Perhaps not one of my finest moments…
During my first year of college teaching, at a regional state university somewhere south of Indiana, I had a trumpet student who thought he knew it all. I’ll call him Bob. No matter what anyone mentioned, Bob said he had already heard of it or had done it. It didn’t take much for me to notice the other students in Jazz Ensemble were getting tired of Bob’s condescending attitude.
One day, another trumpet player made a comment about how the trumpet section should play a passage like the famous lead player, “Dick Slangsteen.” Bob immediately piped up and said, “Yeah, I’ve heard him. He’s incredible.” I saw an opportunity to join the game. So, I picked up the ball, “well, Slangsteen would probably articulate it like this,” and I demonstrated on my trumpet, with my best Slangsteenian tone. The rest of the band picked up on the game and suppressed their chuckles. It was a good thing everyone was looking in my direction and I was a reasonably good actor.
We kept the game going. At least once in every rehearsal, I suggested either a Dick Slangsteen-style vibrato, or a Dick Slangsteen heavy accent, or a Dick Slangsteen dramatic crescendo. For two or three weeks, Bob had no idea Dick Slangsteen was a fake. He just nodded and agreed that Slangsteen was a legend and acted like he knew his playing well. It didn’t seem to bother him that as far as everyone else was concerned, I was Dick Slangsteen.
I can’t remember how Bob found out that it was he who was being played. Somehow, he did, and soon his attitude changed. For the rest of the year he was reluctant to claim knowledge of something he really didn’t know about. It was a hard lesson, I’m sure. We talked about it later and he came to understand that, in a way, he had it coming.
Did I carry things too far? I’ll leave that to posterity. The trumpet player who thought up “Dick Slangsteen” of course thought the whole thing was hilarious, and the band had a lot of fun with the running Slangsteen gags, but I still wonder. One thing I learned was that a fictional player can be as inspirational as a real player. The main thing is to focus on how to do things better. The ideal is what matters. That part is not in question. Dick Slangsteen taught the band how to play better and taught Bob to be a little more circumspect. Slangsteen also taught me that there are limits to how far one should go with a joke. Thanks, Dick.
MurrayWorks 