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<TITLE>Re: [Dixielandjazz] a funny... NOT a political comment...</TITLE>
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on 2/8/03 12:01 AM, GWW174@aol.com at GWW174@aol.com wrote:<BR>
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<BLOCKQUOTE><TT>When I went to college we shared all kinds of ideas... explored each other's <BR>
thinkiing... allowed others to disagree with us... always respected their <BR>
right to speak even when it disagreed with our thoughts.... Not so today for <BR>
</TT></BLOCKQUOTE><TT>sure.<BR>
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Boy, howdy, Gordon: you must be damn near as old as I am! I entered Baylor University in the fall of 1946 with all the WWII vets. Baylor is a Southern Baptist institution, and you can imagine what those WWII vets made of the preachers-to-be. There was in that school every conceivable opinion on every subject, all ages from wet nosed 17 year olds like me to old cigar-chewing majors who had been everywhere and done everything, What a bunch! <BR>
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Musicians were also all over the place: jazz of any kind was verboten on campus: it was the Devil's music, for sure! So we immediately formed a 17 piece dance band using stocks, and also a 6 piece Dixie band with a few specials and mostly head arrangements. Talent varied: from the likes of me, just out of high school (I'd been playing professionally since I was 14 in clubs that never checked your age-- hell, this was pre-war Texas, and you could do any damn thing you wanted if you were white and most other things if you were black--up to Preston Miles on trombone, formerly with Jack Teagarden's big band and later with the New York Philharmanic. <BR>
We had Jimmy ("Ounce") Hearne on bass, formerly with Jack's big band, a 375 pound six foot six whose huge black German bass looked like a cello in his hands. They told the story on him: <BR>
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In the thirties there were no amplifiers for basses and damn few for guitars, the electric guitar not having been invented and the world still sane. ( Sort of. We'd had Hitler and got rid of him; but electric guitars were going to prove impossible--to listen to OR to get rid of!). Ounce liked to play with his eyes shut, and one night when the brass were all screaming triple f and the saxes over-blowing in consequence, the drummer tapped Ounce on the shoulder with a stick: "Hey, Ounce! Jack wants ya!" Ounce opened his eyes, looked at Jack and could barely hear him yelling over the din: "GODDAMMIT, OUNCE! Yer PLAYIN' TOO LOUD!"<BR>
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Now, I believe this story because I've played in front of Jimmy Hearne many times. I also believe the one about his having hit a guy once in a pool hall and knocked him clean over a table without moving a ball. Lengthwise. <BR>
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We had "diversity of opinion" without worrying about it for one minute: that's how life is. Normal. Argumentative. We even had one Protest, though we didn't call it that: the Vets all hated compulsory Chapel attendance, and one morning they all brought alarm clocks in with them, set to go off all together. And it did pause the service, but only for a moment. They hadn't counted on the likes of Pat Neff--president of the University, ex-governor of Texas back in the "old days" when you needed a Bible in one hand and a forty-four in the other. "The Governor," as we all still called him, was at that time over seventy years old, dressed in striped morning trousers and frock coat, wing collar and Col. Sanders tie, silver hair down to just above his shoulders. He had by those years shrunken down to just over six feet, but he hadn't lost one decibel of a voice nurtured on natural outdoor oratory under a Texas sun. He walked out onto that stage, in front of the pulpit, and drowned out all the alarm clocks--no amp at all. <BR>
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"You all know where my office is. Y'all can all go over there, with or without your clocks, and I will kick you out of this University--one at a time--or all together, whichever you prefer. But out you will go!" They looked at the old man and decided well, maybe they ought to take him seriously. They looked again and knew damn well they better take him seriously. They shut up. Chapel proceeded. End of that.<BR>
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One of my amusements, years later in the sixties, was imagining that, instead of Clark Kerr as president at Berkeley, the Free Speech Movement had run up against Governor Pat Neff. They wouldn't have stood a chance. They called their movement FUCK, and claimed it meant "Freedom Under Clark Kerr." I like imagining KAUPN: "Kick Ass Under Pat Neff." The Old Governor would have had a great time!<BR>
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Later on the University did some suppression of its own: when our 17 piece dance band in 1947 opened the Waco Hall stage curtain to Ellington's chart on "Things Ain't What They Used To Be," that curtain almost immediately got closed back again, and we were chased off the stage, suggesting that, no, Things Were Just the Same. NO JAZZ AT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY! (It might lead to--gasp--dancing!) <BR>
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But opinions never got suppressed. You got yelled at, but you could yell back without being silenced. I published in the Baylor newspaper a stinging satire on the lack of religious freedom that got printed and much discussed (thus demonstrating that I was basically full of it: we had plenty of freedom.) Professorial politics varied widely--more conservative then but with plenty of radicals who read Pogo and drank beer and smoked cigarettes--though NOT ON CAMPUS! It was a time of lovely hypocrisy! Some great bands, though, as I'll bet lots a y'all recall....<BR>
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time to shut up,<BR>
Charlie<BR>
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