{"id":4892,"date":"2015-03-02T19:35:36","date_gmt":"2015-03-02T19:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=4892"},"modified":"2015-03-02T19:35:36","modified_gmt":"2015-03-02T19:35:36","slug":"funeral-for-clark-terry-articulates-a-jazz-heros-gifts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2015\/03\/02\/funeral-for-clark-terry-articulates-a-jazz-heros-gifts\/","title":{"rendered":"Funeral For Clark Terry Articulates a Jazz Hero\u2019s Gifts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
Outside Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, after the funeral service for Clark Terry\/ photo: Wolfram Knauer\/Jazzinstitut Darmstadt <\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nThe gatherings that follow a renowned jazz musician\u2019s death honor musical greatness we already knew about. They also reaffirm a sense of community we too easily forget.
\nThat community is bound by musical values first and foremost but also by other things, including a sense of shared purpose and common history. The musical greatness in celebration itself generally has to do with far more than talent and charisma, though trumpeter Clark Terry<\/strong>, who died at 94 on Feb. 21<\/a>, had those qualities in abundance.
\nWhat lends these events special power, more so than the solemn beauty of the music played, are the reflections of character, discipline, boldness and compassion, seriousness of mission and lighthearted humor, and the resonant lessons that run through generations and radiate well beyond music.
\nSuch was the case on Saturday, a week past Terry\u2019s death, at Harlem\u2019s Abyssinian Baptist Church. This funeral, like the man being laid to rest, was hard-hitting yet also serene, elegant but casually disarming, funny despite deep and even hard truths.
\nTrumpets sounded at both beginning and end. First came Roy Hargrove, accompanied by Terry\u2019s working quintet, who played Ferde Grof\u00e9\u2019s \u201cGrand Canyon Suite,\u201d which Terry had recorded more than once. Last, after the music and the testimonials, the prayers and the scripture readings, Wynton Marsalis and several members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra entered the church in the processional style of a New Orleans jazz funeral, playing \u201cJust a Closer Walk With Thee,\u201d as a dirge. They paused before the casket, which was draped in American flag (Terry was among the earliest Navy recruits once black musicians were given the rating of Musicians in 1942), where trombonist Chris Crenshaw sang the hymn, and then escorted the funeral party out to the street.
\nTerry, who possessed a wondrously warm tone on trumpet and a distinctly nonchalant authority, whose gift extended equally well to the darker and thicker sound of flugelhorn, and who played on nearly a thousand recordings that spanned most of jazz\u2019s styles and eras, was a source of inspiration and influence to nearly any jazz trumpeter to follow, many through direct mentorship.
\nMiles Davis, six years Terry\u2019s junior, soaked up lessons from him in St. Louis, where Terry was born and raised. A 12-year-old Quincy Jones sought out lessons from Terry in Seattle. Jones couldn\u2019t attend the funeral but through a lengthy tribute read by Adam Fell (vice president of Jones\u2019 production company) he recalled how Terry had made time in early morning hours, after long nights playing in clubs and before Jones went to school, to teach him proper embouchure. \u201cClark Terry was my first teacher, my original mentor,\u201d he had written, \u201cone of the men who made me who I am.\u201d He explained how those early lessons humbled him as a boy, and then feeling humbled in a different way decades later \u201cwhen Terry left Duke Ellington to join my band.\u201d \u201cSac,\u201d he said, using the nickname he and Terry called each other, \u201cwherever you are, I know your lips are greasy.\u201d
\nTerry had recognized a hunger for jazz education at universities earlier than most, and was as gifted and focused an educator as he was a player\u2014that influence extended well beyond his instrument. Even after his health had deteriorated, he was teaching students from his wheelchair or bedside. A processional during the funeral was played by Justin Kauflin, a blind piano prodigy more than 60 years Terry\u2019s junior, whose relationship with Terry was captured in the recent award-winning documentary \u201cKeep On Keepin\u2019 On<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0It is an inspiring story of musical mentorship, during which Terry, battling debilitation from diabetes, leads Kauflin to grasp jazz phrasing, to overcome devastating stage fright, and to get on, as Terry put it \u201ca plateau of positivity.\u201d
\nDavid Dempsey, who heads the jazz program at William Patterson University in New Jersey, where Terry\u2019s archives reside, acknowledged Terry as a \u201cfounding father of the modern jazz education movement.\u201d Then he skipped back 35 years, to when he was a 27-year-old saxophonist in Augusta, Maine, tasked with putting together a band for Terry, who had been invited to perform by the local arts council. After a full day\u2019s rehearsal of Terry\u2019s compositions, Dempsey said, \u201cClark didn\u2019t call a single one of those tunes onstage. He had joyously, surgically used that rehearsal to find our level and hang us four inches above that level for the next two hours. I\u2019ve been a different musician since then. That night I found out what jazz was.\u201d
\nWendy Oxenhorn, executive director of the Jazz Foundation of America, which had worked closely with Terry in the latter years of his life, talked about her deep experience with people in difficult times, and how she knew of none more courageous and considerate that Terry and his widow, Gwen, who sat in the front row throughout the proceedings. She spoke of some final moments for Terry, when in a fevered daze, he said, \u201cI\u2019m later for a gig, and the boat is leaving.\u201d She left us with that image of Terry, floating on to that next gig. (In lieu of flowers, the Terry family asked that donations be made to the JFA; these should be noted “In Honor of Clark Terry,” and can be made here<\/a>.)
\nAs Reverend Mickarl D. Thomas, Sr., of Ebenezer AME Church in Detroit, a close friend of the Terrys, reminded us that Terry, who grew up poor in a St. Louis of stark racial prejudice, nevertheless cultivated a sense of humor whose power rivaled his musical prowess. He let those assembled in on private jokes and moments of personal generosity when it mattered most, and what it means when, like Terry, \u201cyou are blessed with a great life but you never lose the common touch.”
\nWen Jimmy Heath stood right next to Terry\u2019s casket and performed Thelonious Monk\u2019s \u201c\u2019Round Midnight,\u201d on soprano saxophone, accompanied by members of Terry\u2019s band, his playing, gentle and sure, knowing and well swung, found a sweet spot between solemnity and joy.
\nBefore the final brass-band style procession, Reverend Calvin O. Butts, III, who officiated, cited Terry\u2019s distinctive version of scat-singing nonsense syllables, which never failed to entertain a crowd but also never masked his genius, and that earned him the name \u201cMumbles.\u201d Rev. Butts cited Scripture, about speaking in tongues as a mode of communing with god, and the need for those who can translate Divine information.
\n\u201cHe was known for speaking in tongues,\u201d Rev. Butts. \u201cNobody understood but it sure sounded good, sounded hip. Some people called him \u2018Mumbles.\u2019 When Brother Terry was mumbling, he was communicating with God. Now he can go home and mumble all he wants, and the people will understand him.\u201d
\nTerry would often tell the story of building a horn out of junkyard parts\u2014a garden hose attached to a funnel\u2014since his family couldn\u2019t afford an instrument when he was a child. As an adult, he invented a career path that otherwise wouldn\u2019t exist, and certainly not for a black musician in his day\u2014playing at jazz\u2019s highest echelons (Basie\u2019s and Ellington\u2019s bands, among others) and anchoring The \u201cTonight Show\u201d Orchestra. He taught students including Kauflin the fine points of jazz phrasing through his homemade method of \u201cdoodle-tonguing.\u201d
\nHe was clearly understood here on earth, articulating what jazz sounds like and how dignity feels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The gatherings that follow a renowned jazz musician\u2019s death honor musical greatness we already knew about. They also reaffirm a sense of community we too easily forget. That community is bound by musical values first and foremost but also by other things, including a sense of shared purpose and common history. The musical greatness in … <\/p>\n

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