[Dixielandjazz] Jazz in the Classroom/memorzing solos, etc.

[David Richoux]

Whenever this sort of thread comes around DJML I have to recall how I  
got started playing "trad jazz." Bill Armstrong, a banjo player with  
several Bay Area bands (including Turk Murphy's band at one point)  
decided to form a new jazz group with students from Palo Alto High  
School - this was in the early  mid 1970s. I don't exactly know how  
he convinced the school officials that this would be a good thing,  
but it did actually happen.

The band was called the Churchill Street Jazz Band (the location of  
the school) and most of the band were high school students. The  
important additions were adult musicians from other pro and semi-pro  
bands. The students learned much more than the Lu Watters and Turk  
Murphy charts they used - they soon played in clubs, festivals, even  
a few saloons and learned how charted songs,  "head" arrangements and  
improvised solos worked for a variety of jazz styles. The band played  
at many of the Sacramento and other California festivals way before  
there was a "Youth Band" category.

Some of the original band members went on to join the "Royal Society  
Jazz Orchestra" that was then forming in San Jose, others went off to  
college or other things.

I joined the group in 1978 after the first tuba player went to join  
the RSJO. I was 27, not exactly a "youth" but I had not had much  
experience with playing OKOM at that point. Most of what I knew then  
was from high school "stage band" jazz, and playing tuba with pick-up  
groups that thought "When The Saints" was a complicated song. I  
learned a lot from Bill Armstrong!

Jazz is a very tricky thing to teach, but deep immersion is one very  
good method...

Dave Richoux