Cass Corridor Documentation Project Oral History Project
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SPANGLER, INTERVIEW 1 Cass Corridor Documentation Project Oral History Project Interviewee: Bud Spangler Relationship to Cass Corridor: Jazz Musician, Radio Program Host and Director Interviewer: Robin Darling Date of the interview: April 7, 2011 Location: Wayne State University, Detroit, Mi (telephone) Darling: Hello Bud, how are you doing? Spangler: I’m fine, Robin. Darling: Wonderful, wonderful. So, if you’d like let’s start with some biographical information. If you could tell me— Spangler: You got it. Darling: [If you could tell me] where you were born and raised. SPANGLER, INTERVIEW 2 Spangler: I was born in Norwalk, Ohio, which is in the northern part of the state not far from Sandusky and Cedar Point and all that. And the high school in our town was about two blocks from our house, but the football field where they marched and practiced was across the street from our house. So, everyday they would come marching down the street and go into the football field across the street. So from as early as I can remember the marching band was across the street and the drum majorette was my babysitter so, it was ok with her and it was ok with my mom. I would go and march up and down the sidelines along with the band. And the drums always thrilled me. The drums just thrilled me! So I got to hear music live in that manner. And then we moved to Detroit. My dad got a job in Detroit and actually lived in Wyandotte. And we used to go back to Norwalk to visit relatives. And I was fooling around with my—we didn’t have a record player at our house, but my uncle Eddy had this great collection of stuff and I didn’t know anything about Jazz. I started listening to stuff there and I came across this record by Bob Crosby and the Bob Cats playing “South Ramparts Street Parade.” And unbeknownst to me at that time, marches were a large part of the repertoire of early New Orleans, ‘cause that’s the music that they— the slaves were taught to play for various events and so forth. And, then after the Civil War when they were playing in their own clubs and a lot of stuff was based on march music. And, so, I heard this Bob Crosby thing and it was essentially a march but it was so wide open and swingin’ and exciting. And, I said “What’s this? What’s this?” and they said “Oh, that’s jazz.” And so I felt very fortunate inasmuch as I was introduced to jazz at the beginning of jazz’s history. And as I grew older I learned, step by step: I learned swing, I learned bebop, I learned avant-garde, every step of the way. So there’s no area of the music at all that I had any negative feelings about. And, I have some knowledge of all of it. Darling: Right. Wonderful. So when did you get your first drum set? SPANGLER, INTERVIEW 3 Spangler: Well, I got my—my dad had been a drummer it turned out. And, he had a bass drum in his attic back in Wisconsin. And, one summer they let me bring it home. And, we had a neighbor who was the drummer; he gave me a pair of brushes and a pair of sticks and I (laughter) turned the bass drum on its side and played it like a snare drum. And, my best friend was a trumpet player so the two of us would put on these little concerts in the back yard and stuff like that for the neighbor kids. And then they realized I was serious about it and they bought me a snare drum and I started taking lessons. And, I worked my very first gig when I was in the seventh grade. Darling: Oh, wow. Spangler: Yeah. Darling: What were you doing in that gig? Spangler: Dance music. We were playing at the junior high school. My teacher, my drum teacher, was also the band director of a couple of the schools in town. And, so we played all kinds of stuff, including jazz and some of the pop tunes from the era, which were usually ballads, like “Harbor Lights” and “Blue Skies” and tunes like that, you know. So I got a chance to play all kinds of music, and met some of my very first musician friends, some of whom are still friends and still playing. And that was—God that had to have to be sometime in the early fifties [1950s]. Darling: So did you continue to play gigs all throughout high school as well? Spangler: Very much so. As a matter of fact, I even had my own band while I was still in grade school. And when I went to the public high school—I went to Catholic grade school, St. Joseph’s—and I started SPANGLER, INTERVIEW 4 in grade school to lead a band; and we’d play for dances at the high school. So by the time I was a freshman in high school people thought I had been there for years. So, yeah, it was a great opportunity; we had a lot of fun. Darling: And then following high school you went to Michigan State [University]. Spangler: Yes, that’s right. Darling: Tell me a little bit about that. Spangler: Michigan State was full of talented musicians. Being right in the center of the state, musicians from Jackson and Ann Arbor and Battle Creek and Flint would come through Lansing. And, I got to play with a whole lot of wonderful musicians. My main mentor is still playing, a tenor saxophone player named Benny Poole, who lived in Jackson. I would work with Benny on a regular basis, at least once every weekend. And then I had this wonderful accident. I was the drummer on a Saturday morning TV show that we had on public television there. The host of the program graduated, and because I was always able to fill time by bantering with him, the producer of the program asked me if I would like to be the new emcee. Of course I was terrified, I was nineteen. (laughter) Darling: (Laughter) Spangler: I mean it, I was terrified. Darling: Sounds like it was a great opportunity then. SPANGLER, INTERVIEW 5 Spangler: It was a great opportunity. And I got to do interviews and all kinds of things. We were on opposite of American Bandstand. And the idea was to present an alternative to the Dick Clark formula. And we had live music. And sometimes I played drums in that band, and sometimes there were too many other things to do, so I didn’t. But usually I was the drummer in the band. And my friend Benny Poole came up from Jackson and we had a very, very good professional jazz group on the show. Darling: So did this influence what you decided to end up studying at Michigan State? Spangler: Well, no, I actually went there study radio, television, and film. Darling: Oh, so it worked out well then. Spangler: Yeah, it did. And I was hoping—you know they had a dormitory radio station in one of the dorms; and I did some fill shifts over there, but I couldn’t get my own show. And so instead of starting out in radio as I planned to do, had hoped to do, I ended up with a television show of my own, which is pretty cool! Darling: But as we’ll see, it later turned out to help you with some of the other shows that you helped to work with. Spangler: Absolutely so. I should say, Robin, that when I first heard this music and I went running back to all my friends with jazz records, and I said “Check this out! Check this out!” I realized nobody knew anything about it, they didn’t care about it. And I suddenly became a missionary for jazz music, and it became my goal. There was a lot of good jazz on the radio in those days, in the old days of A.M. radio. You could pull in stations from Chicago and New York and New Orleans, and it was wonderful. So, I’d sit up late at night listening to these excellent disc jockeys talk about music and play the latest stuff. SPANGLER, INTERVIEW 6 Darling: Wonderful. So did you get to go out and see any of the acts that you were interested in back then in college? Spangler: When I was in college, yeah. We actually—the band I was describing to you, Benny Poole and that gang—actually they opened a concert for Ray Charles when Ray had his big band on tour. And one of trumpet players in that band, I would meet many years later in a different function, and that was Marcus Belgrave. Darling: Right. And, he worked with Ray Charles up until the early sixties [1960s], was it? Spangler: I believe so, yeah. Darling: So who else has influenced you musically? Or, at least in your earlier years who influenced you musically, in terms of the drums and Jazz music in general? Spangler: Well, when I was learning to play Dixieland jazz, I was a fan of people like Ray Baduke and, um, that’s the only one I can think of right now, but he was the drummer with Bob Crosby. And my brother went off to Purdue—he was five years older than I was—and he came back and said, “why are you listening to that stuff, man, you gotta’ listen to Gene Krupa and Benny Goodman and the Carnige Hall concert and all that.” He turned me onto that music, and I fell in love with that.