CAROL COMER:
A Passion For Jazz

© 1994 Mike Metheny


For a jazz musician to reach a listener, or better yet a respected colleague on that most personal and visceral of levels can be the ultimate reward. And for singer/pianist/composer/journalist/jazz festival organizer/jazz educator Carol Comer, such rewards have been the rule rather than the exception for the bulk of a distinguished 30-plus year career in jazz.

Note the following comment overheard at a recent jazz brunch at the Downtown Marriott following a particularly poignant rendition of "I'm Glad There Is You." Said bandmate John Leisenring to Carol: "You're still the only singer in this town who can make me cry."

Volumes spoken in just a few but well chosen words.

For years Carol Comer has consistently touched fellow jazz lovers in the Kansas City area not only with song, but with a contagious passion for her craft. And since 1984, that passion has been passed along to a new generation of future jazz fans via Carol's in-school residencies (in Missouri, Kansas, Utah, Wyoming and Nevada) and her comprehensive jazz presentations for students, kindergarten through college.

Much like the William McGlaughlin interview that appeared in these pages in December of '93, the transcript of a single taped conversation with Carol Comer about her life in music was massive and with not an ounce of fat or fluff. Every word she speaks is rife with historical insight, her anecdotes about the Kansas City jazz scene are fascinating and endless, and her infectious enthusiasm for music in particular and life in general is both heartwarming and inspirational.

For this Q&A, we started by asking Carol about her early days in music.

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Carol Comer

JAM: Let's talk about your beginnings; your first musical experiences.

CC: Well, I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma -- the third of three kids -- and my dad was a minister. So all of my early musical experiences were in church. My brother and sister and I used to sing in a trio, and when I got a little older, it was on to children's choir, then junior choir. It was either choir practice or prayer meeting at my house. Those were the activities.

JAM: How did jazz weave itself into the picture?

CC: That's much later on. In the 1950s. When I was in high school (in Wichita, Kansas), my first heroes were Nat "King" Cole, Jo Stafford, Rosey Clooney, people like that. I really didn't know that much about jazz per se; pop music was big back then and I was a big pop music fan. After college (at Pittsburg State in Pittsburg, Kansas) and after a failed marriage -- he was a wonderful dancer and had a wonderful sense of humor...two great reasons to get married (laughs) -- I moved to Kansas City.

JAM: What year are we talking about here?

CC: This would have been 1957. I had an uncle who was a doctor in Kansas City and I ended up working as a medical secretary in a radiology department at Research (Hospital). I had no intention of doing music! But I ended up getting into jazz -- and I've told this story before -- through greed (laughs). I saw this red '58 Porche 1600SL convertible that I really wanted, and my day job wouldn't support the payments. So having played and sung a little in college at frat parties and sorority parties to help put myself through school, I thought, "Maybe I can play and sing and work nights... and pay for that car!" So my first job was at the old Embers over on Troost playing with Larry Cummings, a straight-ahead jazz thing. Fortunately I'd been spending a lot of time at a record store at 40th and Main where, in those days, you could go into a booth and listen to the records before you bought them. ...Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae. I was learning those wonderful songs of the 50s -- that are still wonderful today -- plus some standards, so I knew just enough to sing two or three songs a set. Which, in those days, was all they wanted any chick singer to sing anyway (laughs).

JAM: You're well known for playing the piano along with yourself. Did you play the piano when you were growing up?

CC: Oh yeah. My sister was a classical pianist. And we had a baby grand in our house from the time I was born. When I started taking lessons, though (at seven), I ended up getting in a little trouble. I had such a good ear that I could fake my way through most things up to "Clair de Lune." But then we got into "Warsaw Concerto" and it got a little tricky.

JAM: So as a kid, the piano and the singing were working more or less independently, but were destined to come together someday...

CC: Destined to come together when I saw that car (laughs). And, like I said, I really had no intention of doing music professionally. But after the fact, I fell in love with the music I was singing. I started hanging out with the jazz musicians around town and really got to learn about the music first hand. ...The way (the musicians) talked, the way they dressed, the way they lived -- the way they were -- was all how I wanted to be! And I had my little red sports car to go with it. It was perfect.

JAM: So what happened next?

CC: I kept working nights, started playing (piano) more for myself, met Bill (Comer), my husband of twenty years and the father of my kids, and continued my day jobs for different doctors doing lab work and taking x-rays.

JAM: Without any formal medical training?

CC: I learned on the job! And the more I learned, the more expertise I could bring when I moved on to another job.

JAM: It's a little sobering to imagine a jazz musician being allowed into a medical facility to take x-rays and do lab work...

CC: (laughs) Well, I didn't do that 'til later! Like I said, I started out as a secretary, but I've I always had a pretty good vocabulary and learning medical terminology came easy. But let me say some more about Bill. I'd started working at The Interlude, playing and singing, and Bill would come in with a snare drum and a high-hat and play along with me. He was very patient with me, and he helped introduce me to not only more Kansas City musicians -- he knew all of them -- but to records; all the right people to listen to. Chet Baker, Miles, Dizzy, Lennie Tristano, Lennie Niehaus, Brubeck...

JAM: Bill turned you on to all of those guys?

CC: He helped me discover the people who weren't necessarily singers. Bill was a terribly astute jazz aficionado and very knowledgeable. He was on top of everything that was being played and being done; things that even other jazz musicians didn't know about! He helped me learn about the idiom as I worked in the idiom and I just soaked it up like a sponge. And we had so much fun working together. Occasionally we'd add a bass player or other friends of his, 'cause I didn't really know that many people when I first came here. But I gradually got to know everyone... got to know Marilyn (Maye)... and wound up doing jingles and studio work with her and Warren Durrett.

JAM: Talk a little more about Marilyn Maye, your work in the studios, the jingles...

CC: Marilyn and I met, initially, through Warren (Durrett) and his big band. Then we started doing jingles for Warren down at Damon Studios. It was Marilyn, me, and Sammy Tucker's ex-wife Patty -- what a trio! -- plus three guys if we needed a sextet. We did "Wholesome Bread," "Skelly Oil"... Any commercial that could be heard in seven states, we were the ones who sang it. So that's how I got to know Marilyn. We became best friends for the next ten years.

JAM: It's interesting that two singers could have been such good friends; it seems that there could have been some competition.

CC: But Marilyn was so incredible and such a talent and I was so admiring... We had very different styles, but I appreciated her so much. And she encouraged me. As a matter of fact, without Marilyn, I would have stopped playing (piano) for myself. I'd been doing more stand-up singing with different people and had gotten totally away from playing. Marilyn said, "Gee, you should start playing for yourself again; you'd be working a lot more..." And I did! I started taking lessons from (John) Elliott, got my piano chops in shape... So, Marilyn has always encouraged me. And I've always been her biggest booster.

JAM: For our readers curious about this period in the history of Kansas City jazz, give us kind of a run down of who you were hanging out with then; say in the early to mid '60s.

CC: Oh god... Well, (guitarist) Don and Janie Wentzel...(thinking) ... and (Gary) Sivils, of course... Virginia and Dave Rizer... Tommy (Ruskin) and Julie (Turner)... Kay (Dennis), Sylvia (Bell)... Don and Nancy Van Fleet... Vince and Joanie Bilardo... There were just a ton of us who ran around together. We were just like one family. Don Wornock, Pete Eye, Marilyn and Sammy (Tucker)... In those days, everybody -- and this is an interesting thing -- everybody loved each other, respected each other, was supportive of each other. I'm not saying it's not that way today, but there was a camaraderie that I found hard to match anywhere in any job or in any place that I've ever been aware of.

JAM: What do you think created that sense of camaraderie?

CC: I really don't know. We all had such a mutual respect for each other; we cared about each other and about the music before we did anything else. In a nutshell, I think that's what it was. I don't know what precipitated it, or if it could ever be matched again in this day and age where people are so paranoid and hostile and afraid and the times we live in are so foreboding. I don't know, the climate then was just so different. And, of course, there was Kansas City with its rich (jazz) history. I think without really knowing it, we all felt an allegiance to each other...and to the music.

JAM: Speaking of some of the darker societal elements of the present day, I've always thought that being a kid in the '80s and '90s has got to be especially tough. It would seem that the work you've been doing in the schools over the past ten years would provide these impressionable youngsters with almost a ray of hope, being turned on to such an enduring art form as jazz. How do they react to their first exposure to jazz music?

CC: They love this stuff. They love it. And I'm manic about these kids. About turning them on to jazz. It's the music you and I love. It's America's only indigenous musical art form!

JAM: Can you give us kind of a general sketch of a typical classroom presentation?

CC: Every school's different. But for every school, I use a piano, I take my bass with me, my snare drum, my bells, and I bring a bag of percussion instruments. I always spend at least two weeks in every school when I'm on the road, and the first day I'm with them we talk about what jazz is. "It's a kind of music," I tell them, "that's improvised... a kind of music that you make up as you go along. Have any of you ever tried to improvise before?" Noooo, they'll say. "But when you talk on the phone to your friends, do you have a script in front of you?" Noooo, they'll say. "And when you're on the basketball court, do you know exactly where you're gonna go with that ball? And how you're gonna shoot it?" Noooo. "Well, see? You've been improvising your whole life! And jazz musicians do the same thing with music." Then I tell them about the three elements of music -- melody, harmony and rhythm -- and how they're used in jazz improvisation (walks over to piano, plays melody to "Jingle Bells"): the melody... (adds standard chords): the harmony... (again with animated bass line): and rhythm. Then I play "Jingle Bells" as a jazz musician would play it (plays it again but with syncopated melody and reharmonized changes)... and they like the difference. Because they don't wanna be like their parents! (laughs) That's the way they learned it! That's the way the teacher does it! So when they hear it done "hip" and "cool," they really get into it. From the beginning. Then I tell them how you don't always have to use a song you already know. That you can actually make up your own song. And I play an Eb blues that, if you stay just on the black keys, you can't miss. I had a little kindergartner come up once and I said, "just stay on the black keys!" He said (whiny), "but I can't play the piano!" And I said, "that's okay, I'm just gonna play, and you hit any black key you want." And afterward the kids and the teacher were clapping and gasping; everything he played was "right." So, from the beginning, there's reinforcement; they're "playing jazz." Kindergartners, whatever age they are, they're playing it. From the beginning. Then I teach them about styles, about the blues, bebop, ragtime, the history of jazz going back to the 1600s and pre-blues field shouts. At the end of the two weeks, they've made their own percussion instruments, they've written a drum chart, they've written a blues, and they know the whole timeline of jazz from the 1600s on. They know all about scatting, all about Louie Armstrong, all about Charlie Parker, what it means to improvise, the different things you can do when you improvise... I make it so much fun for them, they don't even realize they're learning things!

JAM: Let's back up. These little kids actually write an original blues?

CC: Oh yeah! All the kids write a blues. And they love to send more blues to me afterward. I tell them, "Now, there are lots of ways to write the blues, but we're going to have a structure. We're going to write a 12 measure blues that is a statement, a re-statement, and a conclusion." Kids who never had an interest at all in poetry or English find that it's a whole other backdoor way into the world of grammar and style and prose and how to express yourself with the written word. And I tell them, "You can write about anything you want; your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your mom, your dad, your teacher..." The school cafeteria is off limits, though. I got in trouble at the first school I ever did. Some of the kids wrote "The Bad Lunch Blues" (laughs) and the cafeteria ladies weren't too happy about that! But I tell the kids that this is an acceptable outlet. That anything they want to write a blues about is okay.

JAM: This is your elementary school presentation. Obviously for the older students, you have to change the approach.

CC: Uh-huh. A lot of times I'll work with bands, or with choirs, or with college kids, and then it's more concentrated, more technical.

JAM: Because you've worked a lot with school kids, let me ask a related question. Usually when school budgets are cut, one of the first things that goes is music and the arts. Any general comments on that?

CC: My general comment is: without the arts, we wouldn't be a civilized country! Arts and education should go hand in hand! Knowledge without sensitivity means very little in a civilized world. Even in a practical sense, you have to have the arts. There would be no new designs for cars every year were it not for artists. No new kinds of homes, or appliances, or boulevards, or genetic engineering. It's all based on trying to find a new way to do something, which is fundamentally improvisational! So no, I don't think you can separate the arts from education. Or living.

JAM: But let's focus just on jazz (in the schools). Do you think there is still a negative stereotype that some would say is perpetuated by the kinds of images found, say, in movies like "'Round Midnight" or "'Bird"? You know, that jazz musicians all have needles hanging out of their arms, that whole thing?

CC: Sure! And that's one of the reasons I like to go into the schools and show the kids that I don't have a needle hanging from my arm! And that jazz is part of our history! It's true, not everybody in Utah was crazy about me coming into their schools at first. But by the time we're through, they're ready to have me move in with them! And stay with them 'til I die!


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