Building jazz by improvisation

[Harry]

Building jazz by improvisation

Leon Breeden turned UNT's minor program into a major success

03/30/2003

By SAM BLAIR / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

The sign beside northbound Interstate 35 tells you what's ahead:

DENTON. . . and all that jazz! But if it weren't for Leon Breeden, that sign probably wouldn't be there. As chairman of the division of jazz studies, Mr. Breeden built a world-renowned program at the University of North Texas. He directed the famous One O'Clock lab bands, student big bands that won Grammy awards and praise from legendary jazz stars, and inspired similar music programs at many other schools. When he retired in 1981, he left a school with a reputation for excellence that continues today. Now 81, Mr. Breeden is being honored with a namesake competition for younger students, part of the North Texas Jazz Festival.

"Most of the international acceptance of jazz education can be traced to the University of North Texas," Dave Brubeck said in 1997, when the jazz program celebrated its 50th anniversary.

A wonderful tribute, but one that would have been impossible to imagine when Mr. Breeden started the job.

In 1959, when he joined the music faculty at what was then North Texas State College, Mr. Breeden brought outstanding credentials as a director, educator, musician, arranger and program-builder. His reception, however, was underwhelming.

"The first day I walked into my office, I found an empty lard can on the floor," he says. "There was a dead rat in it!"

Just sloppy housekeeping, but not a bad indicator of the road ahead. North Texas had been awarding a degree in dance music since 1947. But Mr. Breeden's old friend and predecessor Gene Hall warned him about the administration's negative attitude toward jazz education. "Gene told me, 'You'll have a president and a dean who wake up each morning saying "no," and that's all they say all day.' "

But Mr. Breeden was approaching his 38th birthday and eager for a new challenge after a successful career as music director at Grand Prairie High School. He found one. The rehearsal room was awful and his department's only equipment consisted of a broken-down baritone sax and one microphone.

Two weeks later, frustrated and depressed, he wrote his letter of resignation and showed it to his wife, Bonna. Fortunately, she urged him to put it away and get on with his job. Mr. Breeden did, and that's why you can hear all that jazz in Denton – and on campuses around the world.

When Mr. Breeden started as director, the program had 75 students and four lab bands. Mr. Hall created the lab bands, but Mr. Breeden reorganized them, scheduling rehearsals on the hour. The bands were known by the time they rehearsed – The Two O'Clock, The Three O'Clock – and the best musicians played at 1 p.m.

Mr. Breeden had to take some unusual steps to fulfill his vision. Under his leadership, the One O'Clock Lab Band toured from Moscow, Iowa, to Moscow, Russia. All of those trips were financed without official school money, although, in 1970, the band did receive a loan from the school – $20,000, to pay for air fare to Switzerland. The One O'Clock Band had been named Official Big Band of the famous Montreaux Jazz Festival. But Mr. Breeden repaid the loan with proceeds from sales of concert tickets and record albums.

The band's annual albums began when Mr. Breeden arranged a secret recording session of Lab '67 with musician and former football player Ed Bernet at his sound studios near Southern Methodist University. "If I had gone to the dean, he would have said a program at a state-supported school could not make a recording and compete with outside business," says Mr. Breeden, explaining he was determined, though risking his job. "I didn't do it for money; I did it for education."

Annual recordings became famous; two bands ( Lab '75 and Lab '76) received Grammy nominations, a first for a college group.

Fittingly, top high school and middle school jazz bands will compete for the first annual Leon Breeden Award on Saturday during the North Texas Jazz Festival in Addison. April is a gala month for jazz in the area. On April 15, you can catch Lab Band Madness at UNT. And the Denton Arts and Jazz Festival follows, April 25-27.

By the time Mr. Breeden retired in May 1981, his jazz studies program had 500 students, nine lab bands, more than $10,000 in cash, a library of 4,000-plus arrangements and a marvelous legacy.

He was succeeded by Neil Slater, who founded the jazz program at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut in 1971. The bands continue to receive Grammy nominations. And the school continues to turn out fine jazz musicians, composers, arrangers, vocalists, directors and educators.

For years, the music faculty gave Mr. Breeden the cold shoulder.

"They thought I wanted to push Beethoven out the back door," he says.

But he was warmed by the acclaim of jazz legends.

The first was big-band leader Stan Kenton, a judge at the 1960 Notre Dame Jazz Festival where Mr. Breeden's then little-known NT band won first place.

"Stan, tall and lanky like a basketball player, came striding across the floor of the field house and hugged me. He said, 'You've restored my faith in music.' "

A foremost exponent of modern jazz and advocate of jazz education, Mr. Kenton became a great friend and benefactor. When he died in 1979, he willed his entire library to North Texas. In March 1981, Mr. Breeden signed for a shipment of six crates of original music manuscripts weighing 2,440 pounds. After retiring as director of jazz studies, Mr. Breeden stayed on as archivist of the Kenton Collection. He finished on Sept. 23, 1983.

"I fulfilled my promise to Stan that I personally would go through anything he sent to the school."

As faculty attitudes mellowed and facilities improved in later years, lab bands moved into a large rehearsal hall with seating for 115. Mr. Breeden was delighted when the NT Board of Regents approved his recommendation that it be named Stan Kenton Hall.

Other historic jazz stars raved about the One O'Clock Band. After Duke Ellington played piano with the NT musicians on "Take the A Train" at the White House in 1967, he told Mr. Breeden, "After hearing your band, I'm calling a five-hour rehearsal of my band tomorrow!" Ella Fitzgerald was so pleased singing with the band in Charleston, S.C., in 1978 she said, "Mr. Breeden, I'd like to take this band on the road with me!" And Woody Herman told Mr. Breeden, "Your band sounds like it's been playing together for 20 years. It's unbelievable."

A generation or so ago, Jim Riggs played alto sax and Dan Haerle piano in the One O'Clock Band. They eventually joined Mr. Breeden on the NT jazz faculty.

"Leon had a vast influence," says Mr. Riggs, who still directs the Two O'Clock Band. "Even then, musicians came to NT from all over the world. I think everyone who ever played in the One O'Clock looks back on those as the best time in their lives. We were playing great music with great musicians."

"Leon set the bar so high," says Mr. Haerle, who retired last spring. "And I liked his sense of humor. I wrote a piece based on a Mozart composition and called it 'Waltzing on the Wolfgang'. When the band was going to play it, Leon said, 'I think Dan's writing a sequel to 'Skating on the Amadeus' or 'Marching on the Mozart.' "

A superb clarinetist, Mr. Breeden took his first lessons at age 8 in Wichita Falls from a teacher who received free auto repairs from Alvin Breeden, Leon's father. He played first chair in the high school band while wearing out 78-rpm records copying Benny Goodman solos. At 17, he played in a hillbilly band in honky-tonks where the leader packed a loaded .38 in a shoulder holster and chicken wire separated the bandstand from the fights and flying bottles. Through the years he played in everything from small combos to dance bands to symphony orchestras.

He finished his degree at Texas Christian University after World War II Army service, and, at 23, became band director, the youngest at any U.S. college. He also earned a master's degree at TCU and worked on a Ph.D. at Columbia University while playing in studio bands at NBC Radio. He wrote two arrangements for Arthur Fiedler ("Hollywood Concerto" and "Flight of the Wild Goose") but declined the Boston Pops conductor's offer to succeed Leroy Anderson as chief arranger when his father's serious illness drew him back to Texas.

Now 81, Mr. Breeden lives in a retirement community near the UNT campus with second wife Bennye Wayne, a long-ago schoolmate whom he met again at a Wichita Falls class reunion in 1989, a year after Bonna died. His voice is raspy after a recent bout with pneumonia, but it becomes vibrant when he talks about jazz.

"They should start every session of the United Nations with some Dixieland – maybe a Kenyan on drums, a Swede on piano and an American on cornet. Then everyone could get down to business."

Sam Blair was a writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News for 41 years.

3rd Annual North Texas Jazz Festival in Addison

Friday- April 6. Ticket are $25 Friday and Saturday evening, $30 for Sunday's jazz brunch. Student concerts are free. Hotel Inter-Continental, 15201 Dallas Parkway, Addison.

This year the festival spotlights jazz education. Big bands, combos and vocal groups from middle schools to top university programs around the country will perform and take master classes. The outstanding middle school or high school big band will win the first Leon Breeden Award.

Headliners include: UNT Faculty Sextet, Two O'Clock Lab Band; New York Voices (Friday); UNT Jazz Singers, One O'Clock Lab Band; Kenny Garrett Quartet (Saturday); Jazz brunch, featuring a festival adjudicators showcase and Marchel Ivery Quartet (April 6). Call 972-450-6232. Or go to www.addisontexas.net.

Lab Band Madness 2003

April 15, 7 p.m. Tickets are $8; $5 for seniors and students. Winspear Performance Hall in Murchison Performing Arts Center. All nine lab bands perform. Call 940-369-7802.

Denton Art and Jazz Festival

April 25-27. Free. Denton Civic Center Park and Facilities, 321 East McKinney, Denton. Six outdoor stages and one indoor. Headliners include Branford Marsalis (April 25); Double Trouble and Brave Combo (April 26); and Bill Evans and the Soul Insiders (April 27) Call 940-565-0931 or www.dentonjazzfest.com.

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[FirefightnRick]

Amazing! It's like reading about BIG FOOT, the myth. I don't claim to be a wise man at all, nor will I ever be closest to the most educated around. But I'm not stupid and I am educated. I've played guitar for over 31 years. I love every kind of music on earth. And it's not that I go to a lot of concerts or have a massive library of music or anything like that. But I've never heard of Leon Breedon, nor had I heard of his bands growing up or since. I've never heard the One O'clock Lab band either. Where in hell do they play? And when they do do they ever tell anyone?

I spent 4 awesome days in New Olreans this past december. New Olreans in most minds would be considered the home of the greatest Jazz and in those four days my wife and I heard some of the best Jazz we have ever heard. But those four days also saw the home of Jazz open it's arms to The University of North Texas, who is suppose to be known for it's Jazz studies and all. But it didn't surprise me that this mysterious JAZZ SCHOOL and it's WORLD FAMOUS ONE O'CLOCK LAB BAND was a mystery in the city of Jazz just as it's been a mystery to me all these years.

Talk about small circles, or is it just a very BIG WORLD?

Rick

[eagle60]

When I attended NTSC in the late fifties one of the great joys was going to hear the Lab Band perform in the auditorium. Then exposure to the real inspirations, like Stan Kenton and his band, made that time magical for those of us who were entertained then.

I remember going to a small venue in East Dallas with a group to hear the Stan Kenton Band play in a very small room. The effect of the brass sections 'blew us away!' I remember NT-ex Marvin Stamm graduating to his band. We were all impressed with the professionalism exhibited by Leon Breeden's Lab Bands and how Kenton was very impressed by his efforts.

It's an experience I will never forget. If you'd like a 'taste' of what it was like, you might look around for an old Lab Band tape, or find a CD called "The Best of Kenton" on the Capitol Jazz label (A Blue Note Label.) You might find it on Amazon.com or other similar sources.