by Carolyn Glenn Brewer (Music 781.65 Methany)
Guitarist Pat Metheny is one of the most famous jazz musicians in recent decades, and possibly the most well-regarded jazz musician in recent history to grow up so close to Nebraska. He was born and raised in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City, where he found an incredibly nurturing environment for growing into a life in jazz. While the Kansas City area is well known in jazz history as one of the nation’s most important centers for jazz in the 1920s and 30s, the main centers of jazz had mostly moved to NYC and Chicago by the 1960s when Metheny was an aspiring guitarist. However, what remained of the jazz heritage of Kansas City by the 60s really was remarkable. There hasn’t been much written about that scene, or biographies about Pat Metheny, for that matter, but that changed recently with the publication of “Beneath Missouri Skies: Pat Metheny in Kansas City, 1964-1972” by Carolyn Glenn Brewer, which you can borrow from Polley.
The story behind this book is very
interesting unto itself: jumping ahead to the Author’s Note, which is placed
after the main body of the text, we learn that author Brewer grew up with the
Metheny brothers, and in particular had stayed in touch with Pat’s older
brother Mike, himself an author and well-regarded trumpet player. All three had
played in high school city bands together, gone to summer band camps together,
and played together in the Lee’s Summit Unity Band. All of this makes Brewer an
unusually perfect choice for writing this book: in addition to conducting lots
of interviews for her research toward this book, she was present when a lot of
the action happened in the first place. One of the challenges biographers
always face in situations like this is simply finding all of the right people
to interview: you don’t know what you don’t know, after all. But Brewer knew
exactly who had to be included to make this book as thorough a portrait as
possible.
The book is also a little unusual
because of Pat Metheny himself: despite having won 20 Grammys, and being the
only person to have won across 10 different categories, he remains a very
modest artist. At first, he was uncomfortable with the notion that someone
wanted to write a biography about him, and suggested that a book focus more on
the many musicians he played with in his formative years. Ultimately, the book
that Brewer created manages to do both, documenting the 60s Kansas City scene,
highlighting many of Metheny’s collaborators, teachers and peers at the time,
and profiling the beginnings of Metheny’s career in the center of them all. And
it’s likely that Brewer was able to get particularly personal interviews out of
most of her subjects, simply because they already knew her and considered her a
friend—an outsider writing this book probably wouldn’t have been able to
capture as much detail or warmth.
While “Beneath Missouri Skies” is a
biography of Pat Metheny, these conditions make it unique: the contents of this
entire book would typically be condensed into the first chapter or two of the
usual artist biography. As a person who reads a lot of artist biographies,
though, I found it to be a nice change of pace, being able to focus on a short
span of time that doesn’t even reach a decade, and getting to know the people
and places involved a little better than the fleeting mentions they would
otherwise have in a typical biography. The pace is leisurely, the people are
friendly, and that big Missouri sky reminds me of Nebraska, just a few hours
away.
The beginning of the book takes
place in 1964, and it marks two events in Metheny’s pre-teen years that led him
to the guitar. The first was a landmark year for many young people of Metheny’s
generation: seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. This performance led
Pat to ask his parents for a guitar. He was already playing trumpet, and his
parents weren’t enthusiastic about him taking up guitar, but eventually they
let him buy one on his own from paper route money. Three days after the Ed
Sullivan Beatles performance, the Miles Davis Quintet became the first jazz
band to perform at the Lincoln Center Philharmonic Hall, and the recordings
from their performance were made into two records, “My Funny Valentine” and
“Four and More.” Metheny’s older brother Mike, a great trumpet player following
in the footsteps of his father and maternal grandfather, picked up “Four and
More,” and according to Pat, “Within the first five seconds of the needle
touching that vinyl, my life was a different life.” By the time of the record
release, it was early 1966, and Pat was already playing rock music in his own
garage band, but jazz immediately became his passion.
Brewer discusses the musical
traditions specific to the Lee’s Summit area, which included the Unity Band, a
large-scale community band that played a variety of music from orchestral music
to show tunes. The band performed every summer dating back to 1922, and people
from all walks of life performed with them. Of note, many music students and
band directors played in the Unity Band, creating lots of musical mentorship
opportunities. As mentioned earlier, the author (who also went on to become a
band director) and both of the Metheny sons played in the band. Pat in
particular attributes a lot of his early musical understanding to band member
Keith House, who was their trumpet soloist during Metheny’s tenure in the
group. House was also the Lee’s Summit school district director of bands, and
both his educational skill and his passion for music laid an excellent
foundation for Metheny’s career from his earliest days performing in the brass
section.
Summer band camps also helped to
bring Metheny’s playing into focus. He remembers many of his teachers and
fellow students as an important part of his musical development, and after
camp, he stayed in touch with some students, and they all continued to play
together. Pat’s earliest bands were formed through making these relationships,
and being in a fairly small suburb meant that they often found places to
perform publicly, too. And he had the good fortune to continue working with
excellent educators at school—one of the big themes of this book, in fact, is
arguably the importance of band directors in the lives of young musicians.
These educators can truly inspire young performers to heights they may never
have imagined themselves being capable of, and Metheny’s long career is a
testament to the importance of this kind of quality preparation.
Generally, the book follows
Metheny’s early musical life, frequently stopping for discussions with and
about all of his collaborators. Some are simply regional influences, too: for
example, there were several notable Plains states guitar players whose work
influenced Pat’s early years, such as Ray Harris, Omaha’s Calvin Keys, and then
Wichita-based Jerry Hahn (who was born in Nebraska as well). Hahn’s playing in
the 60s was an influence on a lot of early jazz and fusion players, too, and he
went on to become an important music educator. It’s incredible to consider this
rich community of Kansas City-area musicians at the time, and it’s equally
remarkable to consider that most of the activity in the book takes place while
Pat is still in high school! There is a poignant moment toward the end of the
book when older brother Mike returned home from his time in the Army Band and
got a weekend of jazz theory from Pat—considering that Mike had been Pat’s
first musical mentor just a handful of years before, it’s heartening that he
was able to start returning the favor so quickly. Both brothers ultimately went
on to have fantastic careers in jazz.
I could see this book appealing to
a much wider audience than Metheny fans or jazz fans. It’s also a fascinating
portrait of midcentury small-town and suburban life in Plains states. Though
Nebraska doesn’t have the jazz tradition of Kansas City, one gets the feeling reading this book that it could just as well
be Lincoln as Lee’s Summit. Midwestern readers will likely feel some
familiarity with the camaraderie found among all of the musicians in this book,
as well as the work ethic that kept them all learning and growing together.
(If you enjoy this, you may also
wish to try Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer by Philip Watson, The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music by Ben Ratliff, or Arcana VII edited by John ZOrn.)
( official Pat Methany web
site ) | ( official Carolyn Glenn Brewer author web site )
Recommended
by Scott S.
Polley Music Library
Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
Check out this, and all the other great music resources, at the Polley Music Library, located on the 2nd floor of the Bennett Martin Public Library at 14th & "N" St. in downtown Lincoln. You'll find biographies of musicians, books about music history, instructional books, sheet music, CDs, music-related magazines, and much more. Also check out Polley Music Library Picks, the Polley Music Library's e-mail newsletter, and follow them on Facebook!
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