[Dixielandjazz] School Directors and Jazz Sense

[John Blegen]

It seems that things were beginning to change when I entered high school in 
1956.  For the first year I was there (Radnor High School in the Philadelphia 
burbs), the junior and senior high schools were in the same building, and there 
were two band directors.  One of them, who later became the junior high band 
director when the schools split, was a performing jazz musician (his name was 
Ben Napier, a trumpet player), and he wrote arrangements for the "swing band" 
when he couldn't find stocks.  He wrote some dixieland charts as well and formed 
a dixie band among the students, myself on clarinet.  To this day I play the 
clarinet part that he wrote for "Jazz Me Blues."  The senior high band director 
was not as hip, but he liked jazz and kept the swing band going.  He could play 
some rudimentary jazz piano, and he was delighted that some of us could 
improvise.  He encouraged us, but he had no idea how to help us improve.  But 
the encouragement was plenty.

When I got to college I found that jazz hadn't yet reached the academe, at least 
at the little New England school I was foolish enough to choose.  In my senior 
year ('64), my roommates and I would often have professors and their wives over 
to dinner, and I remember one chemistry prof asking me what I thought could be 
improved at the school.  I blurted out that a jazz curriculum would be a step 
forward.  The profs wife burst out laughing.  


 John Blegen, clarinet
Evanston, IL, USA
jcblegen.com