Here's my seventh grade teacher's sad fate-- he trained as a classical musician, loved music, truly loved it. And then every working day, he surrounded himself with year-olds who massacred the living guts out of it. Could not play it and did not care.
It made him the angriest teacher I ever saw. He yelled all the time. This is what happens if you believe that music means something, is important, and you're surrounded all day long with and year-olds who demonstrate through their actions that maybe it's not.
I told Durrell Daniels about him and Durrell understood immediately. Durrell was once paid to teach band, but he had to quit because he looked at the facts at hand and came to the simple conclusion I got out of band teaching because I noticed that all the band teachers I knew had went a little crazy.
I mean, no disrespect intended, but you don't find too many, like, totally sane band teachers who have taught band for a long time. And I sort of saw myself going on the edge. And I said, well, no. I don't want to be whistling to myself at a wall, looking at apples that are not there, or something like that.
Because it's sort of like-- no instrument sounds good when it's not played well. Trumpet was a pain. Saxophone was a pain. Clarinet was hell. And another thing. The kids, when they get a trumpet, there's a difference between a kid singing and a kid getting a trumpet. You might can't sing, and you might be a little shy. No kid's going to be shy about blowing that horn no matter how bad they sound. As a professional musician, Durrell played jazz and funk and soul, keyboards and vocals.
