Jim Kurzdorfer - RIP
jms
Sorry if this is long-winded, but I just had to get it out there:
It is with great sadness that I learned of my former teacher and
mentor Jim Kurzdorfer’s passing today.
For those who don’t know Jim, he was the bass player for Spyro Gyra
during their Golden Age in the late ‘70’s. He played on the hits
“Shaker Song”, “Morning Dance” and many others on the first three
records.
If that had been all he’d done with his life, that would have been
more than enough. He could have been like many players we all know,
trading on his 15 minutes of fame as “the former Spyro Gyra bassist”
for an extra $50 from some club. Actually, he seemed rather bemused by
the whole fame thing. I once had a lesson at his house, and noticed a
framed royalty check on the wall next to his gold record for Morning
Dance. The check was for ONE CENT. Typical Jim…
“Kurz” became so much more than just the bass player on a couple of
smooth jazz hits. When I was coming up as a young musician in the
1980's, Jim had a reputation in Buffalo as one of the top 2 or 3 first
call guys on every gig or recording session. He had become a champion
of electric bass, starting a college level program, first at Buffalo
State College, and then at Villa Maria College.
As a mostly self taught electric bassist with more drive and desire
than formal training, my options for higher learning were limited. I
had been accepted to Berklee, but simply couldn’t come up with the
money to make it happen. I had heard great things from other musicians
I respected about Jim’s new program at Villa, so I decided to give it
a try.
Everybody has those “watershed” moments that change the course of
your life. Studying with Jim was a major turning point for me as a
player and as a person.
The odd thing is, I can’t point to any one thing that made my three
years of study with Jim so amazing:
Jim didn’t have a “chord/scale tone system” or a “Berklee Bass
Method” or any sort of master pedagogical plan that I could discern.
We didn’t use a method book at all.
He didn’t teach licks; in fact, he HATED even showing you how HE
played. The only time I ever saw him actually get mad was when I asked
him to show me a lick he had played while improvising on “Donna Lee”
during a lesson.
Even though he brought his bass to every lesson, He rarely touched
it, preferring to demonstrate his concepts on piano, and accompany my
playing. One of my favorite memories was watching Jim play his solo
piano version of “Georgia”, which he said was one of his favorite
standards .
( Every time I have to play a hackneyed bar band version of that tune
behind some questionable singer, I think back to the simple beauty of
seeing Jim play it for an audience of one. Every time.)
He never got angry if you didn’t practice. In fact, sometimes it was
BETTER not to practice - not practicing meant that you would do the
same lesson over again, and it was a way for him to take you deeper
into the concepts that he was trying to impart.
Jim also taught Music Theory at Villa. Out of all the stuff we
learned in 4 semesters, the thing I remember most about that class was
Jim teaching me how to ear train by using the Bb produced by the steam
radiator as a reference tone.
What Jim DID was make you THINK about every note that you played and
WHY you were playing it from EVERY aspect – practically,
theoretically, philosophically, metaphysically, logically. He believed
that you could play any note over any chord and make it work if your
approach was grounded in some way. And he was right.
His live playing was an extension of his teaching philosophy – never
a hint of flash or shtick; On electric or upright, every note was
beautifully round and in the pocket. Every improvised solo sounded
like it had always been written that way, just waiting for him to come
along and play it. I was in awe then, and still am now.
The strange thing is that what I remember most about those years is
not the bass playing, but just being around Jim and absorbing what he
had to offer.
He would often hang out around Villa after school, in that “dead
zone” between the end of classes and the start of evening ensembles,
always ready to talk about anything and everything.
I think most of the conversations we had: Everything from Zen
philosophy, to the role of black people in country music, to his
Thelonius Monk research (for his Theory MA), to politics, to the
1960’s. Often, Jim would take the “devil’s advocate” position, to make
sure you knew what you were talking about, and not just spouting off
BS.
He was the only other person I had met up until then who read
philosophy for fun; who liked avant garde music and mean tone tuning
as much as rock and smooth jazz. ; who loved “finger funk” in the era
of MIDI rubber band basslines and slap bass. As a teenager who had
always felt somewhat on the “outside” all my life, I finally felt like
I found someone else who understood.
He saw potential in a young kid who was very rough around the edges
and turned him into a player. Since then, I’ve gone on to higher
degrees, taught hundreds of students, played thousands of gigs in
every style imaginable, written books, recorded albums, built basses,
and toured around the world. To this day, I still consider my Villa
Maria Associates Degree in Electric Bass Performance as my most
important achievement. Without the time I spent learning from Jim,
none of other things I’ve done would have been possible.
Jim’s lessons are the foundation for how I teach my own students
today. I frequently use his JS Bach transcriptions of the cello suites
and 2 voice inventions with my own students. In fact, I’ve spent the
last 20 years doing my own transcriptions of keyboard, cello, and
viola da gamba music for bass, following Jim’s lead.
I rarely play bass in my lessons, and I often teach from the piano. I
ask lots of open ended questions and make my students find their own
answers. And I never use a method book.
When my students ask why, I tell them it’s how I was taught.
When I play live, I think ideas rather than licks.
(About the only piece of Jim’s advice that I ignored was when he told
that it was too hard to make a steady living as a gigging musician,
and that I should get a teaching degree of some sort. He was probably
right about that too.)
I found out Jim was diagnosed with cancer when I came back to Buffalo
for a gig last year. I contemplated calling him many times, but in the
end I decided not to.
The music business is unusual in that you work and live closely with
other musicians for weeks, months or years on end. As you are the only
other people you know who get “the life”, you tend to know them better
than your own family; in some ways it’s like being married.
And then one day the gig ends, and everyone goes their separate ways,
maybe to meet up again somewhere down the road, maybe not. You don’t
think of it as a loss or an end; it’s more like “see you later”. It’s
just how it is.
Saying goodbye is too final for me. I prefer to think that this gig
is just over, and we’ll run into each other again, somewhere down the
road.
eadg
--
SR
"jms" <playb...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:858aeeac-1a2a-4135...@hd10g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...
Cross posted at Talk Bass
Sorry if this is long-winded, but I just had to get it out
there:
[snip]
DGDevin
"jms" wrote in message
news:858aeeac-1a2a-4135...@hd10g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...
> Cross posted at Talk Bass
> Sorry if this is long-winded, but I just had to get it out there:
Very moving, well said.
Bob Sherunckle
Thanks for sharing.
JF
"jms" <playb...@gmail.com> wrote in message
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