July Features
A Salute to Dr. F. Norman Vickers and the Jazz Society of Pensacola
"When you want to get something done, ask a busy person." That slogan certainly is true of all Jazz Warriors. They are all achievers.
Take Dr. F. Norman Vickers, for example. Like most of us, he grew up with jazz and the popular music that has become a part of our beloved jazz repertoire and history. His lifelong interest in jazz was whetted early by listening to radio station WWL which broadcast from New Orleans and frequently featured nationally famous musicians from the Blue Room of the Roosevelt Hotel.
Vickers took piano lessons beginning at age six and continued throughout high school. His earliest teacher was "an old maid who was a rigidly classical teacher," he says, but by the time he was 12, he could play whatever he wanted. So, he would practice boogie woogie bass with the left hand for hours, so that it became automatic. Then he could concentrate on the melody line with the right hand. He was able to play for small dances in high school and considers himself a "functional" rhythm guitarist and a functional flutist, saying that after several semesters studying with the Pensacola Symphony's principal clarinetist, Richard Jernigan, he has greatly improved his playing. He says he is a pretty good amateur jazz chromatic harmonicist. His interest and skills improved after a weeklong seminar in 1979 with Cham Be Huang, a Chinese American chromatic harmonicist/inventor, then associated with the Hohner Company.
Busy? You bet! His profession is medicine! Vickers, a native of Hattiesburg Miss., attended Southern Methodist University, earning a B.A. in pre-medicine and an M.D. from Emory University School of Medicine. After post-graduate training in internal medicine in Boston, New Orleans and Louisville, Ky., he relocated to Pensacola, Fla., where he went into private practice as a gastroenterologist in 1965.
"When I was in busy medical practice, there was little spare time," Vickers recalls. "I could carry my chromatic harmonica (the one with the slide) and play walking down the hall or when someone put me on hold on the telephone. I would play for my patients occasionally. For example, some of my procedures required light sedation. I'd tell the patients that I took requests, and I'd play until their medicine took effect."
Jazz Society is Founded
When the Arts Council of Pensacola decided it would sponsor a jazz festival in 1982, it was time to start a jazz support group. So it was that Vickers and a number of jazz friends, including jazz bandleader Joe Occhipinti, founded the Jazz Society of Pensacola (JSOP).
The first Pensacola Jazz Fest was presented in 1983, sponsored by the Arts Council of Pensacola (now the Arts Council of Northwest Florida); radio station WUWF-FM and the newly formed Jazz Society of Pensacola. For the first 17 years, the Jazz Society was headquartered at Vickers' medical office.
"My office was the only office where, when a person called to ask for the doctor, the staff would ask, 'Is it musical or medical?'" he says jokingly.
American Federation of Jazz Societies
Eventually, Vickers' involvement with JSOP led to a stint as president of the American Federation of Jazz Societies (AFJS) in the early '90s. The position required a great deal of problem solving, and he particularly remembers a dilemma when the organization held a convention in Kansas City. Previously, vandals had stolen the gravestones of Charlie Parker and his mother, who was buried beside her son. Donations were collected, and the missing gravestones were replaced with marble slabs, which would take a bulldozer to remove. A dedication was scheduled for a Sunday morning, and a delegation from the AFJS convention turned out for it. Dean Hampton, KC jazz activist and AFJS board member, had scheduled a 21-sax salute for the event. There were other visitors, including representatives of the newspapers and TV. But not a single saxophonist showed up!
July 2008 issue | © 2008 The Mississippi Rag
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