By Suzanne Cloud
Sharon Baptist Church boasts a congregation that harkens back to 1934, many years before the church finally found an expansive resting space in West Philadelphia. It's a very big church, but John’s family and friends needed a big one to say goodbye and to wish him well on his journey home.
John Blake Jr. was an accomplished musician who started early in his life loving sound, thanks to his mother, a pianist herself. But what he was most beloved for was his teaching and mentoring gifts. Many, many of the photos flashing rhythmically on both sides of the church stage showed John, not towering over students, but kneeling or sitting with his young charges, looking them directly in the eye, wanting to be on their level to communicate the beauty and soul-changing force that music could be for a young mind. There was even a photo of John embracing kid-icon Fred Rodgers from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood!
So, it was totally fitting that greeting the people streaming into the church was the Clef Club Youth String Ensemble directed by Lovett Hines. Cellos, violas, and violins, especially violins—the instrument John Blake Jr. championed in jazz every moment of his life. He was a master of music, so much so that jazz critic Jon Pareles wrote in The New York Times in 1984 that, “Mr. Blake rides those vamps like a master. His tone shifts from a flutelike clarity to the guttiness of the blues violinist Stuff Smith. And where some jazz violin solos could easily be played as horn lines, Mr. Blake deploys violinistic slides, tremolos and doublestops not as special effects, but as flexible, vocalistic shadings... He also knows how to pace a long solo so that it builds to crest after crest, with an oratorical sense of timing.”
So, it was totally fitting that a dream band consisting of violinist
Sharon Baptist Church boasts a congregation that harkens back to 1934, many years before the church finally found an expansive resting space in West Philadelphia. It's a very big church, but John’s family and friends needed a big one to say goodbye and to wish him well on his journey home.
John Blake Jr. was an accomplished musician who started early in his life loving sound, thanks to his mother, a pianist herself. But what he was most beloved for was his teaching and mentoring gifts. Many, many of the photos flashing rhythmically on both sides of the church stage showed John, not towering over students, but kneeling or sitting with his young charges, looking them directly in the eye, wanting to be on their level to communicate the beauty and soul-changing force that music could be for a young mind. There was even a photo of John embracing kid-icon Fred Rodgers from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood!
So, it was totally fitting that greeting the people streaming into the church was the Clef Club Youth String Ensemble directed by Lovett Hines. Cellos, violas, and violins, especially violins—the instrument John Blake Jr. championed in jazz every moment of his life. He was a master of music, so much so that jazz critic Jon Pareles wrote in The New York Times in 1984 that, “Mr. Blake rides those vamps like a master. His tone shifts from a flutelike clarity to the guttiness of the blues violinist Stuff Smith. And where some jazz violin solos could easily be played as horn lines, Mr. Blake deploys violinistic slides, tremolos and doublestops not as special effects, but as flexible, vocalistic shadings... He also knows how to pace a long solo so that it builds to crest after crest, with an oratorical sense of timing.”
So, it was totally fitting that a dream band consisting of violinist
Regina Carter
violinb.1966
Buy Now
