My Future Musical Plans

Originally I had planned to be an arranger of instrumental groups. I was inspired by my high school band teacher, Mr Tillman Buggs. He was from Indianapolis, Indiana and was one of the fastest arrangers of notation I have ever seen. He could write out parts for an 18 piece big band and hear something he didn't like and collect the parts and make corrections on multiple parts and hand the charts back to us in less than 15 minutes. I started taking private lessons from him when I was a Freshman in high school. The lessons were informal. I bought a manuscript book and he told me to write out all of the major scales and the three forms of the minor scales reserving each pitch it's own individual measure. Next he wanted me to harmonize each individual pitch starting with minor seconds, then major seconds, then augmented seconds, then minor thirds, major thirds and augmented thirds ect...... So I would continue to make the intervals larger and larger until I was up to one octave and then two octaves up to the Perfect 15th.

My regular piano teacher did not like Mr Buggs and he was highly opinionated so he told me so. He said this after I told him what I was doing with Mr Buggs. My regular piano teacher who I paid $3.00 for a half hour lesson once a week was Dr Granuel Whittemore. He was a local legend in music. Whittemore had graduated from Roosevelt University or Chicago Musical College for his undergrad degree and then Julliard in Manhattan for his Master's and Doctorate in Fine Arts. He had been a Warrant Officer in the segregated US Army during WW2. Now at home in the late 50's and going into the early 1960's he was a choir director and male chorus director for First AME church. However he did not teach me what I wanted to learn. My mother had asked him to teach me chords or harmony so I could learn how to understand harmony/counterpoint and be able to play piano by ear and teach people how to sing by rote using their ears. Whittemore never did do that. He wasted my time a lot and had me learning to be a concert pianist which was very unrealistic. I played for his recitals every year at his church. It was  a showcase of how great of a teacher he was. Hardly anyone was a lover of classical music in the working class town of Gary, Indiana. What we were playing was way over the heads of the audience were were performing for. I was one of his most advanced students but not his most advanced. He had about 5 who were more advanced than me. I was the silver medal winner among the boys. Billy Foster who was about three years older than me was the gold medal winner. The rest were girls. The girls were usually more disciplined and several were older than me. I quit or was asked not to come back when I performed part of my piano composition and added some improvisation to stretch it out a little more. I can't remember the piece. It was some master-work. I was way past the graded books and was performing the actual works written by master serious composers. The only people who knew I had improvised was a girl who was older than me. I believe her name was either Estes or Eskew. I can't remember since this was nearly 50 years ago. I often wondered what happened to all of those kids who put countless hours into practicing the piano. None of them were ever successful in music so far as big names. Billy Foster and I were the only ones that I know who continued to pursue music as undergrad and grad music students. We were the only ones out of that generation or group who were professional performers and professional music teachers on the public school and college level. 

I had trouble finding musicians who could read music. Most of the cats around Gary could not read or were very poor readers. The older generation were pretty good readers but most were retiring or had retired from playing their instruments and had gotten jobs in the steel mills. Only a few still played but that was mostly by ear and only tunes they already knew. They were not conducive to learning anything new or reading music. So my writing skills got stunted. I never developed as an arranger of instrumental music.