Welcome to Music for Life, enhancing the Armstrong concert experience. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. In today's episode, we continue a three-part series where we play a concert presented in Armstrong Auditorium on February 2nd, 2021. Featuring our very own jazz virtuoso and assistant music director here at Armstrong, Mark Jenkins. This concert featured a tribute to the late jazz legend Ellis Marsalis. To do this, Mr. Jenkins was accompanied by six incredible jazz musicians from right here in central Oklahoma. In this particular episode, we will begin the part of the program that served specifically as a tribute to Ellis Marsalis. So stick around as we hear songs like Have You Met Miss Jones, Stardust, Linus and Lucy, and more today on Music for Life.
On February 2nd, we had an incredible jazz concert here at Armstrong Auditorium. The seven musicians on stage were Jay Wilkinson trumpet, Zach Lee trombone, Vince Norman saxophone, Floyd Haynes on clarinet and saxophone, Jamar Poteet on drums, Raul Rias on bass, and leading up the band. And getting the main billing for this event was Mark Jenkins, assistant music director here at Armstrong and a jazz musician extraordinaire. We started hearing this concert in its entirety beginning with our last episode. In that episode, I also played an audio clip from Mark Jenkins talking about all the musicians he'd have helping him on stage. But we haven't really given a biographical sketch of Mark Jenkins, even in the episode leading up to the concert. We gave a very brief summary of his many talents, but I wanted to use this opportunity to introduce more of his background to us. To do that, I'll use a segment of Mark Jenkins describing all that to us. This is excerpted from an episode we had back in Season 1 of Music for Life. This will get you more acquainted with the musician featured on this concert here at Armstrong.
The first thing I ever played on piano was Popeye the Sailor Man. I wasn't taking lessons at the time. My mom had been very clear. I wouldn't have piano lessons until I asked for them. Honestly, I think she was just afraid I wouldn't sit still, which was probably accurate. Still, I could play the piano whenever I wanted, and I did. So I went over to the piano and picked out Popeye. My dad was pleased with this and took me to one of his gigs. So at five years old, I made my musical debut to the world in a dingy bar and got my first $5 tip. Then I went home and picked out Beer Barrel Polka.
This method wasn't satisfying for long, and I finally asked my mom for piano lessons. She started me with an old James Bastian method book, which I used until I moved on to John Thompson's teaching Little Fingers to play. My Little Fingers didn't have much trouble with that, but pretty soon after I started learning piano, someone robbed our house, taking most of what we owned. This was probably a blessing because they also took our television. Without much around us except for the piano for me to do for the next three years, I really wasn't distracted.
Both of my parents felt strongly that classical training was the only way to go. They didn't and they would not teach me to improvise. They had both learned to play mostly by ear and thought it hindered their development as pianists. My mom didn't tell me the first thing about improvisation until I was eight years old, when I learned to play my first hymn on the piano. The thing is, she didn't want me to play what was on the page. She wanted me to write in the chords and play from that. I still have that hymnal with my handwritten chords that she helped me figure out to this day. Then she told me the method that I would use.
play the bass note, and then play the chord in different inversions. I could also play the fifth of the chord on the third beat if the chord didn't change. The soprano, alto, and tenor all went in the right hand. So what I saw on the page was this. But what I actually played using the chord symbols was this. After just a couple of hymns, I stopped writing in the chords. I didn't need to anymore. When I looked at the music, I could tell what the chords were. This idea of seeing the chords behind the music is valuable for all sorts of things, from hymn playing to conducting, and it's invaluable for a jazz musician.
But I wasn't playing any jazz yet, and I wouldn't for several more years. We did, however, do shows with our church choir, which would tour around nursing homes and put on a variety show. I would play piano, a little bit of trombone, and we learned lots of famous standard tunes listening to the choir. Many of the standards I know today are actually from that experience. When I was 12 years old, some major things changed. First, my mom decided I needed a new piano teacher. At least where classical music was concerned, I played a little bit better than she did. I certainly didn't have her perfect pitch or her ability to improvise, but she still didn't care if I could improvise or not. I began studying with a renowned instructor in St. Louis named Jane Allen.
Miss Allen was an incredible teacher. She taught all of her students to practice in a clear, disciplined way. Her scale and arpeggio requirements were actually higher than my college would be later, and we learned a phenomenal amount of repertoire. She also identified my bad habits very quickly and broke them. For instance, I was a big foot tapper. This won't fly in the classical world, and she told me to stop tapping in the first lesson. When I came to my second lesson still tapping the foot, she stood on it until I stopped. It was never a problem again.
My mom also said it was time for me to start working. She took me to a coffee shop and sat me down to play and then promptly got me a job. That spread quickly. Within a couple months, I was playing at an upscale Russian restaurant two or three nights a week as well, and this is when I started playing jazz. It was never much. In a three-hour gig, I would probably play two hours and 40 minutes of classical music and 20 minutes of something less standard, whether it was Scott Joplin or New Age or pre-written jazz arrangements from books. I had an arrangement of Duke Ellington's Don't Get Around Much Anymore and of Fats Waller's Ain't Misbehavin', and I found that over time, I wasn't really playing what was on the page anymore, and I was interested in learning more jazz.
As I was starting out with jazz, my mom gave me lead sheets for two pieces, All the Things You Are and Autumn Leaves. These are standards for teaching jazz to beginners because they both follow standard progressions on the circle of fifths and have threes and sevens in the melody. One common exercise is to voice a piece entirely with the root, the three, and the seven, so the first phrase of Autumn Leaves would sound like this. It was a great exercise, but I knew my jazz didn't sound like jazz. I was about 15 and told my mom I wanted to buy a jazz piano CD, but didn't know what to try. She recommended Ellis Marsalis, and I selected Heart of Gold based on the included tracks. I recognized a few of the numbers on it. This was my first real glimpse into jazz piano. I still don't know why mom chose Ellis Marsalis as my starting point, but I'm glad she did.
Heart of Gold was a great starting point, and I immediately started doing what most jazz musicians do, trying to transcribe his playing. I couldn't do it, though. Simply put, I couldn't hear the nuances of the chords. One side note, this is not a question of perfect pitch. Whether or not I can pull a C out of midair doesn't necessarily correlate with whether I can dissect a chord with a flat 9 and a sharp 11. As an example, my mom could tell you any note you'd like to know at any time of the day or night, the classic definition of perfect pitch, but would not change keys in the middle of the way you look tonight because she couldn't figure out the modulation. She couldn't have transcribed that Ellis Marsalis recording for me, either.
Going back to Mr. Marsalis, as you probably already know, he is the father of several jazz musicians. The legendary jazz trumpet player and composer Wynton Marsalis, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, who did a brief stint as band leader when Jay Leno took over The Tonight Show, trombonist and producer Delfeo Marsalis, and drummer Jason Marsalis. Despite being unable to hear Ellis Marsalis's chords at the time, my ear certainly improved from the effort. I may not have learned to hear every note he played, but I did learn to discern the overall quality of the chord and put down some version of it. Technically speaking, I suppose this was my first lesson with Ellis Marsalis.
I tried to learn some versions of most of the songs on that album. Have You Met Miss Jones? Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? And lots of other great standards. A few years after listening to that album, Heart of Gold, I had a two-hour lesson with Mr. Marsalis in his home in New Orleans, and I played A Nightingale Sang in Barkley Square for him. When I finished, he said I made the same mistake he did. I didn't play the introduction. Many of the old music theater tunes have introductions to them written by the composers, and most jazz players just leave them off. Tommy Dorsey got after me for that in a club one night on A Nightingale Sang in Barkley Square, so now I always play the intro, he told me.
Then he asked if I knew how the intro went, and I said I wasn't sure, and I started to sing it. Oh, you can sing. You have to be really careful about that, he interrupted. He went on to warn me at length that many jazz musicians, he specifically named Harry Connick Jr. and Diana Krall, tried to get known as pianists and couldn't because they became known as singers instead. The audience connects with that more easily, he said, and once you're known as a singer, you won't be known as a pianist.
He's probably right about that too, but I just can't seem to keep my mouth shut. So that was a little from Mark Jenkins about some of his musical background. As he stated, he's had a versatile upbringing artistically, and he has a lot to show for it. Many of his musical exploits are found on the Philadelphia Church of God website. He has performed extensively on our campus' various musicals and has been featured as producer, composer, arranger, and performer on the Philadelphia Church of God's many inspirational albums. This is one of those songs, a jazz number written by Mark Jenkins, the lyrics also, which are sacred in nature, and Mark Jenkins on lead vocals. This is from the 2004 album.
album of the Philadelphia Church of God, Bring in the Harvest.
And thank him that he looks to a beauty little man who has no strength or might And guides me through the darkest night Cause I'm not wise and I'm not noble But I love God's way And I have strength in his great mercy Father, help me every day Thank my father for the power he gives me in this final hour
It helps me learn and helps me grow, that I might teach the world to know him. It makes me wise and makes me noble, and I will learn to teach his way to everyone in his great family. Father, teach me. Father, teach me every day. We're talking about Mark Jenkins here on Music for Life, who was featured on a recent concert at Armstrong Auditorium. And I was directing our listeners to more material done by Mr. Jenkins. That was one song he wrote and recorded in a jazz style called Wise and Noble. It also featured Terry Scarberry on guitar, Don Monday on bass, Roger Owens on percussion, and Ken Sarkey on flute. Mr. Jenkins is responsible for producing, writing, arranging, and performing on many of the inspirational albums produced by the Philadelphia Church of God. All this can be found at pcg.church if you click on the Resources tab and then the Music tab. No login is required.
you'll see musicals like Undefeated, where Mr. Jenkins plays King Hezekiah, The Widow's Might, where he plays Boaz. He recorded the role of the prophet Samuel in our production of David, and the scribe Baruch in Jeremiah. He served as conductor for two oratorios on that webpage, Song of Songs and Abraham. And for the remainder of the inspirational albums on that page, you can stream many of his arrangements and compositions. Plus, under the Extras tab, if I can draw your attention to the Extras tab, you can hear his original composition written for the dedication ceremony of Armstrong Auditorium.
We'll also put a link to his YouTube channel in our show notes. There you can hear a variety of things both he, his family, and his students have done, as well as an original song he wrote in honor of one of the greatest baseball players alive today. That's on his YouTube page, and I'll let you find that. He also is passionate about passing the musical torch on to the next generation. He's been teaching piano for over 26 years and has been doing so in an official capacity for our college here since 2002, where he also teaches voice, musicianship for singers. He conducts both the youth chorus and youth orchestra on our campus. And like a true Renaissance man, he also teaches English composition, reading comprehension, study skills.
and a variety of literature courses. This concert of his on February 2nd was specifically a tribute to the late jazz legend Ellis Marsalis, whom he talked about briefly in that biographical sketch you just heard from him. The second half of his concert featured this tribute, and that's where we'll start our program today, the beginning of this second half. In this segment, Mr. Jenkins also talks in a little more detail about his interaction with Mr. Marsalis.
In this first set of tunes, we will hear three numbers. First is Have You Met Miss Jones, a tune from 1937 by the famous lyricist-songwriter duo Rodgers and Hart. Then Mr. Jenkins plays a famous Ellis Marsalis piano solo called Hallucinations. And then a collaboration with yours truly on the song recorded by Ellis Marsalis and one of his protégés, Harry Connick Jr. That final song of this set is called Stardust. So I want to tell you a little bit about my experience with Ellis Marsalis. The first album I ever purchased with my own money was a jazz piano CD that my mom recommended by Ellis Marsalis called Heart of Gold.
And the track we're about to do as a piano trio is Have You Met Miss Jones. That's the first thing on the album. Right after I graduated college, I decided that I wanted to try to meet Ellis Marsalis. And of course, the question you ask is, how do you do that? Probably I answered it differently than most people do. I probably should have called people who might have known him. Instead, I looked him up in the white pages. This actually works. That's how I scheduled a lesson with Ellis Marsalis. I looked him up in the white pages, and then I did a two-hour lesson with him in Louisiana at his home. He asked me how he knew if I could play the piano. So I told him I was transcribing the piece that I'll play for you now, which is off of an album of his. The piece is called Hallucinations by Bud Powell.
So, one of Ellis Marsalis' students, who a lot of you have probably heard of, but is not one of his sons, is Harry Connick Jr. I was listening to the Harry Connick Jr. album 25, and he played Stardust. And I realized when I was listening to Harry Connick Jr. sing Stardust that he was not playing the piano. And then it got to the solo section, and I realized it was Ellis Marsalis playing the piano, which was confirmed inside the liner notes. Stardust has always been one of my favorite songs, the Clifford Brown version being my absolute favorite version of it.
I mean, it's really a song about the song itself, about the memory of Love's refrain, about remembering a song from a long time ago and those circumstances not being able to be repeated. What I have for you tonight, I've transcribed what Ellis Marsalis played on that Harry Connick album, and we'll have our music director, Mr. Ryan Malone, come out and sing it for you. And now the purple dusk of twilight time Steals across the meadows of my heart High up in the sky the little stars climb Always reminding me that we're apart. You wander down the lane and far away. Leaving me a song that will not die. Love is now the stardust of yesterday. The music of the years gone by. Sometimes I wonder.
Why I spend the lonely night of a song. The melody haunts my reverie. I am once again with you when our love was new. And each kiss had inspiration that was long ago. Now my consolation is in the stardust of a song. Beside a garden wall.
Where stars are bright. The nightingale tells his fairy tale. Of paradise where roses grew. Though I dream in vain. My stardust melody. The memory of love's refrain.
You are listening to Music for Life. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. This is KPCG. In today's episode, we are playing a concert presented in Armstrong Auditorium on February 2nd, 2021. This concert featured our very own Mark Jenkins, along with six other great Oklahoma-based jazz musicians presenting a tribute to the late Ellis Marsalis. And this is the second in a three-part series where we are playing this concert in its entirety. We just heard Stardust, written by Hoagy Carmichael in 1927, featuring Mark Jenkins on piano, Vince Norman with an incredible saxophone solo there in the middle, and then yours truly on the vocals.
Before that, we heard a piece called Hallucinations by Bud Powell, and then before that, Have You Met Miss Jones. Next, let's hear two more numbers from the concert. The second features the great trombonist Mr. Jenkins had on stage with him, Zach Lee. It's called I Cover the Waterfront. This 1933 standard was recorded by Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday, but they are doing the rendition recorded by Ellis Marsalis and his son, trombonist Del Feo Marsalis. Before that will be the famous tune, Linus and Lucy, written by Vince Guaraldi as part of the soundtrack to the Peanuts animated specials.
So the entire Marsalis family made a Charlie Brown album called Joe Cool's Blues. This is the title track, Linus and Lucy. So Del Feo Marsalis made an album called The Last Southern Gentleman with his father. And there's a great track on there called I Cover the Waterfront. So I wanted to do that number with Mr. Zach Lee. Just piano and trombone. You are listening to Music for Life. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. This is KPCG.
This featured the great trombonist we had there on the Armstrong stage, Zach Lee. at Zach Lee for his help mixing this concert. He graciously took the audio from the live performance, all the microphone recordings and really fine tuned all the levels and did some high quality mixing and mastering. So you're hearing a refined professional level mix of this incredible live concert. So thank you, Zach.
Now, we don't have time in this episode to play the entire second half of Mr. Jenkins' concert, the half that featured the tribute to Ellis Marsalis, but I do have time to play just one more number on this episode. We'll wrap up this concert replay and the special tribute to the late jazz legend Ellis Marsalis in our next episode. You won't want to miss that episode, where we play favorites like Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans, A Nightingale Sang in Barclay Square, The Very Thought of You, and much more, including a great Dixieland encore number. To conclude today's program, we'll hear the Ellis Marsalis tune, Mozartin. This song was written by Alvin Batiste. It is from a 1962 album that Ellis collaborated on and then released again in 1994 on an album Ellis did with his sons, Branford Delfeo and Jason.
More information about events at Armstrong Auditorium can be found at armstrongauditorium.org or by following Armstrong Auditorium on social media. And I will also point you to today's show notes, which will get you to Mark Jenkins' YouTube channel. And then, of course, you can also refer to all of his exploits on our pcg.church music page. And that's pcg.church under the Resources tab, under the Music tab, and that's all available without any login required. All right, so here it is to close out today's episode. Mozartin, I hope you enjoy, and I hope you'll join us next time on Music for Life.
So this next number I picked because when I said I was doing an Ellis Marsalis tribute, Zach over there said that we had to do Mozart. This is one of the few Ellis Marsalis tunes I did not know, but this is Mozart, which he actually did record several times. And we'll get several of the guys in for this on Soho's. You have been listening to Music for Life, a production of KPCG 101.3 on the FM dial in Edmond, Oklahoma. From the Herbert W. Armstrong College campus, I'm Ryan Malone. Thanks for joining me.