Jazz saxophonist, arranger and educator Paul Jeffrey passed away in his home in Durham, North Carolina on Mar. 20, 2015. Mr. Jeffrey played with jazz legends Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus, as well as taught classes and directed the jazz ensemble at Duke for 20 years. Mr. Jeffrey is remembered by fellow music educators and former students for his devotion to and love for The Music.
“Paul was a very committed musician,” commented Professor John Brown, current Director of the Duke Jazz Program. “Anyone who loved jazz, he was down with. If you wanted jazz to take over the world, he was even more down with it.”
Jeffrey worked to instill this love for jazz into the student body. He taught a popular course called Introduction to Jazz and founded the North Carolina International Jazz Festival, which included musicians from countries including Italy, Monaco, Portugal and the Netherlands. To include more students in the jazz ensemble, Jeffrey sometimes let nine or ten saxophonists play in the band, almost twice the amount that are in the current lineup. He also brought in world-renowned guest artists to play with the students during concerts, which they held as often as six times a semester.
While fostering a love for jazz, Jeffrey also kept his expectations high and pushed students to maximize their musical experience.
“Paul was a taskmaster,” noted Brown. “He came from the old school. He was very demanding and knew what he wanted, and he demanded students give it to him.”
After considering the love and respect Jeffrey had for jazz, it’s hard to imagine how he could let his students play any less than excellent.
Stephen Jaffe, Professor of Music Composition, noted his reverence for jazz music: “When you hear jazz musicians talk, they talk about the importance of The Music. This is how you play it, and this is how you respect it. What’s intended by that is that it is greater than any one individual player. That’s really beautiful.”
Jeffrey immersed his students in the jazz world by taking them to performances and sharing his own experiences. In fact, Brown first met him while performing in Greensboro. Jeffrey took a student group there on a Friday night to watch Brown’s show. Saxophonist Todd Bashore, a former student of Jeffrey’s, remembered how Jeffrey would drive him to jazz rehearsals and blast Charlie Parker the whole way down.
“He was a musician’s musician,” noted Brown. “He loved hanging out with the cats. After every rehearsal I had to plan on being there at least another hour just because he loved to talk about Monk and this recording and that recording.”
Sometimes Jeffrey’s desire to push his students and immerse them in jazz fueled acts that were truly legendary. This was seen especially in his skill as a gifted arranger. After hearing the jazz ensemble rehearse, he would usually come up with an original arrangement for them the very next day. Once there were a couple saxophonists in the band who he felt needed a challenge. In order to maximize their experience, he spent all night transcribing and harmonizing John Coltrane solos and making an arrangement of them for the band to play.
"I personally witnessed that,” said Brown. “That was evidence of his passion, his talent and his gift.”
While intensely shaping his students’ jazz experience, Jeffrey also strongly impacted many of the faculty. His fierce commitment to jazz caused some faculty to ask themselves if they could be doing more.
“I loved Paul Jeffrey. He was someone that I looked up to,” noted Jaffe. “My strongest memory is hearing the beautiful way he played at Mary Lou Williams’ memorial service at Duke Chapel. That’s when I knew that he was an incredible treasure.”
After Jeffrey retired, Brown remarked “I found a way to stay connected to him because he had done so much work and he had loved the program so much. He was a friend, you know?”
In retirement, Jeffrey came to the Duke Jazz Ensemble concerts whenever he could and would hang out and chat with the guest artists. One such guest artist was actually Jeffrey’s former student Bashore. After the concert, Bashore’s parents hosted a reception at their house. While Brown notes that he left at 1 a.m., Jeffrey stayed talking and hanging until 3:30 a.m. in the morning.
Musically, Brown noted that Jeffrey had a unique sound. He loved to play standards and Monk tunes. Jaffe observed that Jeffrey paid special attention to “things about placement in the beat, or a feeling, or a tone, that would make the difference between something being humbling for the sake of music” as oppose to “something that would be like showing off.”
“He will be missed,” concluded Brown. “There are some students who really viewed him as a father figure. He was to me.”
In late August or early September. the John Brown Big Band will hold a concert to remember and pay tribute to Paul Jeffrey.
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