Jazz Notes: Al Hamme
We’ve written “Jazz Notes” for six months, featuring six local jazz musicians, and noting some area venues where those musicians perform. Without exception, the six artists have one man in common, a music educator whose presence is acknowledged with appreciative applause whether he’s blowing his sax or merely sitting in the audience. Al Hamme is a talented musician, yes, but also a visionary, teacher, entrepreneur, band leader, producer, arranger, and now proclaimed (by us) “the jazz doyen” of Central New York.
He is also too humble. “I don’t want this article to be about me,” he advised when we first asked to interview him. Nonetheless, when we sat down with him, we started with Hamme’s arrival to the Southern Tier in 1961 to teach music in the Union-Endicott School system. He and his Ithaca College roommate trumpeter Corky Klinko both found their first jobs teaching in Endicott schools. Fast-forward some 57 years later, Hamme and Klinko still play side-by-side in various jazz groups.
The decades between their U-E teaching jobs and the gig where they may well be playing tonight interest us especially because of Hamme the educator, the jazzman who brought the Thundering Herd of legendary band leader Woody Herman to work with teenagers in a kind of summer music camp; the visionary whose jazz workshops brought forth a group of “young lions” in the Southern Tier whose jazz resounds from New York City clubs, international concerts, and critically-acclaimed recordings; and the founder and director of the Jazz Studies program at Binghamton University.
Al Hamme’s early influence on young musicians and his continued support of live jazz in our area have enriched the genre itself, keeping jazz alive at the Firehouse Stage in Johnson City and other venues, inspiring musicians who followed in his Binghamton University footsteps, and getting credit for starting the area’s first jazz festivals.
But maybe Al Hamme is right. This isn’t about him. It’s about the late Acton Ostling, the long-time U-E Superintendent of Music (1930s-60s) whose nationally known band and drum arrangements and publications helped draw Hamme to the Endicott schools. When Ostling phoned him about his first job, Hamme recalled studying one of his band books in 4th grade. “Must be a good system,” he thought, if Endicott had Ostling in charge. Ostling found out his recent hire was playing some jazz around, and asked him to start a jazz group at U-E.
Or, maybe this is about Bob Warner, who was starting Binghamton University’s first complete music department when he offered Al Hamme a full scholarship so he could get his master’s degree. Or, Phil Nelson, who later offered Hamme a full-time position at the university, teaching woodwinds and leading the Concert Band, and eventually the jazz program.
This article could also be about drummer Bob Terrell, who rescued Al Hamme from playing some “kinda hokey” jazz on weekends for $35 a night, by offering him a nightly gig at a club in Binghamton. Not only did the job pay almost as much as his first school salary (which had been $5,280 annually), it connected him with other jazz musicians, including those in the 13-piece Terrell-Masters Orchestra.
Here’s another thought: we could be writing about the Hamme-inspired “Young Lions of Jazz,” including jazz drummer and DIVA Jazz Orchestra leader Sherrie Maricle who emerged from both U-E and BU under Al Hamme’s tutelage. His jazz workshops had begun in 1967 and ran for almost twenty years, with Maricle being one of the many who both benefitted from and then helped staff the summer “jazz camps.” The others include trombonist Steve Davis, pianist Dena DeRose, saxophonist Kris Jensen, trumpeter Tony Kadleck, guitarist Tom Dempsey, and percussionist John Hollenbeck.
With Woody Herman, Bob Brookmeyer, and Phil Woods coming to town to lead the expanding summer workshops (serving fifth graders through their adult school music instructors), jazz had taken a firm hold in Broome County.
In 1974 at BU, Hamme founded the university’s big band, a “town-gown” band at first, the ancestor of today’s Harpur Jazz Ensemble, led by Mike Carbone who got his master’s degree under Hamme. From that big band came the all-professional band of union musicians, “Music Unlimited.” That group brought veteran and novice musicians together, the swing and bebop genres getting along just fine. Following Hamme’s retirement, sax player Tim Donlin took over the various ensembles (from trios to the 12-piece “little big band”), and its jazz still swings throughout the Southern Tier.
So, no; this may not have been about Al Hamme. Maybe more about his students, and the many ways his mentorship has shaped jazz throughout our area. It leads us to this conclusion: jazz may be an innate rhythm, something in one’s musical DNA that says, “Improvise! Swing! Create! Syncopate!” But for most jazz artists, there was also a teacher, a mentor, a jazz master, or many. Someone at school, from elementary years through graduate degrees, made music that inspired, taught theory that made sense, and stirred the urge to practice... practice… practice.
Locally, Al Hamme laid that foundation for a couple of generations. Who’s next? Who will inspire that middle school kid who’s stretching to play trombone, or that high school girl who just heard herself hit the sweetest trumpet note ever? Or the college drummer who is majoring in nuclear physics but wants to play in a jazz group on Saturday nights?
Yes, Who?
