Summer 2013 - Oregon State Library: State Employee Information ...

glen Moore was already a veteran musician
by the time he arrived in Eugene in 1959, a year
after King and Towner started at the UO. As a
teenager growing up south of Portland, he’d performed
as a member of the Young Oregonians, a
traveling troupe of 50 young talents, sponsored
by the Portland newspapers, who barnstormed
the state by bus. He also played background music
on solo piano for banquets and other events.
After the streetcar stopped running from his
parents’ home in Milwaukie and he could no
longer easily get into downtown Portland for lessons,
Moore realized he needed exposure to a bigger world of
music. The UO beckoned.
Along with occasional construction work using skills
learned from his carpenter father, Moore worked his way
through the UO by playing pickup gigs with Standifer’s band
and other combos. Bass players were always in demand, and
Moore quickly learned to find work by attending musicians’
union–sponsored jam sessions at the EMU. He made rent
money but also acquired vital on-the-job training; this was
an era before easily available fake books (simplified sheet
music containing a song’s melody line and basic chords), so
he often learned chord changes on the fly.
Once while playing at a dance, Moore was startled upon
suddenly encountering an unexpected key change on the
bridge of a pop tune. He froze, finding his way back into the
tune a few measures later. Afterwards, the grizzled bandleader
whirled and growled, “Why didn’t you play that
note?” “I didn’t know it,” Moore stammered. “Then play
anything, even if it’s wrong, but never leave a note out and
make the dancers stop.” “That was a pretty rich and wonderful—sometimes
terrifying—setting to try new stuff,” Moore
remembers.
Moore studied literature and history, and fondly recalls
history courses taught by Stan Pierson ’50. But he quickly
found out where the pianos were at the music school, and
signed up for lessons with a grad student who’d been a serious
pianist back east. Moore was deeply influenced by some
Ralph Towner. Photo © Paolo
Soriani-ECM Records.
Glen Moore performing at the
2012 Portland Jazz Festival in
February. Photo by John Rudoff.
“PLAY ANYTHING, EVEN IF IT’S
WRONG, BUT NEVER LEAVE A NOTE
OUT AND MAKE THE DANCERS STOP.”
of the great jazz pianists of the time—Dave Brubeck, Ahmad
Jamal, Oscar Peterson, Billy Taylor, Erroll Garner—and
studying their music helped him understand chord structures.
The school lacked a faculty bassist, so he studied with
cello professor Robert Hladky (“he hated the bass”) but realized
that the cello was too small to work in an acoustic jazz
combo.
Another UO mentor, Chuck Ruff, had been a jazz pianist
in New York before being injured in World War II, and
Towner’s roommate, Jack Murphy, was a serious jazz bassist
who threw occasional gigs Moore’s way when Murphy was
already obligated (as he happened to be on the day of that
providential combo contest when the three stars-to-be first
aligned). They introduced both Towner and Moore to the
jazz of the day. Moore also took private lessons and played
gigs (including modern bop) during the summers when he
went back to Portland.
But amid all the various and ever-changing configurations
of musicians in and around the university at that time, there
was, Moore recalls, something special when he, Towner,
and King played together. “Nancy was like a dream,” he says.
“It was like playing with a Marilyn Monroe who was an
Ella Fitzgerald sound-alike. It made my knees weak to be in
the same room with this beautiful woman.” (Apparently he
wasn’t the only one. King remembers once causing a driver,
distracted by her shapely legs, polka dot chiffon dress, and
teenage beauty, to drive up a curb and through the window
of Eugene’s Cadillac dealership.)
THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON 47