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 Kurzdorfers passing today.
For those who dont know Jim, he was the bass player for Spyro Gyra during their Golden Age in the late 70s. He played on the hits Shaker Song, Morning Dance and many others on the first three records.
If that had been all hed 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 couldnt come up with the money to make it happen. I had heard great things from other musicians I respected about Jims 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 cant point to any one thing that made my three years of study with Jim so amazing:
Jim didnt have a chord/scale tone system or a Berklee Bass Method or any sort of master pedagogical plan that I could discern. We didnt use a method book at all.
He didnt 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 didnt 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 1960s. Often, Jim would take the devils 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, Ive 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 Ive done would have been possible.
Jims 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, Ive spent the last 20 years doing my own transcriptions of keyboard, cello, and viola da gamba music for bass, following Jims 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 its how I was taught.
When I play live, I think ideas rather than licks.
(About the only piece of Jims 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 its 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 dont think of it as a loss or an end; its more like see you later. Its just how it is.
Saying goodbye is too final for me. I prefer to think that this gig is just over, and well run into each other again, somewhere down the road.
