Coming Up at the Half

It is a little known fact about your Own Personal Genius that I once aspired to a far different career path. When I entered the hallowed halls of Mars Hill College (hallowed by R.L. Purvey and Sons Professional Hallowers of New Bern, NC) as a music education major in the fall of 1985, it was my eventual desire to mold young minds as a high school band director. Shortly thereafter, I realized that A) molding young minds to my particular worldview might run me afoul of the NEA and/or state and local law enforcement officials, B) no one who has ever successfully conquered France, from Julius Caesar to Jerry Lewis, was a high school band director first, and C) high school band directors weren't exactly a big draw with the ladies.

So then.

I was reminded of my one-time calling recently when the Once and Future Mrs. Genius and I attended a high school football game between the local Radford Bobcats and a team that shall remain nameless (Anonymous High, from Nondescript County). Mrs. Genius attended a private Catholic girls' school in suburban New Jersey, so she was not prepared for the ritual and spectacle that is high school football in the South. Except for those moments when we pull out our old, respective uniforms and play "The Linebacker and The Librarian (A Drama in Two Acts, Followed By Dinner) , she has largely been unaware of the allure of the game in the rural provinces.

Few things bring the community together in the South like football. Virtually the whole town comes out to sell tickets, man the concession stand, cheer on the team, or just mill around aimlessly and try to look cool. And this is before you add in the players, the cheerleaders, the mobbed-up bookies, the band, and the overzealous moms that come with each group.

Be patient, kids, I'm going somewhere with all this.

Think carefully of the scenario I've just described and ponder which group has the most potential to affect the future of jazz. If you're thinking cheerleaders then you're right on the money, Paco. Can you think of any better way to prosper jazz than having nubile young women in short skirts leaping around and chanting catchy little jazz-related cheers? "Skippy peanut butter, Peter Pan, Jif! Go Kurt Rosenwinkel, riff riff riff! The beauty is in the simplicity.

Of course, the second group in that setting with the most potential to advance jazz is, of course, the football team. I credit the several concussions I sustained during my years of playing football with helping me to appreciate Cecil Taylor. Anyone who has ever had to suffer through two-a-day practices in the sweltering August heat certainly has the physical stamina to make it through The Major Works of John Coltrane. And just think of what a weakside linebacker blitz could do to alleviate the Kenny G problem.

Jazz and football, in fact, share several interesting similarities. Both can be highly technical and difficult to follow for the uninitiated, yet both can be enjoyed on a purely visceral level. Both become more interesting with knowledge. And both benefit from the addition of grilled bratwurst and copious amounts of alcohol. But then, what doesn't?

Jazz could take a few lessons from football, particularly in its small-town incarnation. Football employs a system of proliferation that is part inheritance, part indoctrination and part peer pressure. From Pop Warner league football to that Norman Rockwell-esque vision of father and son tossing the pigskin around in the front yard on a clear autumn afternoon to the beginnings of group identification that comes with choosing the right pro or college team to idolize. Juxtapose that to jazz and you've got Pops Armstrong jazz clubs, father and son trading riffs in that same front yard and youngsters deciding between being a Joshua Redman fan or a Nicholas Payton supporter.

It could happen.

Which brings us to the marching band. I joined the band in seventh grade, after deciding that my path to worldwide superstardom would be smoothest as a trumpet player. I was instead given a baritone horn (later taking up trombone as well), which meant that I would have to wait for the invention of the Internet to achieve my well-deserved level of international acclaim. But it was my first band director and music teacher, Carolyn Altizer, who both saddled me with the baritone horn and sowed a few of the seeds that would later contribute to me becoming the Dean of American Jazz Humorists®. At a time when most music programs in small Southern schools still consisted of jug bands and shape-note choirs, Mrs. Altizer made certain that we were versed in the fundamentals of music theory like how to tell that thing that looks like a backwards capital cursive S from that other thing that looks like a big comma.

It was also in band that my friends Dwayne Milholin, Daymond Lewis, and brothers Jay and Mike Jeffries helped me hone my sense of humor. Subsequent band director Bill Hamman facilitated the beginnings of my journey into Our Music as leader of the award-winning Alleghany High School jazz band. And every girlfriend I had until I was in college, and virtually every woman I've ever dated, was in the band. (For the record, the Once and Future Mrs. Genius was not in the band, but the aforementioned Catholic schoolgirl uniform trumps that inconvenient fact.) If only I'd learned to drink in band, instead of from my older sister, I could truly say that band made me what I am today.

So perhaps the marching band may be of more use to the furtherance of jazz than it seemed when I first veered off onto that cheerleader tangent. Not only can the marching band indoctrinate young people into jazz, it can help spread the music to the masses. Just as I first learned to love jazz while playing "Sing, Sing, Sing, I can't count how many people may have been drawn to jazz with the realization that it could still swing even when being butchered by 75 teenagers in white buck shoes.

But how best to use the marching band for our ends? Beyond having them play Hal Leonard Soundpower arrangements of Thelonious Monk tunes, or simply ensuring the basic jazz literacy of as many of our young as we can and hoping for the best, why not return to the spectacle of the halftime show and use it as a multimedia primer for the unsuspecting masses?

Imagine the Ken Burns's Jazz halftime show. Bookended by giant papier-mâché busts of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, the band marches out onto the field playing "West End Blues and immediately arrange themselves into a large circle to represent Wynton Marsalis' head. As the band now plays "Take the A Train and forms the shape of Stanley Crouch's glasses, the flag squad does an interpretive dance symbolizing the transition of jazz from a primitive folk creation to the representative form of American music. Finally, as the band plays Miles Davis' "So What while turning their backs to the crowd and being cool, the drum major brings the show to an unsatisfying conclusion with about 30% of the halftime remaining.

Or, we could indulge ourselves with the All About Jazz halftime show. Adding yet another dimension to the multifaceted resource AAJ has become, we could use this forum both to further jazz and increase AAJ's brand cachet. The drum major, wearing Senator Ricci's trademarked cool-blue glassesâ„¢, leads their charges onto the field playing Coltrane's "Blue Train. Curtis Fuller's solo is played by a trombonist representing Your Own Personal Genius (with the aid of one of those inflatable sumo suits, an Elvis wig and an oversized can of Budweiser). The next number is Brubeck's "Take Five, during which an alto saxophonist playing Dr. Judith Schlesinger tries to work the kinks out of the drum section. Then, as the flag squad controls the action by clicking giant cardboard mice, the band plays Art Blakey's "Moanin.' The show concludes with everyone falling down like dominos to signify the server crashing.

These are just a couple of ideas, the possibilities are endless. Why not do away with the dorky uniforms and dress like a New Orleans funeral band? Not only is it a great way to celebrate jazz's rich heritage, but also pay homage to the Big Easy in its time of need. And it's a great way either to psyche out the other team before the game or to salve your own team afterwards as need dictates. "But wait! you say, clutching the sides of your computer monitor desperately as I attempt to wind this piece to a close. "Where will the money for these admittedly brilliant ideas come from? You know that school music programs are being downsized all over the country. How will they ever afford giant papier-mâché busts of Pops and Duke, much less Admiral Ricci's cool-blue glassesâ„¢?

Relax, kids. I've thought this whole thing through, being a Genius and inclined to that sort of thing. Don't you realize that high school marching bands are one of the most efficient fund-raising organizations in the country? Invite any band in the nation to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and within hours of the bid, hordes of motivated partisans would be combing the school district selling candy bars or some such fund-raising staple. We once sold light bulbs. I'm not kidding.

Why not use that selling power to its best advantage, then? Instead of nickel-and-diming with overpriced citrus fruit or tins of stale popcorn, why not go for the big money by selling things that produce higher yields like cattle futures or supplemental disability insurance? Or using high school band labor to produce cheap clothing and athletic shoes. I'd feel much better knowing that a clarinetist in Mankato, Minnesota, earned enough money to stage the AAJ halftime show by stitching together the shirts I wear, rather than some 8 year-old in Vietnam who'd just use the money for food or something else that has nothing to do with jazz.

Every problem contains its own solution.

So there you have it, kids, another foolproof Genius plan to advance jazz and make the world a cooler place in which to live. Till next month, exit to your right and enjoy the rest of AAJ.

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