Ran Blake interview transcript

B: Were you playing much piano when you were in school?

R: At Classical High School I helped do the music for a production of Arsenic and Old Lace. They said I couldn’t stay in key very well. I kept talking about the movie with the eye – Spiral Staircase – I was more into Arsenic than Old Lace. Then I had to be the runner for that awful Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado. Then there was a third thing. I played piano for school assembly every week, including a prelude. Mr. Lindstrom was the music advisor at Suffield Academy. He said, ”keep only these white notes in,” or some such thing. I think I did a blues note. Then I had to do the hymns. I was insufferable. I really hated being there, even though I was indulged. I got a room for my LP collection. I got a room for my albums. I got to know Mahalia, Thelonius. The bebop stuff came much later. I loved Scythian Suite by Prokofiev. Of course, Prelude of the Afternoon of the Fawn by Debussy. Roy Webb, the guy who did music for Spiral Staircase, can be hackneyed, but once the murders started, the last hour of the film, was dramatic and rich. The theremin was always featured in these scores. And what is it, the Ondes-Martenot? I much prefer the sound of that. My favorite film music now is Pierre Jansen. We didn’t have DVDs or VCRs in Suffield, CT. I longed to go to the Thompsonville Theater. I remember hitching a ride to see A Streetcar Name Desire in Springfield. One of my parents’ friends was a no-pain lady, and I mentioned to my parents I thought she had headaches. My parents said, “How would you know?” Then I think the cat was out of the bag. They said, “You’re not going to do this movie business. Why do you think we moved here?” So I rebelled against my music teacher. I hated to read music. I did the scales and arpeggios. That was easier. Her husband was a very kind man. But I knew her first as Janet Wallace, living on Mulberry Street. Later a man called Lloyd Stoneman came to our house on Union Street. My parents thought six dollars an hour was the height of extravagance. Blustering snow or whatever. And he had to put up with me. I’m tired of people who don’t do work. You get everything back. He would write reviews once a month. I would do recitals and the poor man…all young people want an audience. So, there was a Warren Amerman. He taught music and his son runs a studio in West Springfield. But finally getting to Connecticut, I did go to all the churches in town – Polish Catholic, regular Catholic, Baptist, then a fresh new Episcopal Church, an Afro American Church. The Polish church had something. Every once in a while the chords would leave C Major, but it was a little while before I got the Church of God in Christ, which was on Russell Street. That was in North Hartford. Now that Church is the Latter Day Rain. Also in the Wethersfield part of Hartford was Ray Cassarino, where I really started doing large block chords and improvisation. Ray did a lot to build up my repertoire for old standards. And I kept mostly record collecting.

B: Did you specialise in what you were playing?

R: Well, mostly it was films and doing my own plots. But it was very rigid back then. It was either Elvis and race music or the cool cerebral jazz that had been swing. I was a late bloomer to bebop. Of course you were measured by how well you played bebop. Now of course it’s still nice to have people study Bud Powell no matter what. But in those days it was what were you going to be – an orchestral musician, or chops or what. Cassarino, we worked on scales, but we went right through repertoire. He gave me a book, and later I would tell people I was going to burn the fake book. Even that was tough reading. You could hear some of the stuff on radio. I started collecting a lot of Ella, Sarah Vaughn, just loved singers -- Nat King Cole. Of course then I did pretty well with Charlie Parker and Dizzy, I became a freak for Stan Kenton and later got to work with Bill Russo. Later I got to where I could do a lot of what are called standards. Right today, I think I could play fifty Gershwin songs. That doesn’t mean I’d do them well, but…that was the music. I joined Eddie White’s rock and roll band in Windor Locks CT. They liked it rhythmically, but not what chords I did. At the beginning they didn’t even like me rhythmically. I couldn’t swing, I couldn’t work with the drummer. But Windsor Locks…the VFW, there would be different halls. But maybe the other piano players were too expensive. I think maybe we played in Hartford once. It was really small town. At first I was snobbish, then I began to find some of that interesting. We’d do “Night Train” and this guy would honk that out. He was a tenor saxophone player. Now it sounds good, but Ray Charles came a little later. I also began going to Jinxey’s in Springfield on Hancock Street. It would be interesting to know if that place is still there and if Frankie Jonas still runs it. Then there was the Elks Club in North Hartford. I had my first rum & coke there. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday night a quartet played there and a guy would sit in on bass called Mo Cloud, who was married to Sadie. Ernie Wilson who was the regular bass player is now in Miami, doing research. There was a bass player called Norman, Bunny was the drummer.

B: Did these combos have singers?

R: No. This and Jinxey’s did standards including an Errol Garner piece called “Trio.” I would hear sort of be-bop. We’re now sort of ‘54-‘55-‘56. I’m one of the few blue eyed guys there. It was so close to the church, I was afraid I’d see – I called her my step mother Carter – she was a wonderful proud Pentacostal woman and I was so afraid I’d be found out going to that bar. And I could never join the church because I wouldn’t give up movies. I never gambled, and I could have given up a glass of wine back then, but…for music, I guess I would have been more open to what was then emerging as rock.

B: You started Bard in the fall of 56?

R: Yeah, I did, And Jim Case was the president.

B: Did you go there with the idea of studying jazz composition?