James Polk, godfather of Austin jazz, paved the way for a younger generation of players

When the name Dr. James Polk floats around the network of eccentrics that comprise Austin's jazz scene, it's usually accompanied by a slate of honorifics: institution, legend, godfather.

The musician and educator, who died on June 21 at age 83, spent five decades performing and mentoring younger artists in Austin.

He began his career by assembling one of the city's first integrated bands to perform on Austin's west side, and ended it as a local icon whose resume included tours with Lionel Hampton and Ray Charles. In conversations with friends, students, and colleagues, Polk is remembered not only for a unique ability on the keys, but more prominently, as an endlessly giving, patient and kind leader.

"What he leant to the community was himself, at all times, never selfish, always encouraging," said the pianist's friend and Austin-based drummer Brannen Temple, "You knew you were in good hands if you drove up and saw his car parked outside."

'We’re going to hear a lot about this young man'

Polk was born in Corpus Christi in 1941 to parents who were also musical. He discovered a passion for music early in life, playing in summer and high school band programs as a teenager. He shuffled through instruments — an alto saxophone gifted to him by his grandfather, later a baritone horn and trombone — before landing on the instruments for which he remains a legend in the community: piano and organ.

After a brief stint in the army, Polk came to Austin at 18 to study at Huston-Tillotson University, a historically Black college in Austin. While in college, Polk began performing with and arranging for local musicians, establishing himself on the scene at a time when the division between historically Black east Austin and segregated, white, west Austin informed musicians’ ability to get booked depending on their skin color.

In the early years of his career, Polk also worked as a high school band teacher. It was there that he met Dr. Beulah Agnes Jones, a born and raised Austinite who was working as an elementary school teacher around the same time.

On a Thursday afternoon at the Texas Music Museum, Jones lights up as she talks about the first time she met Polk: introduced to him not by a handshake, but by the sound of his chords wafting down the hallway of St. John’s Elementary School. At the time, Polk was working as a student teacher to Ray Paterson, who Jones remembers leaning over to whisper, “We’re going to hear a lot about this young man.”

Jones says that whisper was prophetic. Even then, everyone around him knew that Polk was “the real thing.”

Jones thinks back to the ‘70s and recalls performances with a devoted following scattered across Austin: one at the Jade Room on San Jacinto, another at the Continental Club, one above an H-E-B Supermarket (in the early days, Polk and patrons had to take the freight elevator to access the venue).

But she remembers more than just the venues. Standing up and walking over to the museum’s display piano, more than half-a-decade later, Jones plays out Polk’s chords: variations on old classics like "My Funny Valentine" and "Misty." She sings out the lyrics, stopping only to say that sometimes Polk would coax her up on stage to sing during shows. Her voice vibrates through the small museum, founded and overseen by another long-time friend of Polk’s, Dr. Clayton Shorkey.

Peaking in from the hallway, and smiling at Jones’ rendition of "My Funny Valentine," Shorkey says that above everything, Polk was just such a good man.

From east Austin clubs to playing with Ray Charles

Various early fans of Polk say that he was likely the most famous jazz musician in east Austin before he began getting booked and playing on the other side of Interstate 35.

According to them, Polk remembered east Austin as a thriving Black community, despite the shadow of Jim Crow that gave rise to the enclave. Throughout his career, he would often lament the gentrification of the east side, as he saw the clubs that gave him his start shuttered up and the attendees of those first shows priced out of the area.

While friends and colleagues remember Polk speaking openly about the barriers he faced as a Black musician, all were quick to emphasize that he was never bitter or resentful. Instead, they paint a portrait of a man deeply invested in his community, and eager to carry on the legacy of Black musicians who came before him.

Despite the prominence he enjoyed in his community, Polk did not initially treat music as a full-time job, performing sporadically from the late 60s to the late 70s while he worked full-time at IBM. The job took him out of town to Maine for a few years, and upon returning, he was promptly drawn away again when Lionel Hampton invited him to join his band as a bassist during a European tour.

Bemused, Michael Mordecai – a local musician and Polk’s long-time friend and collaborator – says that the Hampton invitation was a serendipitous accident. Hampton’s bassist was nowhere to be found during a set in San Antonio, so Polk offered to fill in. Hampton was so impressed that he extended the invitation that same night.

Mordecai pauses for emphasis, bass wasn’t even his primary instrument.

In the late 70s, Polk quit IBM for good, another happy accident. He re-entered the music scene around the time that Ray Charles Orchestra performed in Austin, and the iconic musician invited Polk to join his company as an organist and pianist, a role that Polk would hang onto until 1984.

Later into his tenure with Charles, Polk would take on additional responsibility as a writer, arranger, and conductor. Two song arrangements written by Polk were nominated for Grammys: “Some Enchanted Evening” (1979) and “I Wish You Were Here Tonight” (1983).

Jones laughingly recites one of Polk’s go-to quips about his time in L.A.: he would always say that he might not know Ray Charles’ number off the top of his head, but that Charles sure had his own number memorized.

'He was very humble even though he had no reason to be.'

After breaking with Charles and spending a few years touring the local music scene in Los Angeles, Polk came back to Austin.

The return was whispered about among a younger generation of jazz artists who knew Polk only through reputation or from hazy memories of his eastside jazz sessions. One such distant admirer was Keith Winkling, the sitting music department chair at Texas State University. He says that Polk was all anyone could talk about when he arrived: the local icon who had made it big in L.A.

When they were finally introduced, Winkling suggested that Polk might want to continue his education (a suggestion that Winkling thought was a shot-in-the-dark.) Polk accepted and finished a masters in music composition in the early 90s, staying on as faculty after graduation.

At the time, Winkling says that Texas State had no established jazz music program, but it only took a few years of association with Polk for the program to attract the best and brightest young jazz players.

“His groove, you couldn’t pay for it,” Winkling says. “He just had it. If you played with him, you were going to get that from him, like through osmosis.”

Winkling is one of a handful of Austin musicians who shared stories of approaching Polk for opportunities and collaborations, confident that a gap in credentials and experience would make it a long-shot, only to find in Polk a life-long partner and friend.

Elias Haslanger, an Austin based jazz saxophonist, started a band with Polk in 2011 called Church on Monday. Haslanger says they ended up playing hundreds of gigs together and holding a residency for over 10 years, a childhood dream for a young musician who first encountered Polk at jazz shows that he frequented with his father in high school.

Haslanger says that Polk would often pontificate on the importance of mentorship, telling stories about oral tradition and jazz and the value of mentorship in their community. In jazz, he says, education has a lot less to do with written studies and exercises, it’s largely about sharing experiences.

When he invited younger players and students to jam sessions, Haslanger says that Polk would rarely correct them. He would never say, “don’t do this, do this instead,” but he would encourage discipline and habits.

“He was the ultimate team player,” Haslanger says, “Never had any ego or attitude about anything. Whenever I asked for advice, he would give it to me, but it was never unsolicited. He was very humble even though he had no reason to be.”

Brannen Temple believes what distinguishes a good jazz musician from a great one is their ability to communicate ideas through notes. Not stopping a session to give feedback or leading a soloist with over-handed direction, but accompanying confidently, supportively, and stably. Temple says Polk embodied that ethos.

Polk could hear where you were trying to go, and he’d give you a little nudge to help you get there, Temple says. It wasn’t just that he could advance ideas through notes, it was that he always did it in a way that was encouraging. It was him saying, “You know it, you can do that.”

Temple remembers a time when he was going through “a period of self-doubt on the drums.” He turned to Polk looking for sagely wise advice, and instead Polk said, “no man, just play.”

“To just play was him saying, 'Brannen, you already have the tools, you just have to put them in the right order,'” Temple says. “Continue living, believe in yourself, and continue the path. You’ll get there, you are there.”

Monday night at the Elephant Room

On a Monday night in July, the Elephant Room on Congress Avenue, a storied institution in the world of Austin jazz, is alive with energy. The venue is located in a basement below a sushi restaurant and is made up of a bar that runs the length of the space, and a low stage where the house band congregates every week to participate in a 30-year-old tradition: the Monday night jam session.

The sessions were started in the early ‘90s by Michael Mordecai, and Dr. Polk played keys in the original house band. Mordecai started the tradition after being inspired by Polk’s own jam sessions back in the 70s, where young musicians and students would crowd in to make Polk’s introduction and try to keep up with the big leagues.

Mordecai kicks off at 9 p.m. with a speech in tribute to Polk, reminiscing on those jam sessions in the 70s and recounting a piece of advice that Polk shared with him back then: music is not a competition, everyone has something to say, and when it’s your turn to play, you’ve got to get up on the stage and say it and then shut up and listen.

The impact of that advice is crystallized clearly in this subterranean bar, where solos are met with approving beams, nods, fists in the air, whistles, and cheers. A cluster of musicians spanning at least three generations huddle on either side of the stage, waiting for Mordecai to give them a gesture that it’s their time to play.

How does the unspoken game of musical chairs between the performers work? One player explains that every musician here has dozens of jazz standards memorized. Before the night begins, they have no idea who will go on to play what, but when Mordecai comes behind them, and whispers that they’re up next, they take the stage within minutes and play out a solo, some innovative new twist on a standard that’s been played by hundreds before them at jam sessions just like this one.

As the night goes on, this haphazard program becomes less structured, less hidden. Mordecai takes the stage after songs and calls out into the microphone, “anyone know this next one?” A dozen hands shoot up and the new band is assembled in under a minute.

Making his Elephant Room debut is a fifteen-year-old named Daniel, fresh out of ninth grade, but with all the musicality and soul on trumpet of a much more seasoned player. His parents, sneaking surreptitious smiles to him, are sat at a table only feet away from the stage.

Daniel gets the coveted whisper in his ear, and he takes his place in the next iteration of the band, leg shaking nervously until Mordecai rests a hand on his shoulder and the two share a nod. In the dim lights, the black X, sharpied into Daniel’s skin to flag his age, almost blends into the sea of ink dotting the limbs of the veteran ensemble members he stands next to. As the tinny trumpet blares down the length of the Elephant Room, incredulous whispers of “did you know he’s just 15” quickly melt into bops of the head and tapping along of fingers on wood.

It’s far from the eastside, far from the 70s. Daniel’s dad checks his Apple watch and whispers to his wife that it’s time to go. But when Mordecai touches Daniel’s arm approvingly, it’s like the ghost of Polk is back in the room, smiling as he whispers, “No man, just play.”

Upcoming tributes to James Polk

8 p.m. Aug. 18, Elephant Room: Remembering James Polk

7:30 p.m. Sept. 10, Parker Jazz Club: A Celebration of Life on Dr. Polk's Birthday

8 p.m. Nov. 1, State Theatre at Paramount: Austin Jazz Society Hall of Fame Awards with special tribute to Dr. James Polk

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin jazz' godfather James Polk remembered as legend, mentor, friend