[Dixielandjazz] Greenspan

[Bill Biffle]

Found this at Jewishpeople.net.

Outside of school, Greenspan was growing increasingly serious about music. He was beginning to entertain dreams of playing professionally. To supplement the instruction he received at George Washington High, he began taking lessons from Bill Sheiner, one of the leading music teachers in New York City. 

    Sheiner was a multi-instrumentalist, fluent in the clarinet, saxophone, flute, and oboe. Lessons were held in a studio behind the Bronx Musical Mart at 174th Street and Southern Boulevard. Besides providing music instruction, Sheiner also did session work with a variety of popular orchestras. 

    Most students who worked with Sheiner were "doublers," meaning that they were trying to learn two similar instruments. Greenspan's were clarinet and saxophone. In teaching him, Sheiner employed a couple of books that are still standard texts: The Universal Complete Saxophone Method and Klosé Complete Clarinet Method. 

    "Bill did not have the ability to teach creativity. Very few do," says Ron Naroff, a music teacher who took lessons from Sheiner during the 1940s. "But guys who worked with him-provided they had stolid study habits-were guaranteed to become good players. They'd be able to play with anyone." 

    In fact, a variety of notable musicians used Sheiner's vigorous instruction to lay the foundations of their careers, including Lenny Hambro, Red Press, and Stan Getz. Through Sheiner's lessons, Greenspan and Getz actually got to know one another and grew friendly. Both had similar backgrounds-Getz's family was also lower middle class and Jewish. His family lived on Hoe Avenue in the Bronx, where Getz attended James Monroe High School; his father was a printer who often had trouble finding work during the Great Depression. 

    Greenspan and Getz took to hanging around together, trading licks on the saxophone. They also engaged in fevered discussions about their idol, Benny Goodman. Greenspan was one year older than Getz, but in terms of musical talent, Getz was light years ahead. He was first to take the plunge into the music business, dropping out of school at age fifteen to join Jack Teagarden's orchestra. Getz eventually became one of the most important figures in jazz history, revered for a trademark breathy saxophone style at once lushly romantic and restlessly experimental. His 1963 single "Girl from Ipanema" was a crossover sensation and one of the biggest pop hits of all time. 




Despite a love of music and dreams of going pro himself, Greenspan stayed in school. He graduated from George Washington High in 1943, a member of the Arista honor society and recipient of a special citation from the school's music department. His photo in the yearbook shows him looking suitably serious, hair combed back in a mild pompadour, a popular look of the time. 

    Beneath his picture is a quote that reads: "Smart as a whip and talented, too. He'll play the sax and clarinet for you."