This year, as a 60-turning-61 white man, I am going to highlight African Americans that have had some kind of influence in my life. Some are famous, some are friends, and others are just people.
February 5th
Mr. Smith
My family moved from Lubbock to Houston the summer before my 5th grade year. I did not blend in well with my new school. I always thought I was the smartest person in the class in elementary school, and I was obnoxious, and I was just about the worst athlete you could imagine, largely because I was a sick kid most of the time. My neighborhood was close to Rice University, and many of the kids in the class had parents who worked there, so they bristled at my arrogance.
I had the only fight I ever had that year. A few kids (at least 4 boys and 1 girl) perpetrated a bullying campaign against me, writing fake love letters that pretended to be from another girl in the class. After a few weeks of this, they turned into obscenity filled screeds left in my mailbox. My mother went to the principal, and he and my teacher cracked down. The five I mentioned above were suspended at least one day, and two of the boys were paddled.
My parents decided that I needed to go somewhere else for 6th grade, as they (and I) felt that the environment there was too toxic. However, we did not have the money to send me to Kinkaid or St. John’s, Houston’s best private schools. That year, however, Houston Independent School District announced a few new magnet schools. HISD would put interesting programs in historically minority-dominant neighborhoods to stave off federally-forced bussing as part of desegregation.
I ended up at McGregor Music and Science Academy. I had already explored some amount of music on my own, playing around with my dad’s guitar and the piano in the house. At McGregor, I started paying saxophone in the band and taking piano lessons. I also loved the science lab, and won the school’s Science Fair in the spring. About 60% of my classmates were local neighborhood kids, so they benefited from the new programs as well.
Mr. Smith was the band director, and he got me started on saxophone the first couple of weeks. I took off from there, teaching myself (until high school, actually). Started on alto. Mr. Smith quickly had me reading alto clarinet parts so that they would be covered; there were plenty of saxophone players! A few weeks in, the school got some tenor saxes, and I quickly switched.
Mr. Smith approached me on day in November, and asked me to help him with some music “since you read so well”. So I started going to the band hall at lunch. He was doing his own arrangement of the Theme from SWAT, a show on TV at the time. He had written out a sketch with about six parts, and wanted to assign those parts to certain instruments, and needed help to finish early enough for the Winter Concert. He taught me what transposing instruments were about, how to identify range problems, and some rudimentary music preparation skills, like planning page turns. He critiqued my notation; it was not great, but I was forced to read my own for that concert, and I made it through.
Considering that nobody in the band had been playing longer than three months, the piece, which closed the concert was a rousing success.
I am so grateful that Mr. Smith took me under his wing. I am fascinated by arranging, orchestration, and music preparation to this day.
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