Alvin Batiste

Jazz musician and educator

• Born: November 7, 1932
• Birthplace: New Orleans, Louisiana
• Died: May 6, 2007
• Place of death: New Orleans, Louisiana

Batiste was an innovative jazz clarinetist, composer, arranger, and educator based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Early Life

Alvin Batiste (bah-TEEST) was born on November 7, 1932, in New Orleans, Louisiana. His parents were Edgar Batiste and Bernice Rodney Brown Batiste. Edgar, a jazz clarinetist, introduced Alvin Batiste to the clarinet shortly before Batiste started attending Booker T. Washington High School. The first influence on Batiste’s playing was recordings of the famous alto saxophonist Charlie Parker. Batiste also was influenced by the great New Orleans clarinetist Sidney Bechet. In addition to the clarinet, Batiste learned to play other woodwind instruments, including the flute and the saxophone.

Batiste received a bachelor’s degree in music education from Southern University in Baton Rouge. While in college, he became the first African American to play a solo with the New Orleans Philharmonic Orchestra, performing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s exquisite clarinet concerto in A major, K. 622. He earned a master’s degree in performance, composition, and theory from Louisiana State University. Batiste then taught music at McDonough Number 35 High School in New Orleans from 1955 to 1965. In 1969, he began teaching at Southern University, where he established the Batiste Jazz Institute. In 1971, he also began teaching at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, where he was the lead teacher in jazz instrumental music.

Batiste developed his own system for teaching music, which he called the root progression process. It featured exercises based on transposing a melodic motif through increasing musical intervals. Batiste published his root progression exercise in a workbook in 1995. Many leading jazz musicians studied under Batiste at Southern University. They include Randy Jackson, Branford Marsalis, Charlie Singleton, Quamon Fowler, and Woodie Douglas. Batiste married Edith Chatters. They had three children: Alvin, Jr., Maynard, and Marcia.

Life’s Work

Batiste was both an heir to traditional New Orleans jazz and an avant-garde innovator. Although the clarinet was central to the birth of jazz in New Orleans, its role had been diminished in the bebop revolution of the 1950’s. Inspired by the music of soprano saxophonist John Coltrane, Batiste pioneered its use in modern jazz. While teaching, Batiste also performed as a sideman in several well-known groups. In 1956, he played with jazz innovator Ornette Coleman. In 1958, he toured with Ray Charles, playing the saxophone. The Nat Adderley sextet recorded two Batiste compositions, “Chatterbox” and “Mozart’in,” on the album In the Bag (1962). Batiste also recorded with Cannonball Adderley on Black Messiah (1972). In 1978, Batiste played on two albums by Billy Cobham. Batiste played and recorded with four other distinguished New Orleans musicians in the American Jazz Quintet, recording the album From Bad to Badder in 1987. Batiste performed with a group of his students in a band called the Jazztronauts.

Batiste recorded three albums with the group Clarinet Summit, an avant-garde quartet that included John Carter, David Murray, and Jimmy Hamilton. Batiste recorded the albums Bayou Magic (1988), Late (1993), and Songs,Words, Messages and Connections (1999). He also composed ambitious works for orchestra, including North American Idiosyncrasies, Planetary Perspective, and Musique d’Afrique Novelle Orleans. His last album, Marsalis Music Honors Alvin Batiste, was released in 2007. It includes his best known jazz composition, “Salty Dogs.” Batiste died in his sleep on May 6, 2007. He had been scheduled to perform at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival later that day.

Significance

The clarinet is one of the major instruments in the history of New Orleans jazz. When jazz developed in the honky-tonks of the Storyville district in New Orleans, the clarinet often was the lead ensemble instrument, fronting the trumpet and trombone on melody line, supported by drums, bass, and strings in the rhythm. Although jazz masters such as Sidney Bechet, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, and Artie Shaw kept jazz clarinet mastery alive through the 1940’s, the instrument was eclipsed in the bebop era of the 1950’s. Batiste did much to restore the clarinet to prominence as a lead instrument in modern jazz. He was a fixture in the New Orleans jazz scene, recording with top-flight musicians and performing in festivals. He also was a talented arranger and composer. His greatest contribution may have been as a teacher, educating a generation of New Orleans musicians in the classroom and through his root progression system of instruction.

Bibliography

Batiste, Alvin. The Root Progression Process. Baton Rouge, La.: Jazztronauts, 1995. A collection of Batiste’s innovative jazz exercises for students, as well as several charts of Batiste’s compositions.

Burns, Mick. Keeping the Beat on the Street: The New Orleans Brass Band Renaissance. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. An account of the late twentieth century resurgence of New Orleans brass bands, which had played a pivotal role in the creation of jazz at the end of the nineteenth century. Several of the new bandleaders had studied under Batiste.

Horne, Aaron, ed. Woodwind Music of Black Composers. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1990. Major African American composers contribute autobiographical notes to this reference.

McCaffrey, Kevin, ed. The Incomplete, Year-by-Year, Selectively Quirky, Prime Facts Edition of the History of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. New Orleans, La.: E/Prime, 2005. History of the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, one of the largest in the country. Batiste was one of the most popular performers in the history of the festival.