Longview News-Journal from Longview, Texas • Page 64

Sunday, March 20, 1977 Page 2-F Longview, Texas fNo business like show business' for Hairston could learn conducting under him. 1 didn't want to be a choir member all of my life. So, he taught me. I have never studied conducting formally." Hairston says Johnson advised him to get a small group of young people and come to his house to teach them music. "That was during the depression days when no one was same role you were first seen in, you like James Cagney.

He was first and always a gangster. "WELL, WHEN THERE were no black pictures to do, I still had to eat and I went around to casting directors. They said, 'Jester, you're a musician. We have plenty of "Finally, I had to start in the first Tarzan movies. In fact, I was in almost all of those orginal movies with Johnny Weis-muller.

I ran around half-naked as a native saying 'Bwana this' and 'Bwana that'. "I had to humiliate myself in those roles for several years. Finally I got a job as a witchdoctor in a picture with another Tarzan, Gordon Scott." As years passed, Hairston filled roles as "waiters, janitors and other minial parts." But, in 1944, he found a part that still identified with him Leroy, the King Fish's brottfer-in-law on the Amos and Andy Show. This gave him the opportunity to lean a great deal about radio which was the media of the time. He performed on other shows with actors like Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Becall and Bette Davis.

i IN RECENT DAYS, he has been seen in "The Lady Sings the "Green Eyes" and his voice was dubbed in singing "Amen" in "Lillies of the Field, starring Sidney Poitier. In 1949, Hairston went to the University of Pacific in Stockton, Calif, to teach Negro spirituals to high school students for 10 days. This resulted in his return to that campus for 18 consecutive years and was also instrumental in the publishing and release of a number of spiritual arrangements by Hairston. "Teachers began to caill me to come to their schools and not only teach my arrangements but also interpret them to the students. This teaching just started to snowball and pretty soon it was a big business with me," Hairston says.

"In fact, I've had so many engagements at schools that when my agent would call me for jobs, I'd have to turn them down to teach." Hairston also is a goodwill ambassador oh behalf of the United States and has been sent by the state department to Europe Africa and Mexico to teach share his music. Next month, he will fly to Copenhagen, Denmark for a television show with a combined choir representing Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. This will be his third such televised show in Europe. "WHEN THE GOVERNMENT first sent me in 1961, I took some of all American songs cowboy songs, Indian songs, Spanish, sea shanty songs from New England, white spirituals from Appalachians and a few Negro spirituals. But everywhere I went, they liked the songs but requested more Negro spirituals.

The audiences seemed to believe the spirituals had By SUSAN TRAYLOR Sunday Editor Whim Jpster Hairston came to Hollywood 42 years ago it was to fulfill a six weeks musical contract with Warner Brothers Studios. He's been there ever since. Dr. Hairston, in Longview March 17-19 to conduct a choral workshop for Longview, Pine Tree, Marshall and Greenville hiiili school choirs, recalls his beginning days in music and his struggle to build a career in the entertainment world. "I didn't start out studying music," he begins.

"In fact, it wasn't until I was a junior in college that I became interested in the field of music. Orginally, I was studying agriculture in hopes of becoming a landscape architect. It was a woman by the name of Mrs. Anna Laura Kidder who changed me from a farmer to a muscian." THE 7S-YEAR OLD Hairston says recalls Mrs. Kidder Was pianist for him when he became involved in a glee club "just for "She'd play for me when I began going around singing at churches and just wherever anybody asked me to sing.

Eventually, she convinced me that I would be more bericfit to my race and to the country as a muscian rather than a farmer and she insisted that I must go to Tufts University in Boston to study music." Hairston did attend Tufts on an educational loan from Mrs. Kidder but admits it was difficult to gain admission. "Back in those days, they always asked you to send a picture along with your request for admission. Well," he laughs, "if that picture happened to look like someone like me, you were sent a very polite letter saying "i'm sorry, but our freshman class has been filled. We will, however, put you on our waiting list.

Of course, after that, you were forgotten. But, I did finally "gain admittance to the school." NOT ONLY DID Tufts have high standards for admission, but it was also an expensive university and Hairston recalls his funds were limited. "I told Mrs. Kidder I didn't have the money to go to some expensive school but she insisted that was where I should be and loaned me money from her personal savings. In addition, I studied voice under Benson Hubbard while attending Tufts and his fee was $7 for a half hour lesson.

That was in 1929 and that was also a lot of money to spend on voice lessons. After my first semester, I was awarded a scholarship and never had to pay tuition again." Mrs. Kidder believed Hairston was meant to be a teacher, but once out of school, he was attracted to Broadway. "I really had a rough time of it for a while. I found out that I 'didn't know anything about music.

I was just out of college and had only had two years of musical training and no actual experience." HE FINALLY ASSOCIATED himself with the then famous Hall Johnson Choir and eventually became assistant conductor. "I asked Johnson, after I had been with him for a while, if I working. So, I'd gather these people boys and girls and we'd all meet at Hall Johnson's house and I would teach them harmony aand sight singing. While I taught and conducted them, Johnson would be sitting away from us watching. After they left, he would tell me what I had done wrong." THIS EXPERIMENTAL GROUP used as conducting education for Hairston resulted in his big break into show business.

"In 1933, the Hall Johnson Choir was preparing to leave on a tour of the west. Three days before we left, NBC called from New York City and wanted the choir to do a radio show called the Maxwell House Coffee Show which was starring some very big white stars. Johnson explained he was going on tour but had a small group that could ce to the show. So I took the group I had been conducting for over a year and we did the Show. It was then I found out I didn't know anything about music.

I was arranging choral background music but I had to do it in such as way that it could be adapted to the orchestra. To study harmony and theory, Hairston was accepted into Julliard Institute of Music in New York. He continued to work while studying there. "I gained so much from the people I surrounded myself with at that time. I associated with people who had graduated from Julliard.

We would stay up nights working on arrangements and I guess you could say, I brow-beat them into teaching me much of what they knew. Also while associated with Hall Johnson, Hairston and other members of the choir did the choral music for the Broadway show "Green When Warner Brothers bought the motion picuture, they also hired the choir to come to Hollywood to do the choral background for the motion picture. After the movie was completed, Hairston did not return East with the other choir members. Instead, he stayed in California and organized his own choir, the Jester Hairston Choir. "The major difference in my choir and the Hall Johnson choir is that Johnson's group was called the Hall Johnson Negro Choir and was composed entirely of blacks.

That limits you. The only time people would call for our music was when they wanted Negro music like plantation cotton picking songs. "I FILLED MY band with 23 whites and 13 blacks we were all members of the same music union and began to get work not as a black conductor but as a choir conductor." His first motion picture was the original "Lost Horizon" with music composed by Demtri Tiompkin. Tiompkin was so pleased with Hairston's work that the two worked together for twenty years. "I just kind of got into acting along the way," the jovial artist explains.

"In this business you have to be versatile. But, in Hollywood, the directors always wanted to keep you in the something the others lacked soul, of course they didn't call it that at the time. "So, I decided that since I was a goodwill ambassador and was supposed to be making friends for the United States, I could best do that with Negro "Many places I go, I just have a few minutes or a half-hour with the people. I would lose my audience if I passed out some difficult music. But I give them one of my Negro spirituals and, let them clap their hands, snap their fingers and pat their feet and they leave saying, 'Oh, Americans are I get on their good side quickly." Hairston is presently, recording happenings in his life in hopes of publishing his autobiography some day.

At 75-years old, he says he has had "a long and fruitful life" that he would like to share with others. As for his age in relationship to his work, Hairston says, "I'll never retire; I'll just wear out. I'd rather, just wfiar out and fall dead doing this work than sit twiddling my thumbs and grow senile." i nil about thacouGf I imvw' I A The East Texas area has experienced an unusually icy and freezing winter but as of today, that should be behind us. March 21 marks the first official day of spring. We've been lucky in having a preview of this beautiful time of the year when the grass is green and brightly colored flowers bloom, like those pictured on the cover.

Staff Photographer Kicky Kussell made the picture. In today's SUNDAY magazine, look for: Aspirations of youth fulfilled in retirennftt 4 page 4 Unique graphics in Hawkins schools PaSe Another service of the Red Cross i page 8 SUSAN TRAYLOR Sunday Editor 7)ri Jester Hairston i some remember Jiim as leroy on the 'Amos and Andy'' radio shoic..