Jazz Notes: A Portrait of Local Pianist Gene Cochran

Picture this husky 12-year-old African-American kid in what he would later call “a pretty tough neighborhood” in North Philadelphia, playing baseball, and “roughhousing around” with his friends - and his mother calls him home to practice piano. Amid the razing, though, Gene Cothran was happy to move to the keyboard and his music lessons. In a recent interview, he told me he could always go back later and “thump ‘em” if he needed to.

Seeing him today on the piano bench at Binghamton’s Lost Dog Cafe or the Schorr Family Firehouse Stage in Johnson City, he remains an imposing figure. But his hands move over the keys playing a gentle Latin breeze one moment, a blues-infected mighty wind the next. Cothran has loved this music since childhood, early childhood.

He says he remembers piano lessons starting when he was just three or four. His first teacher was his mother, and although the lessons throughout his youth were “classical” music, his home was filled with jazz and blues. The jazz came from his parents’ records of the music they had danced to in their early years: the bands of Basie and Ellington and one artist Gene Cothran remembers from an old 45 rpm record, Oscar Peterson.

The blues influence came over the air from two directions. The family’s radio was tuned to blues stations in Raleigh, NC (where Cothran lived his first ten years) and Philadelphia. The blues also floated out of the windows of “holy roller” churches, a kind of “get down” music that ironically lifted spirits high, and though, as a Catholic, he wasn’t allowed to enter those churches, he says, “You didn’t have to go inside to hear the gospel-tinged rhythm and blues.”

Cothran says high school was a crossroads experience for his music. While an athlete at St. Joseph’s Prep, having been schooled by nuns since childhood and influenced by the R&B and pop standards he heard on radio and records, Cothran yearned to move beyond the classical piano to something new. He enrolled in the Granoff School of Music in downtown Philadelphia, an academy that counted among its alumni Sonny Fortune, Dizzy Gillespie, and John Coltrane - a crossroads indeed.

The transition wasn’t easy, he remembers. He had to move from playing from “a book” to “more of a little sketchpad.” Though it was the genesis of improvisational creativity for this talented jazz pianist, Cothran dropped out. He missed having a lesson book to hold on to, the school was expensive, and his football coach wouldn’t let him play if he missed practice. Plus, Cothran says the girls were more into athletes than piano players. He admits it was a big mistake musically.

Had he stayed at Granoff’s, in his early teens he would have been in various combos that got to play warm-up sets at Philadelphia jazz clubs. But “everything stopped.” No more jazz lessons. However, he kept his ear to the radio, and there in the Hammond B-3 center of the universe, Cothran heard Jimmy McGriff, Jimmy Smith, and Philly locals Shirley Scott and Trudy Pitts, both on the air and live at concert venues. He also saw the Jones Brothers (as in Hank, Thad, and Elvin) and the Heath Brothers, and while he was no longer taking lessons, that music simmered internally for years to come.

In 1967, Cothran got a job at IBM Endicott – and, almost immediately, he was drafted in the military. He served for four years during the Vietnam conflict, becoming a Company Commander there. IBM had held his job, and when he left the Army, he returned to Endicott. Cothran was still looking for teachers who would tutor him in jazz.

At that time, the Triple Cities area had a number of jazz venues, most prominent “The Music Box” in Johnson City, and Cothran began listening to local musicians, mentally auditioning them to mentor him. “That’s when the man who really changed everything for me, Doug Beardsley, used my classical background, and had me playing jazz in a matter of months.” Jam sessions and jazz performances took place almost every night, and Cothran found himself playing and developing his jazz keyboard many evenings after spending his day job programming at IBM.

In 1979, IBM did Gene Cothran a big favor. The company sent him to New York City for a three-month class. Living in Manhattan, Cothran says he “literally went to a jazz club or venue every night.” The Carlyle Hotel featured pianists Hank Jones and George Shearing in two different venues, and Cothran remembers fondly the late-night conversations he had with both artists, as well as singer Mel Torme. With their encouragement, Cothran finally found Doug Beardsley at The Music Box, and lessons began in earnest.

But jazz improvisation didn’t come that easily to Cothran. He had a physical reaction to his early lessons. “I’m a cool, calm person,” Cothran says, “but I didn’t know what I was doing [improvising], and I would break into a tremendous sweat! Doug wasn’t putting any kind of pressure on me; I was doing it to myself.” Beardsley and other seasoned jazz musicians at The Music Box and local venues were supportive, offering honest and helpful critique.

When retirement came, Cothran was eager to begin his second career. After all his jazz experiences - from that scratchy Oscar Peterson record, to conversations with Shearing, to the mentoring of Doug Beardsley, to the nights in Elmira playing at a place called Green Pastures (“fried chicken and jazz every Wednesday,” he recalls) - Cothran has become an admired jazz artist, well-respected by his peers, and thankful for the vitality of the jazz scene in the Southern Tier.

Cothran regularly plays with Miles Ahead Jazz Quartet and the Andrew Williams Quartet, and appears regularly at Schorr Family Firehouse Stage, Lost Dog Lounge Jazz Jam, DoubleTree Bistro Lounge, and Moxie Wood Fire Grill. Check out milesaheadjazz.net, williamsmusic.com, or the Facebook pages of any of the above venues.

Jazz Notes, a new Carousel monthly feature, is a collaboration of Jeff Kellam & Deborah Roane, aiming to heighten the awareness of the talented jazz musicians in our community and where to find them. Jeff Kellam played jazz on the radio in Richmond, Virginia for almost 25 years. Deborah Roane is a Marketing Consultant. Both are enthusiastic supporters of all things jazz.