| The place was
packed with students, most standing since there were few seats. And some were
making every effort to dance “The North Texas Push” to the music.
I instantly
knew I had found my home.
Soon and at my insistence, Leon Breeden and
I became friends, even though I never once signed up for one of his classes or
played a rift on the piano with any of his big bands. And that friendship continues
nearly fifty years later.
Mr. Breeden will be 88 this October and I’ll
be 69 in June.
Mr.
Breeden took his One O’clock Lab Band to London, Paris, Portugal, Russia, Mexico
Germany, Spain and Switzerland. The band played in most major cities throughout
the U.S. and the Spoleto Music Festival.
The band performed at the White
House for the parties of Presidents Johnson, Carter and Reagan. They played for
the U.S. visit of the king and queen of Thailand.
It has accompanied jazz
greats like Ella Fitzgerald and has produced new members for Stan Kenton’s
and Woody Herman’s bands.
Mr. Breeden’s students, in addition to
Marvin Stamm, included Lou Marini, Lyle Mayes, Galen Jeter, Sparky Koerner,
Marc Johnson, Byron Parks, Paul Guerrero, Lanny Steel, Dee Barton, Jim Riggs and
Herb Ellis. And there are more than 600 recordings of the jazz band’s performances
in the North Texas School of Music archives.
What is interesting is that
Mr. Breeden and his Lab Bands did more to bring academic notoriety to what began
as a small and insignificant teachers’ college, than, perhaps, any board of regents
or college administration did before or during the more than twenty years he taught
jazz music.
In
1981 the Texas House and Senate unanimously voted to make May 3rd “Leon Breeden
Day in Texas.” Six years later, after secretly planning to surprise Mr. Breeden
with a Lab Band reunion, more than 400 of his former students came from world-wide
locations to honor him.
Actually, 400 plus one…it was one who had never
played in one of his bands. Me, a piano player from Galveston
who had profoundly found his college home years before when he heard Mr. Breeden’s
band for the first time.
For more than twenty years, I’ve been trying
to convince the University of North Texas’ Board of Regents to name one of the
academic buildings after Mr. Breeden. Maybe this is the year they’ll listen to
reason.
Meanwhile, Mr. Breeden frequently solos with his clarinet at the
front of Jim Riggs’ “Official Texas Jazz Orchestra.”
Bill
Cherry's Galveston Memories March 7, 2009 column
Copyright William
S. Cherry. All rights reserved |
