a large segment of American homes, and some family members either played by ear or bought the sheet music of popular tunes in order to play them for their own entertainment. The content of popular music in those days was infinitely more reflective of real musical understanding and skill. The best songs of Harold Arlen, Hoagy Carmichael, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn and others, are on a par with the best songs of nineteenth-century classical composers in terms of their masterful combination of text, melody, harmony, rhythm and formal structure, all working together toward the end of clear musical expression.{josquote}I think that most institutional jazz programs could still benefit much from incorporating more from the self-taught orientation of the first generations of jazz musicians.{/josquote} In the 1960s, with the mass marketing of television, the tendency to appeal to the lowest common denominator began to become increasingly excessive, and that tendency continues. This probably had to do with making sure that the commercials didn’t go over anyone’s head. If anyone ever had any doubt that the main purpose of television is propaganda, the increase of commercials from eight minutes for every hour of programming in the 1960s to twenty minutes per hour today should be adequate proof. The effect on popular music has virtually eliminated the elements of melody, harmony and form. Texts have become largely amateur at best, patently degrading and offensive at worst, and rhythm is now largely reduced to a near deafening, throbbing pulse. At the same time the Grammy Awards have gradually increased the number of categories of what, in the 1960s was a single category known as “popular” to more than two dozen varieties of so-called music that honestly insults even an average intelligence. Sadly, intelligence has become almost a dirty word in our society. The reason seems to be, unfortunately, that stupid people are much easier to control and keep occupied than smart people. Thanks to MTV and its spin offs, music for today’s generation is something to look at much more than something to listen to. I am amazed that even many music students and professionals usually say they went to “see” a well-known musician perform, or that they “saw” this or that concert. Whether we realize it or not, the words we commonly use to describe our experiences reveal a lot about the modalities of those experiences that affect us most deeply. About 1975 I started teaching a basic arranging course during Eastman’s summer session, while Rayburn Wright and Manny Album were doing the advanced classes in preparation for the now legendary Arranger’s Holiday concerts at the end of each summer session. At that time most of the students who came to take my course, having completed high school or a couple of years of college, had the musical background to complete a basic big band arrangement by the end of the six weeks. By the middle of the 1980s, the level of musical background had decreased to the extent that I had to change the goal of the course to that of writing an arrangement for five horns (three saxes, two brass) and rhythm section. By the beginning of the 1990s the musical background of these students was so meager that they struggled mightily to complete even a short arrangement for this small instrumentation. When I first started teaching at Eastman in 1973, I was just 26, only a few years older than some of the students. I grew rapidly as a player, writer and aspiring educator by being thrown into such a talented and ambitious student environment. The rhythm section that was in the Eastman Jazz ensemble at that time included pianist Phil Markowitz, Gordon Johnson and Ted Moore, one of the two best that have ever played in an Eastman group. The horn players included trumpeterwriters Allen Vizzutti and Jeff Tyzik, saxophonist Doug Walter, trombonist Nelson Hinds and bass trombonist Jim Daniels. Phil has worked extensively with Dave Liebman, Allen has become a major jazz and classical soloist, Jeff is the principal pops conductor for the Rochester Philharmonic, and both Nelson and Jim did stints with Woody Herman and other major jazz orchestras right out of school. In fact, Eastman became one of the major sources for those bands from the early 1980s until most of them discontinued their year-round activity, which has left a huge hole in terms of professional
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performance opportunities for young jazz players. As stingy as U.S. support for the arts is, the support for jazz is still practical nonexistent in comparison with that of music from the European tradition. {josquote}Because jazz was developed primarily by African Americans, there is a strong spiritual element in it. Like the blues, it inspires perseverance in the face of even the most oppressive adversity.{/josquote} When we developed the first jazz degree program at Eastman, we decided to start with a master’s degree. We felt that having a dozen or so advanced players and writers at Eastman, who had already specialized in jazz for four years, would be the quickest way to improve the level of jazz playing in our ensembles. It proved to be the right move, especially since there were not a lot of schools at that time that offered advanced degree programs in jazz. Our illustrious alumni from that program include trumpeter-writer Jeff Beal, trombonists John Fedchock and Dave Gibson, saxophonists Dave Glasser, Bob Sheppard and Tom Christensen, Rob Lockart and Charles Pillow, pianist Matt Harris and Manny Mendelson, bassists Bill Grimes and Jeff Campbell, drummers Rich Thompson and John Hollenbeck and composerarrangers Maria Schneider, Joel Mc Neely and Dave Slonaker. Many of these also write music and several have won Grammy or Emmy awards Other talented classical music majors who played in the big bands and took jazz courses as electives, and then went on to establish themselves very successfully in jazz, include trumpeter Byron Stripling, flutist Steve Kujala, and the other outstanding rhythm section that included pianist Ed Czach, bassist Dave Finck and drummer Dave Ratacjak. While the level of talent and ability of our incoming students at Eastman is still far above the national average, commensurate with the level at America’s most prestigious music schools, the musical background of most of these students is markedly lower than it was thirty years ago. However, most of them make extraordinary progress during their tenure at Eastman. The exceptional faculty in our Jazz Studies and Contemporary Media department, of course, has a lot to do with this. As a result, the top big band and small group at Eastman are, in my opinion, as good as any college groups in the country. What’s more, our graduates routinely do very well in the professional world as players, writers and educators, a sure sign that they are mastering the necessary skills, both musical and social. And the networking in major cities throughout the world is the most helpful I know of in terms of major collegiate jazz programs for helping recent graduate to find work get established in the professional world. But the level of college jazz performance and writing nationwide, like the level of professional jazz performance and writing, is not what it once was and certainly not what it could be. So much more would be possible if we didn’t have to spend so much of our time and effort making up for the encroachment of the new Dark Age.

JR247:You have spoken about the concept of “Ockham’s razor” and how it relates to the creative arts. Could you explain this and discuss how it relates to jazz education? B.D.: By coincidence, I happen to have just read an excellent book on western thought, The Passion of the Western Mind, by Richard Tarnas, which a mutual friend of ours had recommended. To my amazement, an entire chapter was entitled, Critical Scholasticism and Ockham’s Razor. I was even more amazed to be reminded that the man who formulated this principle, a British philosopher and priest of the fourteenth century, was a namesake of mine, William of Ockham. Although this is by far the most comprehensive and well-written book I know in conveying the evolution of the ideas and attitudes that have shaped western culture, I feel that the principle of Ockham’s razor was presented in a manner that remains too specifically related to the subtle theological and philosophical attitudes of that time, so that the modern reader might see no practical application of it today. This principle was conceived as an argument that universals such as Plato’s Forms were essentially fictions as opposed to aspects of an independent and separate order of reality. As stated by William of Ockham, it says simply, “entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity”. My professor of western civilization at Kent State University, however, worded it in a much more useful way in terms of a more universal application: given multiple explanations for a particular phenomenon, the simplest and most direct one is most likely to be the most correct.{josquote}I think it’s extremely unfortunate that our jazz program at Eastman, for whatever reasons, is nearly all white. While it’s understandable that black students probably feel more comfortable in jazz programs with at least some black teachers, it’s sad that the influence of hip hop and rap has been a major cause in a lack of appreciation in the black community for the unique legacy of jazz, just as the influence of Elvis Presley, The Beatles and white rock ‘n’ roll has diluted white American culture.{/josquote} There are many applications of this principle in creative music, but there are two that are especially useful. The first relates to the unfortunate division of the theory of harmony by inadequately educated musicians into “classical harmony” and “jazz harmony”. It has been my unfortunate experience that, while most classical theorists know little about the ongoing development of chromatic tonal harmony by jazz musicians, and many only consider music to be tonal if it ends on a major or minor triad, most jazz educators know little about the harmonic language of classical music from 1700 to 1950 or so. One disastrous result is that jazz harmony is far too often reduced to a handful of harmonic clichs, the most overused of which is II-V or II-V-I. The best jazz composers, however, from Duke Ellington and Bix Beiderbecke to Thad Jones and Bill Evans, would be embarrassed at the paucity of harmonic vocabulary and the understanding of the principles of harmony that pass as acceptable in many jazz programs today. The great classical composers from Bach to Shostakovich had a large catalog of harmonic moves and many ways of multiplying the possibilities through borrowing tones from the parallel minor key (from c minor in c major) or the parallel major key (from c major in c minor). Of course, in jazz there is a third modality, blues, from which blue notes can be used
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to color the voicing or melody note of a particular chord. The result of today’s musical “tower of Babel” is that students who may lack the understanding of basic harmonic moves, and their applications in great music since 1700, often resort to convoluted explanations of the harmonic language of tunes they are analyzing because they haven’t learned some relatively simple and basic principles of tonal harmony. Or they may fall into a similar problem because there attention fastened onto more complex relationships that seemed more advanced or creative, while forgetting some of the basic relationships that are most essential for young musicians in acquiring a solid harmonic foundation. In many of these instances their explanations are more complicated and less clear than a possible explanation based on simpler and more straightforward relationships. Therefore, in all the analysis done in my classes, whether basic or advanced, my college professor’s formulation of Ockham’s razor is the guiding principle. I keep reminding myself, as the saying goes, “Keep it simple, stupid.” This situation is further complicated by the gradual shift in the classical conservatories to a theory program that places less emphasis on a thorough understanding of tonal harmony and a demanding program of ear training. Consequently, each generation of musicians hears less, while being encouraged to develop an ever more impressive technique. Still, I am happy that the jazz students at Eastman have to take the classical theory and history courses in addition to those in the jazz curriculum. It is well known that many early jazz musicians, especially the pianists, were quite knowledgeable about the classical repertoire and the basics of classical harmony. And the greatest jazz composers from Jelly Roll Morton to Clare Fischer have been very familiar with classical repertoire, whether from academic or self-study. The second application of Ockham’s razor illuminates another problem area to which there is, unfortunately, no solution. During the last fifty years the number of chord symbols in current use has multiplied considerably, with no real increase in the clarity of representation or universality of adoption. Coming into jazz in the 1960s, I used some of the newer symbols for many years, until I encountered the music of Clare Fischer. When Clare explained to me that the symbols he used were the earliest to be widely adopted and that he simply refused to change to symbols that, in some cases, were actually less logical than the older ones, I began to reconsider the whole situation. Basically, the earlier symbols use flats and sharps only for the chord roots. They use a small “m” for minor and an elevated capital M (on the higher level of the symbol, parallel to the 7 or 9) for minor and major chord qualities, respectively. They use plus (+) and minus (-) only for altered chord tones (raised or lowered ninths, for example). This avoids the overabundance of flat and sharp signs when used for both chord roots and alterations, and it also avoids illogical representations of altered tones that result when flats and sharps are used to represent them. For example, the lowered ninth of an E7 chord is not F flat, but F natural, and the raised ninth of an Ab7 chord is not B sharp, but B natural. Because I couldn’t find any convincing reasons for continuing to use the newer symbols, the most trendy of which are the triangle in place of the capital M and the minus sign as a substitute for m or mi, designating minor, I began using the older system in 2004. Since the biggest disadvantage of the new symbols is that everyone now has to know the meaning of all the different symbols used to represent the same sounds, I realized that at least there is no disadvantage to using the older symbols. While it is regrettable that this second, but considerably less damaging, tower of Babel could have been avoided if the principle of Ockham’s razor had been widely understood and applied, the principle cannot correct the situation after the fact. Truth be known, the invention of musical jargon that has no truly useful purpose has often been a deliberate ploy to sell books or to create the appearance that something old is really something new. One of my biggest pet peeves is the invention of new names for things that already have names, yet another common phenomenon of our time that flies in the face of the principle of Ockham’s razor.

JR247:You once wrote an article entitled “Jazz in Academia: Street Music in the Ivory Tower,” about the inherent contradictions one must face in effectively bringing jazz into the classroom. In revisiting this topic, do you feel that jazz education as a whole has made any strides or steps backward in teaching the music to a new generation? BD:To preface my response, I have to say that in many ways I fear that all segments of American society have been increasingly “ghettoized” since the 1960s. I was a student at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, when the National Guard killed four students during a protest against the Vietnam War. At least some of the students were not even participating in the demonstration, but were on their way somewhere in between classes. All the impetus from the activity of the many groups who were trying to make our society more transparent and responsible to the electorate during this period were brought to an abrupt halt by the police riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the killings of students on several U.S. college campuses and the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. The unspoken yet crystal clear message from these events and others like them was that, if you are truly persistent in your efforts to use the legal democratic processes provided in our constitution to change the gross imbalance of power and wealth in our society, you must face the very real possibility of being killed for your trouble. It should be no surprise, then, that these events literally shattered the psyche of our society, so that it went into a deep state of denial that is becoming deeper and deeper all the time. One of the consequences of this is that the many rich subcultures of America have little or no contact with each other. If I have no contact with those who live in circumstances that are different from mine, how can I be sympathetic to political, social or economic programs that might improve the situation of communities that are in need?
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Unfortunately, our leaders, both Republican and Democratic, take full advantage of this situation, pitting one group against another in order to continually improve the position of the economic elite, with which they are definitely aligned. We are, consequently, brainwashed to think in terms of gross extremes, as if no possible solutions in between are possible. Even though the worst forms of communism were certainly no models of human dignity and freedom, is the worst form of capitalism necessarily any better? The ideal that it sets forth, as represented by the current administration, is the individual against everyone, sitting in front of his or her computer monitor, concerned only with the acquisition of more material goods, money and property, not to be bothered by individuals or entire neighborhoods around the corner that may be living in destitution and squalor. And if bombing other countries that have never attacked us can keep the good times rolling, well I guess we’re just expected to accept that as the price of progress. When I was growing up in Akron Ohio in the early 1960s there was not only a thriving jazz scene, but also considerable social interaction between the white and black communities. One of the common venues in which many whites and blacks interacted and shared great experiences was the jazz club. I was fortunate that, after hearing me play a few times at the age of 18, Harold Wright, an African American singer, decided to hire me to play in his trio with Bobby Reeves, an African American bassist. Harold played a cocktail drum set: a floor tom, a ride cymbal, and high hat cymbals, and he sang very well in the manner of Billy Eckstine or Arthur Prysock. Every Saturday we rehearsed at Harold’s place, a modest but well kept-up home in one of Akron’s black neighborhoods. Neither Harold nor Bobby read music. There were no written arrangements. Harold knew the melodies and lyrics to a couple hundred standard tunes and the keys in which he liked to sing them, and Bobby could play the greatest bass lines that fit these tunes. With whatever harmonic facility I had developed at the piano by that time, I had to figure out what went in between. This was the greatest practical ear training and harmony course I can imagine. If I hadn’t already figured out a lot on my own, and drilled it sufficiently to have facility in all the keys, I would never have survived the first rehearsal. Fortunately, however, Harold, Bobby and I enjoyed six or seven years together, until Daralene and I moved to Cleveland in the spring of 1971. We played regularly at venues from swank supper clubs to funky after-hours rooms, and we developed a relationship that was as close as I have ever had with any white musicians. After the violent period of upheaval that culminated in America’s exit from Vietnam and the resignation of president Richard Nixon, however, social interaction between whites and blacks became much less common. In spite of the cruel claim that America’s racial problems had been solved and that everyone was now on an equal playing field, America had actually been shocked into a psychotic state of denial from which it may never awaken, short of some cataclysmic event on a scale almost to terrifying to contemplate. I think it’s extremely unfortunate that our jazz program at Eastman, for whatever reasons, is nearly all white. While it’s understandable that black students probably feel more comfortable in jazz programs with at least some black teachers, it’s sad that the influence of hip hop and rap has been a major cause in a lack of appreciation in the black community for the unique legacy of jazz, just as the influence of Elvis Presley, The Beatles and white rock ‘n’ roll has diluted white American culture. This is not to criticize variety, but simply to protest a culture in which the simplified, mechanized and mass-produced predominates over the personal, organic and authentic by a thousand to one. When I first joined the Eastman faculty in 1973, there was a lot of prejudice in both directions between the so-called “street players” of Rochester and the students in the “hallowed halls”. As in any prejudicial situation, there was ignorance on both sides. Although the self-educated players generally played with more feeling and a more convincing swing attitude, there were many who were no better than their mediocre academic counterparts. And even though most of the Eastman jazz players at that time were not as convincing as the best street players, a handful of the best of them could swing and project the authentic character of the music as well as any young player in town. For at least my first ten years in Rochester, I know that most of the self-taught players and some of the public were not convinced that I could really play, but I gradually won over more and more of them over the years. It’s been really gratifying to feel the support of people throughout the community since Daralene and I returned from Cologne in 2002. Shortly after joining the Eastman faculty, I got a call from a local sixteen-year-old pianist named Barry Keiner. He was interested in a few lessons, especially in regard to the things that the modern pianists such as Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett were doing. You can imagine my surprise when, at his first lesson, he ripped through an unbelievable Art Tatum solo like there was nothing to it! From that moment we became fast friends, with Barry inspiring we to get deeper into the piano tradition from James P. Johnson to Bud Powell, and my showing him whatever I could about jazz piano from Bill Evans to Richie Beirach. Because Barry was so young, I think people automatically tended to group him with the street players, but he really was more musically educated than most conservatory graduates. He was an excellent sight-reader and had no trouble in clearly and accurately notating some of the solos he had learned from classic jazz piano recordings. He had a thorough knowledge of the classical piano literature and the great concert pianists. His tragic death from a drug overdose before leaving his twenties shocked and saddened the jazz world, especially his many friends and fans here in Rochester. I was certainly both a friend and a fan, and I still miss having Barry on the scene more than I can say.
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Many of those who were suspicious of my playing in 1973 would have been surprised to know that I was as self-taught in my jazz playing as any of them. I never took a jazz course in any music school. It just so happened that, because I was surrounded by peers who were hungry to learn more about the improvisation process, I tried to remember and analyze how and from where I had learned certain things in order to help save them some time. I wish that today’s students could have the kinds of experiences I had with Harold Wright and Bobby Reeves, and that they would realize the importance of the concentrated listening and painstaking imitation that self-taught musicians value as the main tools for assimilating THE MUSIC. Just as with learning a language, knowing all the grammar is of no use if you can’t follow a conversation and make yourself understood with a group of native speakers. It’s a shame that all these years after the heyday of the civil rights movement in which there was a lot of teamwork between whites and blacks, the different ethnic groups in our country seem more isolated from each other than they were forty years ago. There also seems to be more of a tendency from all sides to look for scapegoats instead of trying to find solutions in ways that would bring us together. Because jazz was developed primarily by African Americans, there is a strong spiritual element in it. Like the blues, it inspires perseverance in the face of even the most oppressive adversity. I wish there were more situations today that encouraged more social interaction between whites and blacks. We’re really in dire need of some real social and political leadership in this country, which might bring both the “street” and “academic” worlds to appreciate the advantages of each without become victims of the disadvantages of either. In music, the advantage of the street culture is that it generally takes much more initiative, rather than waiting around for someone to show you everything. The advantage of the academic culture is that, once it has internalized something, it tends more to systematically analyze the potential application of it in relation to many different cases and situations. As Ellington might have said, though, both together would have to be unbeatable. I think that most institutional jazz programs could still benefit much from incorporating more from the self-taught orientation of the first generations of jazz musicians. The most important things include memorizing everything, since nothing in a book can do you any good on the bandstand, and developing the speed and accuracy of the ear, since the ear is really the only thing that can help you while the music is in progress. As long as there’s enough emphasis of these two things, I’m sure that all the academic understanding and discipline can only make you a better overall musician.

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