Maynard Ferguson playing “Somewhere” in 1969.
My dad’s group–1988
Here’s my dad’s group playing “Indiana” in September of 1988 in Ft. Worth. Neil Slater-piano, Dr. Gene Hall-clarinet, Jack Rumbley-drums, Jack Petersen-guitar, Perry Sandifur-trombone, unknown bass player.
They were playing for a gathering of UNT people in Ft.Worth, and my dad asked me to video the band. This was one tune they played that day. They played two hour long sets without any music, and this group had never played together before this day. My dad and Gene Hall were 75 at this time. Gene Hall died in 1993, and my dad died in 2008. They were soul mates, having been best friends throughout their lives. My mom was always in the audience to hear him play.
My dad’s music
My dad would put together a band every so often to play for groups. They played for free, although my dad would pay the musicians, because it was usually for a good cause. Here he is introducing the members of this particular band that played in September of 1988. The thing that made this group interesting was that it included the first director and founder of the Jazz Studies Program at North Texas, and the third director of the program. I think they were playing for a North Texas group that day. He brought me along to video because he knew it would be an all star band. The drummer was the only full time musician of the group, however.
This was recorded on a vhs video tape recorded which was not too great in low light. However, it was convienent and cheaper than hiring a professional to record it. Years later I transferred it to dvd, then onto my computer where I could edit it and put it onto YouTube. I’m glad it has survived.
The Windows
We had to figure out something to cover the seven foot high windows in the jazz museum, and curtains didn’t seem like the right approach. We decided on pictures, or paintings of some of the major players in the jazz trumpet world up to 1989. Finding a local artist we could afford and who was good was our dilemma, but where would we find him, or her?
I just happened to see a great portrait of Buddy Tate one day in Sherman in a frame shop while having some posters framed. Buddy Tate had been a great saxophone player from Sherman who had played in the Count Basie Orchestra. I asked the owner of the frame shop who did the painting because I knew I had found our artist to do our jazz paintings for us. The artist was a local woman who was well known and taught art lessons from her home named Pat Pierce. She was in her 70s, short, but I didn’t know if she wanted to take on a project such as ours. We would be needing 13 large paintings, just for starters. Plus, we needed them fairly fast, not in two years.
When Pat arrived at the museum to meet with us the first time, she immediately noticed a portrait of my great grandfather hanging in the lobby of the museum. To our surprise she recognized the artist’s work who had done the portrait of my great-grandfather. She told us she had been a young art student of the woman who had done the portrait! I thought that was impossible since my great grandfather died in 1919 and the portrait must have been done before that sometime. However, Pat had been a young woman when she took the lessons, while the artist who had painted my grandfather’s portrait was an older woman by the time she taught Pat.
It was this lineage of artists that made us sure we had found the right artist. If my great grandfather liked this woman’s style and she had taught Pat, then she was good enough for me. Pat and her husband, Jack, have felt like family to us since the day we met. I don’t know how we were lucky enough to find her, but it all fell into place like magic. She was the artist I had wanted to find, and her price was what I could afford while we were waiting to hear back from the IRS about my dad’s estate tax. The first 13 paintings she did for us was just the start, however. We still had two rooms downstairs which would require another 10, or 11 large paintings.