[Dixielandjazz] Teachers

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

You can teach people how to do something -- as long as they can do it, or want to or are trying to do it.

There is the famous and lengthy story of the frustrated singing teacher who finally gets an idea why the young soprano can't get into Schubert and asks her, "are you wirgin?"
Of course she is, she protests, and when her insistence has subsided sufficiently he rhapsodises about what is required, etc. etc. before she is ready, the passion etc. etc. (this is not a joke for the teller who tries to get everything into eight bars) before she can possibly be ready. 
The following morning she is knocking on his door, looking wrecked and having attracted some strange looks for her awkward gait en route, and sighing "I'm ready now" in a style of vocalisation in which she'd apparently been engaged all night. 

No, you're not, he says, you're still as XXXXXXX as you were before you'd ever been XXXXXXXX

The main story about Arnett Cobb was his getting a response beside which the same audiences' responses to the solos of Jimmy Heath and Joe Henderson were comparatively limp.   

As for the Trane-clones, they do something very difficult. 
They make the sound of two hands knitting a complex pattern of sweater out of hot air.  
There seems to be wool while the labour is proceeding, but at the end there's nothing. 

Milt Hinton used to say that if a young player had time, meaning sense of timing, teaching was a matter of showing him or her where to put their fingers. By way of contrast, those who should properly be referred to as Paid instructors show young folks where to put their fingers to hide the absence of a sense of timing et cetera et cetera. The same applies as badly where "creative writing" has become a racket.