Seymour Lefco, 91, Milwaukee's "jazz dentist" whose patients included Belafonte, Shearing, Peterson, O'Day, Dizzy, Mulligan, etc.
Shrike!
By AMY RABIDEAU SILVERS
Posted: Aug. 30, 2006
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=489598
Seymour Lefco was just starting as a dental student at Marquette
University when he fell in love with jazz.
http://graphics.jsonline.com/graphics/news/img/aug06/lefco083106.jpg
He was known as the jazz dentist, Nancy Levner says of her father,
Seymour Lefco (above), whose patients included Dizzy Gillespie.
Multimedia
http://www2.jsonline.com/graphics/news/media/aug06/83106/player.asp
Listen: 'Today is the First Day' - By Seymour Lefco
That introduction came via the music of Louis Armstrong. Soon a friend
asked if he would like to attend a birthday party for jazz legend Fats
Waller, then living in Milwaukee.
"It started at 3 a.m., and Fats just drank his tumbler of scotch until
about 5 a.m., when he started playing," Lefco later recalled. "I went
from the party to my first Marquette class, at 8 a.m."
Lefco wove jazz into his life. He kept the jazz playing while he
worked on decades of dental patients. He learned to make his own
music, playing piano and writing songs recorded by some of the jazz
greats. He befriended musicians in need of financial support - and
dental work. His heart seemed to keep time to the more syncopated beat
of the music around him.
"He was known as the jazz dentist," said daughter Nancy Levner.
Lefco died of natural causes on Monday. He was 91. He had continued to
live on Milwaukee's east side with Rachel Lefco, his wife of 67 years.
Earlier this summer at a jazz event, everyone - the musicians and
customers and manager - went out of their way to greet Lefco, said
Mike Drew, a fellow jazz lover and friend.
"Seymour was the focal point in the room," Drew said.
A Milwaukee native, Lefco began practicing dentistry here. He served
with the U.S. Army during World War II, landing on Omaha Beach a month
after D-Day.
He returned to Milwaukee and his practice. Patients came to include
actor-singer Harry Belafonte, pianists George Shearing and Oscar
Peterson, singer Anita O'Day, bassist Ray Brown, trumpeter Dizzy
Gillespie and saxophonist Gerry Mulligan.
Ray Brown was among those who recorded Lefco's songs.
"I befriended him in 1945 when he was coming up," Lefco once
explained, saying that Brown was invited to dinner at Lefco's home.
"You don't know how unusual that is," Brown, an African-American, told
Lefco, who was white.
"He gave me the music to 'You Look Good to Me,' and I did the lyrics,"
Lefco said. "I still get royalty checks from 23 countries for my songs
he did with Oscar and others. But he told me once that (songwriter)
Marilyn Bergman said I wasn't a very good lyricist."
Lefco kept taking piano lessons until nearly the end.
"I'm all my teachers' oldest student," he quipped in 1999. "I've taken
piano, and stolen tricks, from everybody. Each has improved me, about
an inch."
To Lefco, jazz was not so much a "what" as a "how."
Take anything by Louis Armstrong, for instance: "How he sings, it is
jazz," Lefco said. "Jazz is improvisation. You know he's not singing
it like the man wrote it. Louis could sing anything and make it jazz.
Same thing with Ella Fitzgerald on 'Tisket, A-Tasket' or Ray Charles
singing 'America.' Kids should hear Ray singing 'America.' "
Lefco earned a reputation as a bit of a liberal pundit, writing
letters to the editor on politics, education and social issues.
In one letter, Lefco skewered the "Republican-controlled Congress
abetted by spineless Democrats." In a letter on Oregon's "death with
dignity" law, he quoted Woody Allen: "It's not that I'm afraid to die;
I just don't want to be there when it happens."
Perhaps more than anything else, Lefco became a mentor to Milwaukee
musicians.
Penny Goodwin was a singing waitress when the two met.
"He pushed me to really make a career of singing and let the waitress
part go," she said.
Lefco helped organize concerts for her and other artists. In the
1970s, he put up the money for Goodwin to record an album called
"Portrait of a Gemini," which included Lefco tunes such as "Too Soon
You're Old / Too Late in Gettin' Smart."
"It's become a cult thing all over the world," said friend Ray Tabs,
who produced the album. "It's a crazy thing after 30 years."
Later, when Goodwin wanted to switch careers and become a teacher,
Lefco was still the friend who believed in her.
"He encouraged me to go back to school and get my bachelor's and my
master's," said Goodwin, now a social studies teacher at Roosevelt
Middle School of the Arts. "He more than a mentor to me. He's a father
figure to me. I had an angel on my shoulder in Sy Lefco."
In addition to his wife and daughter Nancy Levner, survivors include
daughters Terry Dulberger and Laurie Swofford, grandchildren and
great-grandchildren.
A service will be held at 11 a.m. today at Second Home Cemetery, 3705
S. 43rd St.
--
Gotta Find My Roogalator