I went in [Sweet Basil band] and played with them, maybe half the gig for almost eight years or more. Jon Gordon More Quotes by Jon Gordon More Quotes From Jon Gordon There are a lot of people that impacted me. I remember hearing Oscar Peterson live at the Blue Note, which was very expensive, but... $50 in the '80s... hard to come up with. But it was amazing. Jon Gordon oscars blue people [Eddie Locke] had a huge impact in my life. He was a great jazz drummer. He was mentored by Papa Joe Jones and he played for many years with Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge and actually got me on a gig with Roy Eldridge when I was 20 that I'll never forget. Jon Gordon papa impact years Sometimes I would go on Sundays and play with Doc Cheatham. I was also playing in a band of teenagers led by Don Sickler called Young Sounds, and The McDonald's Big Band led by Rich De Rosa and Justin Di Cioccio. All those guys were great educators and musicians and taught me a lot! Simultaneous to all this, another one of my musical fathers came into my life, Eddie Locke. Jon Gordon teenager sunday father Families that I lived with a little bit in junior high and quite a bit in high school and college. Just to have a safe, sane space with food and things like that. That's what I needed. And people were really kind and really generous. So I think the world kind of opened up my first years of performing arts, studying classical saxophone with Caesar DiMauro. Jon Gordon college art school Larry [ Laurenzano] said to me one day near the end of junior high, "Jon, are you Jewish?" I said, "No." And he said, "Well neither am I. I'm not sure of Caesar DiMauro, but he teaches at the JCC and I got you a scholarship there." Jon Gordon junior-high juniors one-day I was commuting three to four hours a day, I had jobs for much of it. But I was always involved in going to some ensemble someplace. Taking my lessons at the local Jewish community center on Staten Island. Jon Gordon community islands jobs I didn't always have time to practice as much as I wanted to do, that was a real problem for me in high school and college. Jon Gordon real college school When I got to Performing Arts, within the first week, a few days, Bill Charlap walked in and couldn't read music but he's playing all these solos from Keith Emerson of ELP, and Rick Wakeman from Yes. Real impressive rock piano and keyboard things. And we had really, truly amazing young 13-14 year old classical players in our year who had been practicing six, eight hours a day for eight years. So it was like "Whoa." Jon Gordon real player art Particularly, in my situation, I needed a way out of where I was. So music was that. Jon Gordon situation needed way [Larry Laurenzano] gave me a junior high school saxophone to take to high school, because I was always taking one of our school horns home to practice and I couldn't afford to buy one. He gave my friend, Tyrone, a tuba and he gave me a junior high saxophone for each of us to use at Performing Arts High School with. My audition piece was selections from Rocky. We were not sophisticated. But we had some spirit about it. We enjoyed it, and it was a way out. Jon Gordon home art school Sense of community was really fostered by Larry Laurenzano, who was a great educator. Jon Gordon larry educator community Walk down Forest Ave to Joey's Pizza like we used to do after performances, which doesn't exist anymore. We had a sense of community [in the school band]. Jon Gordon band community school We had a great educator [in the school band], a man named Larry Laurenzano. He was tough, but we knew that he loved us. And that was the beginning of playing music with people and really being inspired and having fun and being in a community. Jon Gordon fun men school I finally got to junior high and I got to start saxophone. There were a few of us that were in the beginner band in sixth grade that made it to the advanced band, which was called the morning band at our junior high school in Staten Island. Jon Gordon islands morning school I asked all through third, fourth and fifth grade, when they were asking kids to be in the band, to be in the school band. But they wouldn't let me do it. Jon Gordon band kids school I heard these stories [about musicians from my mother] and somehow music, it was my understanding what my father had done. I didn't know it was misinformation. It sort of inwardly in my psyche laid the template for music being affiliated with my father and my family. Jon Gordon understanding mother father [My mother told me] stories about Nat King Cole, and Miles Davis, and seeing pictures in later years with band leaders like Alvino Ray. Jon Gordon kings mother years We had Bob's [Gordon] records, and he's on Clifford Brown's first record as a leader. I believe it was Clifford Brown's first record as a leader and had the original versions of Daahoud and Joy Spring that were arranged by Bob's best friend, the West Coast tenor player named Jack Montrose, who I later met. Jon Gordon player spring believe What I feel the most confident about as a teacher, whatever my strengths and weaknesses are. The fact that I got to be around those people, I feel like that I have something to offer because of that blessing. Being around them a little bit... I'm not them. I'm certainly not trying to compare myself to them. But in lieu of them being able to impart something, the fact that I had so many people like that that were kind to me and talked to me was invaluable. Jon Gordon blessing teacher people When I was a kid, I always saw these pictures of a man called Bob Gordon with a baritone saxophone, who I understood was my father. Turns out he wasn't. He was my mother's first husband. Jon Gordon husband mother father
