Oral History Program Clayton Furch Adam Rosenberg 30 January 2009 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Clayton Furch Interviewed by Adam Rosenberg 30 January 2009 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Furch, Clayton, an oral history by Adam Rosenberg, 30 January 2009, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Clayton Furch. The interview was conducted on January 30, 2009, by Adam Rosenberg. Furch discusses his experience with music, specifically jazz. AR: So I guess I'll just start right off and get right into the interview process, alright? CF: Sure. AR: So how did you start playing music? CF: Oh, I grew up in the twin cities of Minnesota and I started on piano for about a year then I switched to sax and clarinet all the way through the university back in the University of Minnesota and played in dance bands back there on sax and clarinet. And then, it was a long story, but I won't make it a long story, fairly short; my dad was transferred out to Utah to work here in Ogden about the time I was graduating from the University of Minnesota so I put in to teach school out here and came out here and taught school in the Ogden School District 34 years as a band director. AR: Really. CF: Yeah, that was a fun experience, and then after I retired from that I went up to Weber State. I had some faculty I was teaching in jazz, piano, history of jazz, and some other things. AR: Yeah, but when I got out here, there were very few piano players around, and I had been used to gigging on sax and clarinet, so I started playing piano and then one thing led to another. So for the last, oh how many years since the late fifties. Forty years, nearly going on fifty years I've been playing mostly piano. I still play saxophone though. 1 AR: Oh, wow. So in Junction City Jazz Band, you play all the instruments? CF: No, no just piano. AR: Just piano? CF: Yeah and I've been in that band about eight years I think. I played in bands back in Minnesota but that was sax and clarinet, so this has just been piano. AR: So how do you feel about the differences between playing piano and clarinet and sax? CF: Yeah, well that is a good question. In a big band everyone is really music. Everyone is reading music, but the piano probably has more opportunities for improvisation than any other instrument. Like in the trumpet part they'll say okay here's a trumpet solo for sixteen bars or course or something like that. Whereas the piano part I pretty well do a lot of improvising all the way through the piece. AR: Really. CF: Some things I play as they are written depending on what it is. A lot, some of the music is just chord symbols so it’s entirely improvisation if you, you know as a guitar player you know what chord symbols are. AR: Yeah, right, right, wow... So I guess a lot of people... so there is quite a distinct difference between jazz band and big band, or is it just... CF: Yes, uh, in a small... I'm going to say a small combo... I'm talking three or four pieces, it's entirely improvisation. I mean very rarely will you use music, or you might use a lead sheet which is the chord and melody, you know. AR: Right, right. 2 CF: Whereas in the big band with sixteen, seventeen pieces you pretty well have to follow the charts. AR: Right, oh, that makes sense. So you'll just open up like sixteen measures of the solo and say it's like the trombone solo. CF: Yeah the soloist takes, but everyone else is playing their parts, whereas with the piano I can pretty well do a lot of fill-ins all the way through. So I really enjoy it. It's quite a bit different from playing ... like I've played with a duo with a sax player, Joe McQueen, we do a duo and then we do a quartet with Joe, and then we had a bass and uh... Well, you know Dr. Keipp, Don Keipp he plays with the Junction City Band. We had drums and bass with sax and piano. And that's entirely improvisation. AR: Really? So you guys just get out the key symbols and then… CF: Oh, we'll just say, okay let's play George and we already know the tune because we've played it many times. We may play it a little differently every time. Whereas in the big band if you're playing a written arrangement, you pretty well, you know, you stay the arrangement. AR: Oh, well, that is cool. So how did you originally get involved into big band or jazz, or just music in general, I guess. CF: Well the twin cities is really a good spot for growing up because there is a lot of live music between those two cities, and I mainly started playing in the big bands to put my wife through university. You know, we didn't have bukoo scholarships like they do now days, and so with a little help from my folks I paid my way through University for four years. 3 AR: Oh, wow. CF: And it's been a good source of income for me during, well, I don't know... I don't want to get into the school-teacher deal, you know. They're fighting for salaries and it's always a struggle, but most of my fellow teachers when I was teaching in the Ogden Public Schools had second jobs and they would finish teaching during the day and go to work at a gas station or for the railroad or something like that. And I could go out and... well I taught privately. I taught private lessons until just a few years ago. I haven't... but I could go out and make some good money doing something I enjoyed doing. AR: Yeah, wow. So you kind of stayed with the music your whole life. That's awesome. CF: Yeah and then when I got into this recording thing... this was about five or six years ago. My son helped me set up this recording studio and I really enjoyed this because here I am completely free to do what I want. I can, you know, go into this, and I MIDI the stuff and then I can adjust it, take out all the wrong notes, sensor that out, adjust everything and get it just the way I want it and then put it on a CD and... So I've made. Well, this was one of my, oh this was probably about number twelve which is favorites the second time around. So I am working on number fourteen now. AR: Wow, so fourteen, Geez. And how long have you, when was your first one? CF: Well I think the first one we did was a Christmas CD about '05 probably, maybe '04 I can't remember. AR: Wow, so about four years or so. CF: Five years... 4 AR: So um, do you feel that like there has been a revitalization of jazz, or how do you think, or big band music, or how do you compare it to maybe…because I've read a lot and in the seventies they said there was a revitalization and how do you feel that jazz music has going right now? CF: Well they say that every few years, I mean jazz will never have the audience that rock or hip pop or rap or that type of thing for young people. You know, they want something different. But the ones that are really thinking, AR: The ones that are using their brains...laughing. CF: Well, oh man, I don't know about that. You better sensor that one. I mean there's more to jazz than just a bunch of people beating on the drum and playing tuga (two chords on the guitar). I'm over simplifying here. My apologies to people that play that kind of music. AR: No I agree. I cannot go to sleep with jazz music just because there is too much... CF: Yeah, right. AR: You can't, right. So how do you feel, then, that the big band or jazz area is viewed by young people? Do you think they really think about it, or? CF: Well, I think that several years ago it kind of had a renewed interest with the younger people. You know, with the Junction City band, when I first started playing with them the average age was probably in the fifties or maybe even the sixties; and the last three or four years we've been getting as young as junior high, high school and a lot of university students. So the age-span there is... and I think a lot of this has to do with renewed interest in ballroom dancing, you know with the things on TV. The same thing with 5 dancing. There is more to ballroom dancing. It is similar to the band type of thing, you know, listening to music and dancing to it. You've got to use a little more brains. I keep using that word, than just standing out there and moving your body. AR: Right, there are steps involved. So do you play in quite a bit of bands in the area? CF: Well, that's the only big band. I did, for several years I played with the Crestmark band out of Logan when they had a big thing up there called the Glen Miller Show which was a floor show. I played with that band and we traveled around. We went back to the Midwest and played in Chicago and Iowa and we went up to Sun Valley and played. I played in the big band and then there was a floor show. In fact my son produced the floor show. AR: Really? CF: We did that for twenty years and then Utah State decided they didn’t want that, so. I haven't played with any other big bands outside of the Junction City band. AR: Oh really? Ah. CF: No, but like with the small groups I have some steady engagements that we play monthly and now we're playing down at the Union Station. You know once a month they have their thing through Weber State. I'm playing down there next month with Joe McQueen and the quartet. So come down and hear that if you want. That's pretty... AR: Yeah, that would be neat. Yeah. So do you feel that a lot of your audience is...? Do you see a lot of the same people that you perform for, or are there a lot of different faces? CF: Uh, I think there is pretty much the same crowd that follows that type of music around. If it's a small group or if it's the big band. As the word spreads people will come in more I 6 think. One problem we have with the Junction City Band ... Do you remember when they renovated the Union Building up there and everything was shut down pretty much. So we went for a year or maybe two years without having any public masses. And that has been really tough to try to get back our crowd that we had. AR: Oh yeah, because now of course you guys are playing quite often within the next few months right, I mean. CF: Yeah, well, Junction City has one public dance a month. We played a couple of weeks ago in Salt Lake for the Utah School Boards convention and we put on an hour program for them, and that really went well. And we have an outstanding vocalist now, a girl Ruth Stephensen, just a really great vocalist. And her husband, Dave, is a trombone player in the band and he also sings very well. AR: Really. CF: So it's kind of brought a new interest to the band and we've been really excited to play. I used to ... sometimes I wasn't too happy about going to play, but this year I feel a lot better about things. AR: So how do you feel about vocals in big band situations? CF: Well I think you need it for variety. That is one thing we were really lacking. I sang some songs. I sang maybe four, five, or six songs in an evening, but I'm not Tony Bennett by any means. On some of my CDs I've put one or two vocals in just so they can say, "Well that really must be him then, because I recognize that voice". I'm not that great a singer. So these two new singers have really added to the group. AR: Oh that is cool, huh? So how long do you guys' shows usually range for? 7 CF: Well if we do a show, it's usually an hour. And the public dances are three hours with a twenty- minute intermissions. AR: Okay, yeah. CF: And then up in the public dance, they'll have an hour of dance instruction prior to the performance. AR: Oh, okay, alright. And then so the dances that you do, how long are your sets usually? CF: Uh we do three songs in a set I believe, and then as soon as we get the music up for the next set, we go into it. So it's pretty steady playing until intermission, and then generally it will have uh twenty- minute intermission and they'll bring out a group to perform during intermission, a choral group usually. Then we have a group called the Moonlight Singers which are singers from ... most I think have graduated from Davis High School, called the Moonlight Singers. Now they will come in and sing uh half-adozen numbers with the band too, so we really have quite a variety, you know, not just the instrumental. AR: Right that is ... that is a neat computer. So how did you, I guess you said you've been with the Junction City Band for eight years? CF: About that I think. AR: Yeah, and how did you originally get involved with them initially? CF: Oh I think maybe their piano player they had left, or something ... somebody called me. AR: See, so you got a phone call. 8 CF: Yeah, well the director Dr. Erickson, Earl Erickson, I'd played with him many, many years ago in what we called the Ogden Municipal Band. I played clarinet with that band and we played several years together, so we've known each other quite a few years. In fact some of these musicians. Excuse me while I slip this in my mouth. I'm getting a little dry here. AR: Don't even worry about it. CF: It's some of these musicians that have been playing with the band, or have played with it for a lot longer than I have I think. Earl probably started the band and he...are you going to interview him? AR: I have, yeah. CF: Uh huh, he's probably told you a lot of this. A lot of duplication, how many years ago he started it. As he told you he was the Chair of the Music Department at Weber State. AR: Yeah he mentioned that, yeah, yeah. He seems, he is pretty humble so it's like... CF: Yeah he is. AR: So then, so I guess then when you started playing with the Junction City Big Band, were you playing with anybody at that time or...? CF: Um, just my... I had a group called the Gene Clayton Trio. My real name is Clayton Gene Furch so I called it the Gene Clayton Trio and I played with three pieces of the majority of the time was Salt Lake, played in country clubs, hotels, dance clubs, and I did that for twenty five, thirty years. Then when I got here and started playing with the Junction City Band, I still have a little trio. In fact we do a ... the base player from Junction City and then another drummer, the three of us go out and play a lot of these 9 assisted living care centers. You think I'm a senior citizen, wait until you see then, until you see those guys. And those people are really appreciative. AR: Right. CF: We can go out and play for them and they can be sitting there looking like ... and all the sudden pretty soon they're tapping their toes and clapping and singing along, so. AR: Oh wow. CF: So we do several of those in the area. AR: Oh wow, that is cool. CF: And then on every other Monday afternoon I get to play the big Yamaha grand piano up in the lobby of the McKay Hospital. When you walk in the front door at McKay there is a piano there and people. AR: What day is that that you play? CF: I play every other Monday afternoon from 2:00 to 4:00. I've been doing that since they started that. AR: Really. Wow, my wife works there. CF: Oh she works there huh. Tell her to come down on a Monday afternoon and she'll hear me play. AR: Oh definitely, alright. So I guess you were talking about the venues. Have the venues changed quite a bit that you, because you have played around Ogden and Salt Lake. Have they changed? 10 CF: Oh definitely. I mean it used to be that the hotels had, used to be dance clubs, and the country club. Many years I played out at the Ogden Country Club and the Salt Lake Country Club and Fort Douglas Country Club, and Hillfield Officer's Club. Many of those places, if they do have music now, it's very rarely and a lot of times it will be a DJ. There's just not many opportunities for live music. AR: Yeah, right, right. CF: So do you prefer, or does it matter to you because you play solo as well as doing more of the Junction City Big Band, do you have a preference on what size of...? AR: I enjoy all of them, you know. When I go up and play at the hospital I do a lot of Broadway tunes, standard tunes, and kind of look out and see ... There will be people sitting there ... "Well maybe I better play a nice little waltz type or maybe I better play a Broadway song". I will look and see, maybe there are little kids there and I will play dorae-me from Sound of Music. And I think I do that typically when I'm playing with a smaller group too. I will look out and see what kind of an audience we have. You know we played out at the Union Station with Joe McQueen and that's strictly jazz down there. And I'm sure Dr. Erickson when he figures out the song list for Junction City, he tries to put in a variety of things, and then there will be requests and we will have to throw in some extra things. Sometimes people ... if they have dance instruction one night and it's a cha-cha, then obviously they will want to hear the big band play a couple cha-chas during the evening so they can practice with it and learn the new lesson. AR: Oh wow, that's cool. So you get a big entertained by watching the people dance? CF: Yeah and you can do that a little more when you're not reading music. 11 AR: Right, that's true. CF: I'll look out occasionally when playing with a big band, but I don't want to get too far away from the charts. AR: That's true. So in the big band, it's all strictly sight reading and reading music, like? CF: Yeah, well even sight reading...sight reading means playing something for the first time. AR: Oh, right. CF: And that is generally when we get a new arrangement, we sight read it because we don't rehearse. I think the last time we rehearsed was 2005, probably. AR: Really, so... CF: And that's true with these small groups too. We never rehearse. We rehearse on the job. If we're going to try to do a number, we'll try it early in the evening before there's too many people watching us. AR: Wow that is the best way to do it, right? So what is your favorite memory of playing with the Junction City Big Band? CF: Well I quite enjoyed playing for this school board convention down there because we finished and people giving us a standing ovation and these were people from all over the state who got to hear us. Some of our better performances up at Weber State, the ballroom. Some nights things will really click, you know. AR: Yeah, yeah. CF: Other nights, not so good, that's like anything else. 12 AR: Right, right, that is true. So what about... do you have originals that you've personally done? CF: Oh I have a couple. On one of my CDs I have a couple of numbers that are from my CDs that I've done. I feel quite proud of them. I wish I could do more composing. In fact sometimes I'll just turn things on here and sit around and improvise. I've got one number on here, just an improvisation, and I might use it on the CD or I might not. I don't know. AR: Right. CF: My wife is probably my biggest critic and she'll listen to it and say, "I don't think you want to use it". AR: Wow, that is cool, well, is there anything you'd like to add, or...? CF: Well, I wish we could get more publicity for these Junction City Big Band numbers. That Standard Examiner I don't think has done their share. I mean they'll put two big pages in on some rock band that's come to town, and we have a hard time getting a little that says, "There will be a dance here Friday night with Junction City or whatever it is". And if they did more... The Signpost I'm sure puts something in for Weber State, but you can't really afford... I don't know if any of the radio stations if anyone listens to AM radio or FM, I don't know. Getting the word out, I think is one of the... and there used to be a lot more opportunities too for private dances. Like the LDS Church used to have a lot of dances, and they very... We played two or three last year but I don't think we have had any booked this year. We almost always have played a Valentine's Dance for private you know. And we've played for the Catholic Church. We've done some fund raisers for them and I think we've done a Lutheran Church too. We've done fund raisers for them down at the Eccles Conference Center down at the ... and so even with the private, the 13 churches and the other groups, they are not as much doing as much of that. Of course the economy the last year hasn't helped either; that's been tough. AR: So do you think, uh, the jazz music. Where do you think it will be in ten years? CF: Well I think it will always be around because it's such an important part in the music history of our country, and also the world. I mean, you know, I think jazz is more widely accepted in Europe and in Japan, and in the Orient, than it is in the United States. I mean there are people; in fact a lot of the black musicians in the fifties, sixties, even on went to Europe and just stayed there because of the situation for the blacks in this country. Of course we don't have that problem now, but Europeans were, are much more appreciative of jazz than the Americans. Ken Burns has done a lot for it with his series, you know in terms of... AR: Yeah, that's great, yeah. CF: In fact we played, when he came to talk in Ogden a few years ago, the Joe McQueen Quartet we played at that when they had the dinner. And hear again they can maybe get four pieces to play, but to get sixteen seventeen pieces that costs a little more money and that's another, where it's a little prohibitive for a lot of groups to have big bands because it costs quite a bit more. AR: Right, yeah. So is it volunteer or? CF: No we do get paid a small amount, not too much. When gas was four dollars a gallon, it was ... some of the players come from Salt Lake. Most of them are from the Ogden area. We have attorneys that play in the band. Earl has probably told you this, but we 14 have music teachers, retired music teachers. We have quite a variety of people playing in that band. AR: Wow that is cool. Eclectic personalities make for good music. CF: That is right. Yeah. We all have one thing in common; we love to play that music, so that's what counts. AR: That is true. Is there anything else you wanted to add, as I said before? CF: Well, I don't think so. I will play you eight bars. AR: Yeah I was going to ask you, there's a piano right there. CF: I just happen to have my piano here. Okay this is a number I'm just working on my CD. It's just right here, but I'll play it live for you. This was really popular back thirty, forty years ago, called What Now My Love. {Clayton playing music.} CF: There you go. AR: Wow, thank you. I appreciate it. CF: Except when I do it that way, I can't correct it. That is why I love this because I can go back in and do so much, you know. AR: A wrong note. Do you do direct recordings, or is it indirect mostly. I guess I see the mic. CF: We do, I can do this too. AR: Oh wow. CF: But generally what I'll do. I've got on some of my CD, I'll lay down... Do you have another appointment in a few minutes? 15 AR: No, no. CF: Okay, I'll show you. Oh when I try setting things up I always get screwed up, but I'll give it a try anyway and see what I can do here. Let's see if I can set up a style. This number I'm working on now, here, I just do one track and then add a track and add a track. But this has a lot of these keyboards of this type have what they call styles, and what the style will do is set up... {Clayton playing music while talking.} CF: No see while I record this I'm playing the chord with my left hand ... can you hear the variety? So I'm just playing a chord here with my left hand, and you have intros and endings so I just put that on the ending. So about two-thirds of my CDs I'll use different styles, different Latin styles, Bosonova, Somba, Rumba. And then in the jazz style there is medium jazz, acoustic jazz, fast jazz, Be-Bop, modern jazz, big band... So I can make this thing sound like a big band. And it's kind of frustrating when... musicians don't really like this because I'm taking the part of the drummer and the bass player and all of it. AR: Yeah. CF: So they don't really like it. Then I'll go back with this right hand. I'll generally play the melody along with the right hand, but when I go back in; I can add another middy track and use both hands playing because I already have all that rhythm laid out. AR: Oh yeah, right, right. CF: And that saves a lot of time because if I were to program in every drum beat and every baseline and every guitar, it takes hours but this way I can do the whole tune and have all that... fun huh? 16 AR: That is, that's a lot, that's the best way to go about it. I mean anymore. Wow. That is cool. CF: So have you been recording all this? AR: Yeah, yup, yup, yeah. CF: You'll take out all the rough spots, when I pick my nose? AR: Oh yeah. So nothing else I guess. CF: No I think that'll cover it. You're probably use about thirty seconds of this anyway. I know how these things go. AR: Just get your name on then... CF: You'll edit it all out. AR: I guess I am going to get some pictures from Earl and then I'm hoping to get you guy's show on the 27th. CF: Yeah that's our next one. We usually try to do it before Valentine's, but it depends on when he can get the... We kind of work in conjunction with Weber State. We kind of have to take the dates as they're open. AR: Oh yeah. You know I saw a little, it must have been Earl that put them out there, but the little... CF: Cards or something saying when the next. AR: But yeah. I'm excited for it. I mean friends are coming so. CF: Well good. Yeah we need people. We need a lot of people. 17 AR: I am definitely putting the word out there and everything so we'll see. So do you like playing on the acoustic piano or keyboard better? CF: Yeah I do, primarily because I've got three of these electronic keyboards and they are all 61 keys and when you get a full keyboard there's a lot more; you can do a lot more. See this thing. When I play with just Joe McQueen. Joe and I have a steady gig down at the Wine Cellar down here in Bountiful and we play there every first Friday. In fact we will be playing there next Friday night. AR: Really? CF: Yeah, and I'm so grateful because there's no smoking now and I'm really looking forward to that. AR: Oh I agree with you. CF: That really used to bug me. I don't know if you smoke or not... AR: No not at all, I hate it. CF: Yeah, but I have about... oh this thing has a hundred different styles and I have programmed about oh I save about ten of these styles so when I play with a sax player I mean we can do... {Clayton plays a style.} CF: Oh you don't want to hear that one. That's a Dixieland. Let's try; we don't do any of that. Joe hates Dixieland. {Clayton plays another style while talking.} CF: So it's basically what I was doing on that one. So we take this and run it through an amplifier and we can pretty well fill the whole room with the sound. This thing has paid for itself many, many times. 18 AR: Really. CF: Yeah. We put... I started working with Joe up at a restaurant called Jill's up on Harrison. It was Jaso’s, and it's nothing now, but we worked two or three nights a week for, oh, maybe three years and I used this thing and then I had it setting on top of a baby grand piano. So I could use this and play the room with the left hand and play the baby grand piano down here with the right hand, and that worked out really well. Or I could just play this thing period, you know. AR: Yeah, yeah. CF: Yeah the electronic world is something else, isn't it? AR: That is so true. Like I don't know, I don't really like the really hard music. I think that's... I like jazz a lot too. CF: Do you? AR: Yeah and so when I play, I kind of just play by myself anyway too. Yeah I just do singer songwriter stuff and I always ... like in fact I'll hook up an IPOD. Yeah it works beautifully. CF: Yeah I've done that too. You can play with even the best groups, you know. AR: Exactly. That is true. 19