In addition to Miss Bobo, Jay's teacher Hall of Fame (He also has a Teachers' Hall of Infamy, but is sparing you that for now) includes the late William T. Slaughter. An accomplished organist respected for his technically superb and musically inspired renditions of Bach fugues, Mr. Slaughter taught band instruments in all six (!) grades at Aiken Junior and High schools. He was a one-person staff - no assistant teachers back then - ably assisted at the High School by a student staff that included (ta-da!) Jay.
Mr. Slaughter taught all the instruments. Reeds, flutes, percussion and brass. Glockenspiel and timpani, oboe, clarinet and saxophone. French horn and trombone. Maybe he knew and played stringed instruments, too, but he didn't teach them, referring interested students to teachers in nearby Augusta, Georgia.
He gave private lessons in a back room of his house in downtown Aiken, and Jay, who stuck with band from Seventh to Twelfth grades, was one of his students, a half-decent one in his later years. Jay played cornet, the "symphonic" version of the trumpet. At the outset of band class in the Seventh Grade, Mr. Slaughter examined the facial structure of each new student in turn and recommended an instrument that suited them. He probably skewed the choices to what instrumentation the high school band would need three years into the future, but he never let on. Jay's choices were cornet or French horn, the latter of which, Mr. Slaughter warned, was quite difficult to play.
Easy choice, really. Jay took the path of least resistance, with blessings from his father, who disliked music in general except for the military bugle call "Taps." After an impressively inauspicious start, Jay caught on to getting a sound out of the instrument, moved up to shaky scales and the occasional arpeggio, and kept at it, even practicing occasionally as whim and necessity dictated. When Mr. Slaughter recommended private lessons, Jay's parents footed the bill, and Jay's father even sprung for a silver Conn Connstellation cornet, the stuff of dreams for a cornetist then and now. He'd already bought a baby grand piano that took up much of the livingroom.
Jay's hero list took on new musical entries. Harry James, of course, because he was still the rage in the early Sixties. And Bourbon Streeter Al Hirt, who had popular tunes in the Top Forty of the day. Good ones.
Jay's love affair with music started even earlier, as his Sainted Mother insisted he have piano lessons. She so wanted to be able to play the piano herself, but didn't take lessons. Instead, she dutifully pursued a mailorder self-study course in which the middle piano keys were numbered on a cardboard overlay. The course ignored basics and moved right into songs. Eventually, she learned to play her favorite piece, "The Merry Widow Waltz," quite well, but after that she stopped studying.
On the other hand, Jay flopped at piano. He learned to read music and count rhythms, but never got the knack of reading both treble and bass clef lines at the same time. When he figured out that he could improvise the music by reading only the treble clef, that was the end of piano studies. After exhausting only two piano teachers, the first being one of his cousins, he got stuck on "Flow Gently Sweet Afton," and gave up, turning his attention to the cornet, which only entailed one clef at a time. He took up piano many years later and learned to play a few of his favorite classical pieces - long after giving up all hopes of professional musicianship.
Jay played first chair cornet in the Aiken High School Bands and helped organize the Pep Band at the University of South Carolinia (slash) Aiken. That was pretty much the end of his career, however - although at the urging of a colleague, an accordion player at the newspaper where he worked, he played hymns and carols with the Salvation Army Band on Main Street a few times. Decades later (see the picture and don't laugh at the hot pink hat), Jay again had delusions of musical adequacy and relearned the cornet, but that episode was cut woefully short by health and other troubles.