Two jazz greats graced the campus of El Cajon’s Grossmont College recently. Jeannie Cheatham, the “Queen of Kansas City Blues,” and internationally acclaimed saxophonist John Handy spoke about their decades of experience.
Two jazz greats graced the campus of El Cajon’s Grossmont College recently. Jeannie Cheatham, the “Queen of Kansas City Blues,” and internationally acclaimed saxophonist John Handy spoke about their decades of experience.
Derek Cannon, co-chairman of the college’s music department, opened up the discussion, asking the two musicians what influenced them in their development of performing jazz.
Cheatham said that growing up as a “good Baptist,” her mother believed she should learn the piano. “We picked up on the sacred hymns, which I believe teach you how to listen,” she said.
Handy said that his own experience was also initially grounded in church growing up in Dallas. “I was very isolated. But I listened to the radio and watched a lot of TV. I listened to the music on TV programs, even the theme song of the ‘Lone Ranger,’” he said.
The song “In the Dark” also influenced Handy when he was just an 8-year-old boy. “Then when I saw my first picture of a saxophone, it was like heaven to me. Charlie Parker was my god for a long time,” he said.
Cheatham’s own formal education in music began with a teacher from London who used to give piano lessons for 50 cents. “I would sit under the piano and watch my sister take lessons,” she said.
The teacher would place pennies on the back of the wrist as a way to teach control over the keyboard. “Those pennies flew off my sister’s hands and I got rich collecting them,” she said.
When the teacher was ready to give up on her sister and declared there was no reason to come to the house to teach anymore, Cheatham spoke up. “I promised the teacher that I could play the whole book of songs with all the pennies staying on my hand,” she remembered.
When Cannon posed the question to the greats about what advice they might give to young aspiring musicians, Cheatham said that women musicians need to “carry their own luggage, their own weight.”
“Know your music. And don’t carry on cussing and carrying on,” Handy nodded. “Listen to Helen Sung, one of the greatest pianists I’ve ever heard,” he said. “In today’s music, it’s so much mish-mash, it’s hard to tell who’s doing what, who’s playing what instruments. It’s like everybody’s forgotten how to be an individual in a music group.”
If young people are even thinking about becoming musicians, Handy recommended developing their own audience. “These days, ascetic development is really sad. The music business in America has helped destroy music. Everyone looks at whose clothes are coming off instead,” he said.
Cheatham, who has had many European students, said that she has always taught students to choose a certain note and develop it. “The best way to learn music is to sing it first,” she said. In the days of jazz development, Cheatham said, musicians were taught to find the soul of music and move it to their own work. “I found the soul of music a long time ago,” she said. “If you can’t get the hair on your arms to rise or get that tingle in your soul, then there’s something’s missing.”
Handy agreed. “The soul of music can be lost when I play and is amplified to the tenth degree,” he said.
At the end of Cheatham’s and Handy’s talk, the audience was invited to ask questions. Karla Fox spoke up. “I grew up listening to you, Mr. Handy. In Detroit I’d listen to the music because my grandfather had control of the radio. That was also where I first heard your song ‘Hard Work,’” she said. As a young lady, Fox got a job at the local radio station — the same one where she’d first heard jazz. “‘Hard Work’ became my theme song,” Fox said.
The Jazz Greats discussion was one of several events honoring Black History Month at Grossmont College.
