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Discography | Personnel
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Kashmere
Stage Band on NPR Egon and Kashmere Stage
Band director Conrad O. Johnson talk with NPR. Click
here to hear the interview with the legendary, 92-year-old
band instructor. NPR story | audio (MP3, 8 min.)
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From the early 1960s through the mid 1980s,
most every American high school band director took the initiative
to record and release his pupils’ music on vinyl. Capitalizing
on custom record pressing plants in different areas of the
country – Cardinal in the Northeast, Gabor Industries
in Florida, Delta Custom in the Midwest, for examples –
and Saugus, California-based Century Records’ user-friendly
recording/production process, band directors manufactured
records to sell to students, parents and any other benign
soul who could stomach their typically rough-hewn, amateurish
cacophony. Countless thousands of high school band records
have been recorded and released, most packaged in whatever
stock sleeves the manufacturing plant had on hand, pressed
in runs of a few hundred pieces and distributed – if
you can call it that – within the limits of whatever
town or city the school called home.
This is not to say that all high school band
records are worthy only as nostalgia pieces for those involved
in their production. Although a good bulk of the early ’60s
high school recordings feature symphonic bands, marching bands
and the random glee club, by the late ’60s, high school
band directors often shaped their ensembles as “stage
bands”: performance bands styled in the form of the
jazz big band. The big band era of America’s jazz history
(roughly speaking, the decade from 1935 through 1945) had
long passed. But some leaders from the big band era –
notably Duke Ellington and Count Basie – remained attractions
though the ’60s, and leaders such as Stan Kenton and
Woody Herman kept relevant with a younger audience by embracing
the changes occurring in popular rhythm within the ’60s
incarnations
of their bands. Many high school stage bandleaders themselves
were either products of the big bands or had grown up surrounded
by the sounds of the swing decade. They pressed their young
students to excel in a most rigorous musical form.
A stage band’s members were often more
interested in putting forth their take on popular rhythm than
proving that they could swing like Bennie Goodman or Glenn
Miller. They were kids, after all. Though their youthful energies
were somewhat restrained by the big band form, this desire
has led to large number of interesting (and a small number
of amazing) recordings. By the late ’60s, when the funk
beat (alternatively labeled “rock” or “soul”
beat) took over as the prevailing rhythm behind popular music,
it wasn’t uncommon to hear a white stage band attempt
covers of tunes by horn-heavy rock bands such as Blood, Sweat
& Tears and Chicago. It wasn’t uncommon for a black
stage band to cover funk king James Brown and his JBs (big)
band. Occasionally, an enterprising band would come up with
an original composition that melded the best of jazz, rock
and funk. And the music they created wasn’t only novelty.
The very fact that the Detroit Sex Machines were high school
students when they recorded four of the best funk sides ever
begs the question: wonder what Detroit’s Southeastern
High School Stage Band sounded like?
In large cities, where many high school stage
bands sprung up in proximity to one another, a logical phenomenon
often occurred: one stage band, and usually one band leader,
catalyzed the development, and sound, of a region. Stage bands
were competition bands by nature, and a winning band’s
formula would often be adopted by its followers. Often, the
reigning bandleader would release a large number of albums
(sometimes recorded in a studio, but most times recorded live),
which both served as fodder, and a source of envy, for his
compatriots. One example is Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where
L. Jerome Hick’s awesome output with Douglass High School’s
Stage Band set the bar for the region’s bands.
But in Houston, Texas, Conrad O. Johnson pursued
a far loftier goal with his stage band at Kashmere High School,
a predominantly black school located in the city’s north
end (referred to in Houston as “Kashmere Gardens”).
He wanted to lead not only the best high school stage band
in Texas, but the best high school stage band in the world.
Our opinion is that he succeeded, and we’re thankful
that he thoroughly documented his band’s progress, so
that we can present to you the Kashmere Stage Band’s
musical legacy.
In the mid ’60s through the ’70s,
in Houston’s bustling metropolis, Johnson (known by
many as “Prof.”) made a career of producing leagues
of musicians capable of playing competitively with any band
in the nation, professional or otherwise. More than simply
a product of the big band era (his childhood friends and early
musical peers included legends like Illinois Jacquet and Arnette
Cobb), Johnson bestowed a living history to his young students.
And while many band directors simply tolerated the use of
popular rhythms in their stage bands, Johnson embraced the
funk movement that enveloped his kids. He encouraged composition
– both by writing original funk songs for his band to
perform and by allowing the Kashmere Band to play songs written
by band members. Never one to succumb to novelty, Johnson
didn’t simply throw funk beats beneath a jazz song to
please his kids. He instructed his band to play funk because
he respected the funk idiom in the same way he respected jazz.
Nor did he simply borrow charts from progressive big banders
such as Herman, as was common amongst high school bandleaders
from the era. He arranged nearly every one of his band’s
songs himself, and those that he didn’t arrange he allowed
his students to arrange. He worked year-round with his eager
charges, constantly pushing the limits as to what their band
could accomplish. He built the Kashmere Stage Band from scratch
and his winning combination of powerful funk rhythms beneath
expertly executed jazz solos quickly influenced those bandleaders
directly within his sphere and those he met – and almost
always bested – in competitions across the world.
Egon
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