ReflectionsON 75 YEARS OF NORTH TEXAS JAZZBY JOHN MURPHY1961-202218 University of North Texas College of Music
Isabel Wilkerson opens her book on caste in the UnitedStates with the metaphor of a house:America is an old house. We can never declarethe work over. Wind, flood, drought, and humanupheavals batter a structure that is already fightingwhatever flaws were left unattended in the originalfoundation. When you live in an old house, you maynot want to go into the basement after a storm tosee what the rains have wrought. Choose not tolook, however, at your own peril. The owner of anold house knows that whatever you are ignoringwill never go away. Whatever is lurking will festerwhether you choose to look or not. Ignorance isno protection from the consequences of inaction.Whatever you are wishing away will gnaw at youuntil you gather the courage to face what you wouldrather not see. Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Originsof Our Discontents (New York: Random House,2020), page 15.As the program looks back on its first 75 years andimagines its future, we are surveying our 75-year-old house.In addition to surveying our program’s achievements, it’simportant to look in the basement: to check its foundation,to address its failings, how it has been perceived over time,what its effects on jazz education and the music professionhave been, and how its enduring values can be adapted tothe continuously changing music profession.SEGREGATION,RACE AND INCLUSIONNot surprisingly for a program that was started in a stillsegregateduniversity, race in particular and diversity andinclusion in general have been continual concerns, in variousways. Gene Hall’s 1944 master’s thesis on the dance bandcurriculum, regarded as a founding document of the program,includes an overview of jazz history that credits NativeAmericans, not Black Americans, as the originators of swingrhythm. He ignored the consensus of jazz writers of the timeand adopted the view of a fringe commentator. In his 1991oral history interview, Hall was asked by historian MichaelCogswell, “Did you have any black students in the program?”Hall replies, “No, we didn’t have any black students becausethis was not an integrated school until--what--1954 or 1955.”Interviewer Ron Marcello states, “The first graduate student wasaccepted in 1954, and actually it began accepting its first blackundergraduate students in the spring semester of 1956.” GeneHall replies:Well, that year we had some good blacks come in.There was a guy who is still active around Dallas. Heplayed saxophone. He plays piano now. I can’t thinkof his name. We had a good tenor man and a goodbaritone man come up from Dallas. Both of themwere good tenor men—both saxophone. We were alldelighted to have them because they improved theband. But about a couple of weeks later, I got a notefrom [then university president] Matthews to the effectthat, if we played on our campus, it was all right; but ifJazz 75th Anniversary Reunionwe went off the campus, we couldn’t use them in theband. So I had to tell the guys, and they left the school.I don’t blame them, but I had to be honest with themabout it. I said, “Here is the way it is. What can I say?”In this and other ways, the interview is a reminder that Hallwas a product of his time and place. He was born in 1913 inWhitewright, TX, a small town near Sherman, the population ofwhich has never exceeded 2,000, and spent much of his earlymusical career in a music business that was as segregated asthe rest of society in those years. His choice not to make anissue of including black musicians in off-campus performancesmay reflect a reluctance to take actions that would jeopardizethe continuation of the recently established program, whichhad faced opposition from faculty and community.Guitarist and alumnus Don Gililland provides theperspective of a white player on the racial divide in the bandsin the Dallas-Ft. Worth area in the early 1960s:I had been playing professionally for severalyears prior to NT, first with some outstanding highschool colleagues and later with all-black bands(the legendary Buster Smith for one), where I gainedvalued experience. This was short-lived, however, asthe black ensembles became popular in some of themainstream Dallas venues. Sadly, while I had beenaccepted and welcomed at private parties and allblackfunctions, the still segregated downtown supperclub scene was not open to integrated bands and Iwas let go.At North Texas, the atmosphere was totallydifferent. In the bands, and campus-wide, thediversity was apparent and harmonious, a starkcontrast to what I was experiencing just a few milesaway.Regarding the job with Buster Smith, mentor of CharlieParker, Gililland recalls:Actually I inherited the job from a fellow classmateand mentor, Steve Rodriguez. We were making awhopping $8 a night playing in a strip club I was tooyoung to even be in. I had no idea at the time I wasin the presence of greatness.The separation of the music scene into white andblack spheres—not to mention separate locals of theAmerican Federation of Musicians—was acceptedas normal. White and black musicians in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area in those years worked in separatespheres. There were exceptions in the case ofprivate parties or smaller clubs. But the larger venuesexpected bands to be segregated, and country clubsrequired all of the musicians to be white.Trumpeter Lester Bowie of the Art Ensemble of Chicagoalso studied at North Texas in the early 1960s. Hisexperiences here, as relayed by George Lewis, provide aglimpse of what studying in the program in the early yearswas like for black students:Bowie’s subsequent experience at North Texas StateUniversity, where he was part of the earliest crop ofjazz students in the first degree-granting program in19
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