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Read the unedited transcript of Byron Coley's interview with Ran Blake...

B: Were you playing much piano when you were in school?

R: At Classical High School I helped do the music for a production of Arsenic and Old Lace. They said I couldnt stay in key very well. I kept talking about the movie with the eye Spiral Staircase I was more into Arsenic than Old Lace. Then Ihad to be the runner for that awful Gilbert & Sullivans Mikado. Then there was athird thing. I played piano for school assembly every week, including a prelude. Mr. Lindstrom was the music advisor at Suffield Academy. He said, keep only these white notes in, or some such thing. I think I did a blues note. Then I had todo the hymns. I was insufferable. I really hated being there, even though I wasindulged. I got a room for my LP collection. I got a room for my albums. I got to know Mahalia, Thelonius. The bebop stuff came much later. I loved Scythian Suite by Prokofiev. Of course, Prelude of the Afternoon of the Fawn by Debussy. RoyWebb, the guy who did music for Spiral Staircase, can be hackneyed, but once the murders started, the last hour of the film, was dramatic and rich. The theremin was always featured in these scores. And what is it, the Ondes-Martenot? I much prefer the sound of that. My favorite film music now is Pierre Jansen. We didnthave DVDs or VCRs in Suffield, CT. I longed to go to the Thompsonville Theater.I remember hitching a ride to see A Streetcar Name Desire in Springfield. One of my parents friends was a no-pain lady, and I mentioned to my parents I thoughtshe had headaches. My parents said, How would you know? Then I think the cat was out of the bag. They said, Youre not going to do this movie business. Why do you th

ink we moved here? So I rebelled against my music teacher. I hated to read music.I did the scales and arpeggios. That was easier. Her husband was a very kind man. But I knew her first as Janet Wallace, living on Mulberry Street. Later a mancalled Lloyd Stoneman came to our house on Union Street. My parents thought sixdollars an hour was the height of extravagance. Blustering snow or whatever. And he had to put up with me. Im tired of people who dont do work. You get everything back. He would write reviews once a month. I would do recitals and the poor manall young people want an audience. So, there was a Warren Amerman. He taught music and his son runs a studio in West Springfield. But finally getting to Connecticut, I did go to all the churches in town Polish Catholic, regular Catholic, Baptist, then a fresh new Episcopal Church, an Afro American Church. The Polish church had something. Every once in a while the chords would leave C Major, but itwas a little while before I got the Church of God in Christ, which was on Russe

ll Street. That was in North Hartford. Now that Church is the Latter Day Rain. Also in the Wethersfield part of Hartford was Ray Cassarino, where I really started doing large block chords and improvisation. Ray did a lot to build up my repertoire for old standards. And I kept mostly record collecting.

B: Did you specialise in what you were playing?

R: Well, mostly it was films and doing my own plots. But it was very rigid backthen. It was either Elvis and race music or the cool cerebral jazz that had beenswing. I was a late bloomer to bebop. Of course you were measured by how well you played bebop. Now of course its still nice to have people study Bud Powell nomatter what. But in those days it was what were you going to be an orchestral musician, or chops or what. Cassarino, we worked on scales, but we went right thro

ugh repertoire. He gave me a book, and later I would tell people I was going toburn the fake book. Even that was tough reading. You could hear some of the stuff on radio. I started collecting a lot of Ella, Sarah Vaughn, just loved singers-- Nat King Cole. Of course then I did pretty well with Charlie Parker and Dizzy, I became a freak for Stan Kenton and later got to work with Bill Russo. LaterI got to where I could do a lot of what are called standards. Right today, I think I could play fifty Gershwin songs. That doesnt mean Id do them well, butthat was the music. I joined Eddie Whites rock and roll band in Windor Locks CT. They liked it rhythmically, but not what chords I did. At the beginning they didnt evenlike me rhythmically. I couldnt swing, I couldnt work with the drummer. But Windso

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r Locksthe VFW, there would be different halls. But maybe the other piano playerswere too expensive. I think maybe we played in Hartford once. It was really small town. At first I was snobbish, then I began to find some of that interesting.Wed do Night Train and this guy would honk that out. He was a tenor saxophone player. Now it sounds good, but Ray Charles came a little later. I also began goingto Jinxeys in Springfield on Hancock Street. It would be interesting to know if that place is still there and if Frankie Jonas still runs it. Then there was theElks Club in North Hartford. I had my first rum & coke there. Tuesday, Thursday,Saturday night a quartet played there and a guy would sit in on bass called MoCloud, who was married to Sadie. Ernie Wilson who was the regular bass player isnow in Miami, doing research. There was a bass player called Norman, Bunny wasthe drummer.

R: No. This and Jinxeys did standards including an Errol Garner piece called Trio. I would hear sort of be-bop. Were now sort of 54-55-56. Im one of the few blue eyeuys there. It was so close to the church, I was afraid Id see I called her my step mother Carter she was a wonderful proud Pentacostal woman and I was so afraidId be found out going to that bar. And I could never join the church because I wouldnt give up movies. I never gambled, and I could have given up a glass of wineback then, butfor music, I guess I would have been more open to what was then emerging as rock.

R: Yeah, I did, And Jim Case was the president.

B: Did you go there with the idea of studying jazz composition?[page break]R: Well, there was no such thing and I made a petition could I be a jazz major?The following summer I was at Lennox School of Jazz. I had Oscar Peterson. I guess I got the okay, but there was nobody there. I started putting on the Bard Jazz Festivals. And I just read in the NY Times this morning about Jimmy Priest whowas Marian Andersons nephew, who was a drummer who got polio. Hes now conductor whos doing conducting at Julliard Stockholm. I tried to get a group down from Albany with Hod OBrien. But I would be on campus from Monday night to Thursday. But Iremember there was Buddy Tate in New York, and going to the Apollo Theater andMax Harrison from a London magazine would come in.

B: While you were enjoying these noir films, did you read any of the source mate

rial?

R: I had every book I could get at the Paris Airport of James Hadley Chase. Dashiell HammettI think the women scared me more. The Postman Rings Twice by James Cain. There may have been a year 54-55 that was noir. Then Vertigo came out. According to my father I had another relapse. But I felt jazz is what I am. People would say there was too much Ives. And I dont think I did swing. So I think very consciously I though, Im going to get Bud. Monk was no problem, I could eat him up. Then Charlie Parker, but why was Ray Charles easier?

R: Well, "Unanswered Questions", The Second Movement of the Fourth Symphony, "Central Park", "Housatanock"but a lot of it was very discernable from hymnals. ButI cravedKenton really filled the bill for a while, but after 55 he never did, exce

pt his theme song got better with Peter on drums. But I guess I wanted a wild R&B pre-Aretha with wild strange chords. That was a hard product to get. At Bard College we had a professor, Leonard Catewell from the Berlin Philharmonic, more of a snobbish guy, Paul Nortoff. I was such a slow pokey composer. I really did not notate. And people today seem to think my piano things are pretty arranged. Ithink there are themes that l keep coming back and forth, but there was alwaysthat moment who might be behind the curtain. Whats going to happen. Daydreaming about the past and films. Then going to Birdland. I got to study well a little later. Then I had a six week field period at Atlantic.

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B: What was the incident you describe recreating from Key Largo ?

R: Well, I dont think thats so great a movie. But maybe its the storm brewing. I wouldnt say its one of the thirty important films.

R: Yeah. She came in and said, You remind me of Art Tatum.

R: I believe she came in the same year, but I may have been a year or two olderbecause I did one extra year at Suffield Academy. Then hung around the house andhad some odd jobs. I know I was a year or two older, but I believe I was in thesame class as Jeanne. We met at Bard Hall. The first piece we did was Jeepers Creepers. We went to a recording studio in Springfield. I dont know what happened tothis homemade LP. I loved her parents Madeline who has such a long life. I thought Jeanne and I would grow old together. Madeline was quite a dancer and she appeared in a group called Over 70. Jeannes father, Alonzo, was the postman. A verydignified guy. A great friend of Brock Peters, who was in The Pawnbroker and ToKill a Mockingbird. They lived on Freeman and Prospect Avenue in the Bronx andI would go there for weekends. Right behind the house was Skippy, the sister ofNellie Monk.

B: You recorded while you were still at Bard?[page break]R: Privately, yeah. We paid $100. Then I remember Jeanne played a lot with a Broadway pianist, Jonathon Tunic. And we didnt really connect much the sophomore and

junior years. Then we did a little but more our senior year. Then I moved to aboarding house in NY City.