Oral history interview with Patricia J. Trice, 2013 [text/print transcript]

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THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT GREENSBORO
INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Patricia J. Trice
INTERVIEWER: Sarah Turner
DATE: March 30, 2013
ALSO PRESENT: Woody Trice
ST: Today is Saturday, March 30, 2013. My name is Sarah Turner. I am the oral history interviewer for the [UNCG Institutional Memory Collection’s] African American Institutional Memory Project. I am at the home of—
PT: Patricia Trice.
ST: And we are here to talk about her experiences as a graduate student in the 1960s. And thank you, Dr. Trice, for letting me come today. I guess I just want to start off by asking you if you could tell me about when you were born and your birth date, and where, and your family situation, and things like that.
PT: Okay, I was born here in Greensboro. I’m a native. We didn’t live here; we lived someplace else. We didn’t move here until 1955. And I went to Washington School. It was called Washington Street School then. We lived away from here when I was in junior high so I did not go to Lincoln [Junior High], but I did go to Dudley [High School] and graduated from Dudley. I am a member—was a member and still am a member—of Providence Baptist Church, which is right down the street. It wasn’t then; it was over close to where Bennett [College, Greensboro, North Carolina] is now. What else?
ST: And what was your birth date?
PT: February 5, 1939.
ST: And when you say “here,” do you mean this actual house? Did you grow up in this house or—
PT: No, we did not move here until I was in high school.
ST: Okay.
PT: I was a senior in high school.
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ST: In this house or just this area?
PT: No, in this house.
ST: Okay, so this is a childhood house for you. Okay. Where did you—You said you didn’t live in this area, but you lived in Greensboro when you were born. What area were you living in?
PT: Not too far from here, near Washington School. We lived there, and we lived in West Virginia for three years, but then we moved back to Greensboro.
ST: What was your family—How was your family made up?
PT: I have a brother, and I have a sister. She is deceased, but my brother is still living.
ST: Okay, does he live here?
PT: Yes.
ST: Great, and what did your parents do?
PT: Daddy was executive secretary of the New Farmers of America, and so he worked with young men in high school who were intending to be agriculture teachers. And mama, mama stayed home until we were in high school, and then she worked at A&T [North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, North Carolina]. She taught English.
ST: Okay, so did both of your parents go to college?
PT: Yes, daddy had a master’s. He went to A&T, undergraduate and graduate. Wait, is that right? He may have gotten a graduate degree from West Virginia State College [Charleston West Virginia]. But mama went to Shaw University [Raleigh, North Carolina], and then she has a master’s from A&T, and she also has further study at Columbia [University, New York City, New York].
ST: Wow, so education was, I guess, really important in your household.
PT: Oh, yes. Yes.
ST: That’s great. What year did you graduate high school?
PT: Fifty-five.
ST: I know you went to UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro] for graduate school; where did you go as an undergraduate?
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PT: Oberlin [College, Oberlin, Ohio].
ST: Oberlin. Can you tell me about, you know, as a senior in high school, what were you considering when you picked where you were going to go to college?
PT: Well, when I was—When we lived in West Virginia, I had a piano teacher who was an Oberlin native. He lived here, but was brought up in Oberlin, in the city—the town of Oberlin. He also graduated from Oberlin so—And we knew about Oberlin because of its reputation for music, especially. The conservatory there is really one of the oldest and one of a very few that is part of a liberal arts college, not separated [unclear]
ST: So most conservatories are separate.
PT: Some of them are; Julliard [School, New York City, New York] is, and Curtis [Institute of Music, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] and so on. But this is one of the top conservatories in the college setting, and so I was just always going to go there as far as I can remember. So, I did.
ST: And where is Oberlin?
PT: It’s near Cleveland [Ohio]; it’s thirty-some miles southeast or west, I can’t remember, but it’s just south of Cleveland.
ST: So you went far away.
PT: Yes.
ST: And were you the only person, I guess, from this area to go there? Did you go alone?
PT: Yes, pretty much. There were one or two—Let’s see, I’m getting mixed up. There was another girl, but she didn’t live close, and a couple of times I came home for the holidays on the bus. I had an accident in West Virginia. But most of the time I flew.
ST: I guess you knew in high school that you wanted to study music?
PT: Yes.
ST: When did you start to get involved in music?
PT: Oh, I can’t even tell you: When I was in elementary school. You know I started taking piano lessons and it just happened. I did a lot of stuff at church, and I went to Dudley and was very much involved with the music there, and I took lessons right straight on through, so I just knew.
ST: Were either of your parents musical?
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PT: No.
ST: No. [laughter] And it’s piano, that’s your—
PT: Piano and organ.
ST: Okay. And so usually we focus on people’s undergraduate career, but we’ll go ahead and fast-forward. You graduated from Oberlin in 1959 and how did you decide your next step? What did you—?
PT: Well, I knew I should go to graduate school, and I was in music education at the time, and so I decided—I applied to Michigan and Illinois and two or three others, and heard right away back from Illinois. I got a personal letter from, you know, the dean and everything, so that persuaded me. I had applied to the University of Southern California, and I don’t know if I ever heard back from them.
ST: Still waiting.
PT: And so I went to Illinois, and it really was a good choice for me. I enjoyed it. I met my husband there. And then after that, we went to Colorado; he got his master’s at Colorado, and I worked in the public schools for a year. And then we came back here for a vacation, and ended up staying for nine years, and worked at A&T. And then he got a job in Florida, in Tampa, so we lived in Tampa for twenty-seven years. And I thought we’d stay there but, as luck would have it, here we are.
ST: So when you say that you went to Illinois; when did UNCG fit into your timeframe?
PT: After. I went to Illinois and got a master’s in ’60, and then we lived in Colorado for a year. I came back here—We came back here in ’61, I think. Both of us were working at A&T, and it was in ’67 or ’68 that I got the master’s from UNCG in piano performance, because the two degrees that I had were in music education.
ST: Okay, so you got your bachelor’s in music education and a master’s in music education, and then you went to UNCG and got a master’s in piano performance. And what kind of brought you to getting that degree.
PT: I was teaching piano. I had always played the piano and always taken lessons and so on, but I felt that I needed to have some kind of certification. I enjoyed it; I studied with Daniel Ericourt.
ST: How do you spell his name?
PT: E-R-I-C-O-U-R-T.
ST: And who was he?
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PT: He is—At the time—I can’t remember whether he’s deceased now or not. I think he is. At the time he was a fairly well-known French pianist who lived here and taught at UNCG.
ST: And what were you teaching at A&T at the time?
PT: Piano, and—What else? The major piano—the piano performance classes and piano classes for the undergraduates. They all have to take piano, no matter what their instrument is. They love it, too.
ST: Really.
PT: Oh, they hate it. [laughter]
ST: So if you majored in music at A&T, you had to take piano.
PT: Anybody had—any place. That has to be a secondary instrument, so if you played trumpet, you’ve got to take piano.
ST : But piano just has to take piano.
PT: Oh no, they usually have to take—They have to take—You have to take a major instrument and a minor instrument anywhere you go, and so they take something else, usually voice.
ST: And so when you were going to UNCG, you were working at the same time, or did you stop ?
PT: No, I took a leave. I took a leave. I took a leave of a year, and then I think I went two summers.
ST: What were you interested, I guess, growing up besides—Was it always going to be music for you?
PT: Somehow it was, yes.
ST: And when you were going to UNCG as a graduate student, I guess you were living, you know, in a house. You weren’t living on campus or anything like that.
PT: No, we had a house not too far away from here. I wasn’t living here; this is—My parents lived here. My husband and I were living down the street.
ST: Do you guys have any children?
PT: Yes, we have two children, two grown children, and how many grandchildren? Six, seven; don’t ask me? I think it’s seven. We have a new baby so, yes. 6
ST: And did you have children at this point when you were going to UNCG?
PT: No. Oh wait, the year I graduated, we adopted a little girl, but we didn’t when I started and finished.
ST: Can you tell me just about some memories you have about going to get your master’s at UNCG? Maybe something about some more professors that you studied under.
PT: I really enjoyed everything that I did there. I enjoyed the lessons with Mr. Ericourt; well, not enjoy. You don’t enjoy lessons, but I learned a lot. You learned by listening to him play. He didn’t always tell you what to do but he’d show you, and you just watched. At least that’s how I learned. But I learned a lot about fingering. Of course, he had studied with a pupil of Debussy, so—
ST: Of what?
PT: Debussy, Claude Debussy. One of the really, really famous—
ST: How do you spell his name?
PT: D-E-B-U-S-S-Y. And he was known for his interpretation of Debussy, so I felt really, really fortunate. I had studied with him before I went there. I knew he was here in town so I called and took a few lessons from him. But it really—I learned a lot from him, especially just listening to him play. You could tell, stylistically. I didn’t like everything that he taught me, but, you know, you learn from one, and then you take what you want from there, and then you learn from somebody else and you take—And so I’ve been real fortunate that my background has been kind of broad.
ST: Did you ever consider going to UNCG for music as an undergraduate?
PT: Things were segregated then, my dear.
ST: Oh, I guess the first black student didn’t come until about ’61 [Editor’s note: the first African American students were admitted in the fall of 1956], I think.
PT: Yes, ’61, and I went to college in ’55, and—
ST: I hadn’t even thought about that.
PT: Yes, in fact the state of North Carolina paid me to go to Illinois so I would not go—I could have gone. By the time I graduated and was interested in the first master’s, I could have gone to school in this state but they paid me not to.
ST: Really.
PT: Yes. 7
ST: Without even applying to those schools, or did they—Were you just told, if you go out-of-state—
PT: I can’t remember the process. I must have applied, and it was called the—There was a legislator whose name was [Thomas J.] Pearsall, and he—P-E-A-R-S-A-L-L—I can’t remember what his first name was. I met his son later in life. And the plan was that if you were eligible and had been accepted at UNCG, or [University of North] Carolina [in Chapel Hill], or [North Carolina] State [College, Raleigh, North Carolina], they would pay your tuition to go out-of-state.
ST: I have never heard that. That’s—
PT: Oh, my dear, yes. It’s a part of our glorious history. The Pearsall Plan. So I went to Illinois, and enjoyed it. And then later when I came back to UNCG, I enjoyed that, too. I’ve enjoyed every place I’ve been.
ST: And so I guess A&T didn’t have as well-know of a music program.
PT: They didn’t have a graduate program.
ST: But even as an undergraduate, you wouldn’t have stayed here to go to music school.
PT: No, their music department was not on a par with where I went. Oberlin has one of the best reputations in the country.
ST: Really, and I guess being it wasn’t North, but it was Midwest, it was integrated.
PT: Yes.
ST: Interesting. I hadn’t thought of that because one of the ladies, JoAnne Smart, [Class of 1960], is a Dudley graduate, and I thought for a minute you might have known her, but she’s a couple of years behind you, but she was one of the—Actually, I don’t know if she was a Dudley graduate. She student-taught at Dudley; that’s what it was, and the next wave of students came after they were—She was their student-teacher, kind of inspired by her. I had one lady who told me that her student-teacher was Miss JoAnne Smart, and that she thought she had a beautiful shade of lipstick, [laughter] and she thought she was so sophisticated that if women were sophisticated, they must all go to Woman’s College, [now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro] and that’s kind of what inspired her to go. Well, can you tell me about what the program—how it’s structured with piano performance; I mean what kind of classes you take and how you spend your time?
PT: You spend your time—at least four hours of it a day—practicing. You have to. Four hours is a minimum, and what fun that is. Not straight, you can’t do it straight. And that was the hardest—That always is the hardest part. You can’t do it altogether; you do—When I was working—and I always tried to concertize—but I’d get up at four in the morning and practice for an hour before I got ready to go to work, and then I would 8
practice two hours, maybe, at school, and then come home and try to get in another hour. Or something like that, but I always had to get up early in the morning. But I only did that for about six months.
ST: I was going to ask if your family enjoyed the early-morning piano practice.
PT: Well, fortunately I could close the music room off so that they—They weren’t the least bit happy about the fact that I got up, but they really couldn’t hear it. They slept right on through it. [laughter]
ST: Do you, as a piano performer, do you always play other music, or do you do any composing of music?
PT: No, I’m not very creative. My father never could understand that. He says, “As much music as you’ve had, you ought to be able to write something.” I said, “Daddy, I can’t. That is not my skill.” I always—
ST: Play other works.
PT: Yes. I gave my—I had a fairly large library, piano library, and I gave it to UNCG several years ago.
ST: Really. Wow. And as part of your curriculum, you practiced, and then you’d take, I guess, just practice courses. I mean what kind of courses are there in piano performance besides practicing at UNCG?
PT: In school?
ST: Yes.
PT: You take piano lessons, and then are piano lit [literature] classes, and there are other kinds of music classes that you can take.
ST: What does piano lit mean?
PT: You study the literature that has been written for the piano, from one period to the next. In the baroque period, for instance, there is Bach, mostly Bach, and some Handel and Scarlatti. And then in the classical period, there is Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven (or Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven) and in the romantic period, there are several composers. We learned the twentieth century composers, too. And of course they’re still writing.
ST: Right, and then after you graduated [unclear], how many students are in a concentration like you were in as piano performance?
PT: Oh gracious.
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ST: How big was the program, would you say, when you were there?
PT: I have no idea. You’ve got piano majors, piano performance majors, and you have students who are taking piano as their major instrument who are music education, or voice, or something else, so I don’t know. I have no idea, but there were—Let’s see, how many piano teachers were there? There were, I know, three; there may have been four—or there may have been more than that—and then there were some graduate students who were teaching also. But Mr. Ericourt—name just went right out of my—Mr. [Robert] Darnell, and then there were—there was a husband, wife team; the names I can’t remember—Inga. [Editor’s note: Phillip Morgan was the husband of Inga Morgan] I can’t remember, but there were at least four teachers who were the major teachers, and then there were some part-timers so—
ST: And were there other African American students in the program?
PT: In piano performance?
ST: Yes.
PT: There had been before me, but I don’t remember. [unclear] [laughter] Not in Mr. Ericourt’s studio, but I knew somebody who had gotten a master’s and had graduated either a year or two before me.
ST: Do you remember who that was?
PT: Wilhelma Bishop. W-I-L-H-E-L-M-A Bishop. Her husband was a Methodist minister; still is but she’s deceased.
ST: And how did you know her?
PT: I knew her through a friend of my mother’s, who belonged to the church that he pastored, and she was really helpful and would come—She came and talked to me a couple of times about the program and what she liked about it, so I kind of had an idea about what to expect. She was a very, very nice lady. She taught piano, and she also was very active in the music program in her church. Very, very nice lady. They left shortly after that; he moved on to another church. You know, Methodist ministers don’t stay long.
ST: Right, and did you ever feel like there was any—I mean, did the teachers care. You know, at the time the administrators cared about admitting black students. It was very—They wanted it to be gradual, but did you feel as if professors had any concerns about people’s race or was it a non-issue as far as you can remember?
PT: I don’t think the professors did. The students—In some cases I was amused because—Oh, what’s the name of the—There’s a music sorority, Mu Phi Epsilon, I think, and I was eligible to belong. Did I—What did I do? I can’t remember because I was eligible at Illinois and I didn’t join, but I did join at UNCG. And I also joined Pi Kappa Lambda, 10
which is an honorary society at UNCG, but they were kind of concerned that I’d want to—They did a fashion show and all that kind of stuff and they were concerned that I might want to participate. I had no interest in participating, so they were relieved.
ST: Did you feel like people were accepting of you?
PT: Oh, yes. I think so. The dean was. He was new the year I went. In fact, I was offered a job, but that was—As soon as I was offered that job, my husband was offered a job in Florida so we left.
ST: Do you remember what the dean’s name was?
PT: Hart, Lawrence. Hart, H-A-R-T. He just died fairly recently.
ST: And I have here that you were the founder and director of the Spiritual Renaissance Singers of Greensboro, Can you tell me more about that?
PT: When I was in Tampa, a friend and I started a similar group. We sing only the arrangements of the African American spirituals, and they are all unaccompanied, they are a cappella arrangements. We started a group in Tampa and it was such a wonderful experience, I talked to some friends here and they had said, Yes, we—In fact we’re still going.
ST: Okay. So this wasn’t something you did in graduate school; this was something after.
PT: Yes, this was—what year? I don’t know, but we started this one—the one here—We met and there was a group of people who met here and they said, Yes, let’s start it. And so our first concert was in ’89 I think, and we’ve been going strong ever since.
ST: And how many people do you have in this group?
PT: From twenty-two to twenty-six or so. It’s a small ensemble and we sing only the unaccompanied arrangements of the spirituals.
ST: So no piano.
PT: No piano; no instruments of any kind.
ST: Why do you want to do unaccompanied?
PT: The bulk of the arrangements are unaccompanied, and they began as unaccompanied.
ST: Historically.
PT: Yes, the original songs were unaccompanied. 11
ST: Well, can you tell me what campus was like, I guess, for you in the 19—This was later 1960s. Can you just describe experiences or memories you have about UNCG’s campus?
PT: Well, actually I don’t have many because I wasn’t on campus. I’d drive over there, and park up whatever that street is that goes by in front of—Well, the Music Building was on Tate Street then. [Editor’s note: the name of the building was Brown Music Building]
ST: That’s a good memory because I only know [the School of Music] as being right off Market [Street] so—
PT: No, it was on Tate Street, right next to Aycock [Auditorium], and so I would park—What direction is this? No, this. This is south, isn’t it, I think.
ST: Yes.
PT: South, I would park just south of Tate Street. No, just south of Aycock [Auditorium] and—
ST: Aycock Street?
PT: Yes. And walk down, and walk up and get back in my car.
ST: Did the music school have a name of the building, or was it just the music school?
PT: No, there’s a name. [pause] It’s whatever that building is next to the [Aycock] Auditorium. What is the name of that building? [pause] Oh, that’s right. It’s not there anymore. It was—It wasn’t on the corner, but it was the next building. It’s a big building; I can’t think of the name of what it is.
+ST: You mean the building is no longer there.
PT: It’s there.
ST: Oh, it’s there. I don’t know.
PT: As far as I know, it’s there.
ST: I don’t know if they changed names when they moved things, or if they kept the name the same.
PT: I’ll see if I can find out what it is, if I can get up off this couch. Whenever you buy a couch, make sure it’s high enough [laughter] so that you don’t have to—Woody, what was the name of the Music Building at UNCG?
WT: I don’t know. I can’t remember.
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PT: [laughter] What good are you?
ST: It’s okay if you can’t remember.
PT: Oh golly, isn’t that something. It’s the building right next to the auditorium.
ST: Right next to the auditorium. I should know it. I’ve got a more recent memory and I’m terrible at things like that.
PT: Well, if you don’t use the building, you don’t know.
ST: Right, and exactly as a graduate student, you stay kind of separated.
PT: Yes, you know I didn’t live on campus or anything.
ST: Right.
PT: I just can’t think of it. I’ll probably do that after you leave.
ST: And so as part of your curriculum, did you have performances that you had to do, like in Aycock [Auditorium]?
PT: You had to do an ensemble performance.
ST: What does that mean.
PT: That means you have to get together with a bunch of instruments, and we did [pause] the Trout, the Schubert, the last movement of the—or was it the first movement—of the Trout Quintet by Schubert. It was a great experience; I loved it.
ST: What did you like about it?
PT: I liked the music. But performing with others in a small ensemble, that was fun.
ST: So did you ever consider just being a piano performer, like being a professional piano player?
PT: I sort of was because I did keep performing all through my career, but pianists are a dime a dozen and it’s very, very, very difficult to break out so I just kept performing because I had to kept my chops up. and I felt it was important for my students to hear performances.
ST: And then what other—You said you had to do ensemble; did you also have to do other pieces as part of your performing requirements.
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PT: Let’s see, there was of course a solo recital and then you had to do—I don’t remember exactly what but there was at least one ensemble performance and I did some accompanying, too.
ST: And does accompanying mean with a singer or does that mean—
PT: A singer or—It happened that it was a singer, but any, all instruments and voice other than piano have to be accompanied. There has to be some music, some harmony and chords and texture behind them. Piano can do everything, but clarinet can only play melody. They can only play melody.
ST: You would think I would know this. I took band—Well, I was only in middle school, but I don’t know the difference between melody and what else makes up music. It’s very interesting.
PT: Well, the melody is what you hum along with and then you have the harmony underneath, the chords that are underneath and then there’s texture—the way the notes are put together underneath and so on.
ST: So what other instruments can play harmony?
PT: All the rest of them.
ST: Really.
PT: Yes, they play a part in the harmony. So you have a part in the harmony, in the chord.
ST: Interesting. Did you ever have to do any like sight-reading as part of, like performance, or just as part of like testing and things like that?
PT: As a part of—In fact, you had—Yes, you had to be able to sight-read as a part of a test that you took at the end of a certain period. You’d go in and you’d have to play something, play a piece that you had prepared, and then sight-read pieces that they had there for you.
ST: Did you have to audition to get into the UNCG music school?
PT: Yes.
ST: And was that the only place you applied since you were in Greensboro, or did you ever consider going anywhere—?
PT: No, at the time I didn’t. But, you know, it was here so—And the reputation was a good one, and it was in-state, and I had a husband.
ST: Right. Interesting. And can your husband play piano? 14
PT: No.
ST: Your children; did they learn how to play piano?
PT: Yes, sort of; to satisfy themselves. My daughter—When we were living in Florida, they both, she and my son, were in a hand bell choir at church, and they just loved that and so that’s what she has found in Kansas City—It’s not even in the church she goes to, but she plays in a hand bell choir, and she’s real happy with that.
Now my son, who lives here—In fact he lives right up the street—kept the singing, and he’s singing in the ensemble, in the Spiritual Renaissance Singers, and he has been—He kept asking me, and I kept saying, No. But he’s really been an asset.
ST: Can you tell me anything about kind of what your classmates were doing at UNCG? Did any of them go on to become famous pianists?
PT: I haven’t kept up with them at all.
ST: Did you make any kind of friends at all at—
PT: I did make friends, but one of the problems was that I moved away shortly after getting the degree, so I lost contact with the classmates that I had.
ST: I work with a lady who is a classically trained—do you say it “pee’ uh nist,” is that how you pronounce it, or is that—
PT: Some people do.
ST: Piano player.
PT: “Pee an’ ist.”
ST: Pianist, and she went to a conservatory for two years and then transferred to UNCG. I think she still has her music degree, but she just couldn’t do the conservatory anymore. She wanted to go to a liberal arts school, but she says she still has friends who are, like, professional pianists. She gets their CDs, and she says it’s just crazy to see these people make this their life. She still plays piano locally, but I was just like amazed by someone who I’ve met. I’m just so not musical. I wish I were but—
PT: Well, you know, you don’t have to be.
ST: Yes. Well, in middle school I took band, but I was forced to play the clarinet. I didn’t get to choose. My mom made my sisters all—I’m the youngest of four—we had a clarinet and we all played it. That was how it went. Mom said we’re not buying another instrument, so we all were forced to play this instrument that we didn’t want to play. It’s funny. 15
Well, let’s see what else I have to ask. Was there any kind of like political activity happening on campus when you were there; any kind of like the Neo-Black Society or any kind of—
PT: Not that I know of but I was kind of divorced from all of that. I did not get involved in campus life that much. I didn’t live on campus, you know. I just wasn’t—I drove my car over there and parked it on Tate Street and—I went to concerts and things like that, but I always went to concerts so I don’t go as much now as I did then because I’m just—I’m an old lady. I just [laughter, unclear] But I went to a lot of concerts then.
ST: Would famous people come to—?
PT: Oh yes, the Artist Series, yes.
ST: Really, who would come and [they’d?]—What are some names of people who would come, if you can remember it?
PT: Shirley Verrett, who was an emerging singer. Where did you park, over here?
ST: I parked in your driveway. Is that okay?
PT: Okay, right here.
ST: Yes.
PT: Okay.
ST: How do you—Her name was Shirley—
PT: V-E-R-R-E-T-T. Who else came? The Artist Series has always brought in [pause] For the life of me, I can’t remember anything, but they were excellent concerts.
ST: And when did you get your PhD?
PT: In [pause, chuckles]—
ST: Obviously after you went to UNCG.
PT: [calls out] Woody, when did I get my PhD?
WT: When?
PT: Yes.
WT: I think ’81.
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PT: No, it wasn’t ’81.
WT: I don’t know.
ST: [laughs] Where did you get it from?
PT: Florida State.
ST: Florida State. Did you ever consider going to UNCG and, instead of piano performance, getting a PhD.
PT: I didn’t live here then.
ST: But I mean after—You could have gone since you already had a master’s degree. Instead of getting an additional master’s, theoretically, you could have gone and gotten a PhD.
PT: Oh, yes. No, at that time, I didn’t. I was teaching piano at A&T, and I felt like I needed to get further training in piano, so that’s why I got my master’s instead of getting a PhD. But a PhD is not a performing degree anyway. It’s what I have now, because I did not get a performance degree at Florida State.
ST: But as far as you could get with performance would be a master’s. It’s a terminal degree or does it have a PhD.
PT: It’s a DMA, doctor of musical arts. And I really didn’t—I’m glad I did not go for that degree. The degree that—The PhD has really been very beneficial. It introduced me to the world of research, and I really like that world; it has served me well.
ST: What kind of research do you do for music?
PT: Well, the book that I wrote—
ST: Oh, you wrote a book.
PT: Yes.
ST: See, we learn so much.
PT: It is a bibliography and a—My mind is [unclear]. A friend of mine told me—She was asking me when I was getting ready to go up to get the doctorate, to get the degree for commencement, she says, “Pat, when is commencement?” I said, “I don’t know.” [She asked,] “Who’s the speaker?” [I said,] “I don’t know.” She asked me another question and I said, “I don’t know.” She said, “Well, I’m glad”—She had a real strong Southern accent. She says, “Well, I’m glad you got your degree then because I don’t think you could get it now.” When did I get my degree?
17
ST: What was the name of your book?
PT: Oh, it was a long name; let me go get it. [pause] Where is it? [pause]
ST: It almost seems like you are allowed to forget things now because you were a professional student for—How many years were you in college from undergraduate? You went four years as an undergraduate.
PT: And then I got a master’s and then I [unclear]
ST: Was that two years?
PT: No, it was a year.
ST: A year, so that’s five years. And then you got your second master’s.
PT: Yes, that was—
ST: Was that a year or two?
PT: A year and a half. A year and two summer things.
ST: That’s at least another—You’re almost up to seven.
PT: And then the PhD was a year of residence, and all kinds of other time. But I enjoyed all of it. I loved going to school.
ST: So it’s Choral Arrangements of the African-American Spirituals. So this has been something I guess you’ve always been interested in.
PT: The spirituals, yes, and particularly since we started—In Tampa, we started the Spiritual Renaissance Singers of Tampa, and I found out that there wasn’t a reference book at all. There was no place I could go to find out what was available, so it’s not the kind of book that everybody would read because it just lists, by composer and then by title and subject.
ST: And so did you have to write this as part of your graduate degree?
PT: No, I wrote that after.
ST: You wrote it after. Okay. Interesting because a lot of people, at least in history, to get a PhD you essentially have to publish a book, or at least have to write a book and hope it gets published, so I figured you did this as part of your studying.
PT: No.
18
ST: So you did this when you were working. Okay. Well, what kind of—This is the history in me—What kind of primary documents were you using? Where did you find the history for these spirituals?
PT: There are some references but—And there are lists of—There is an overview, an historical overview at the beginning, and then there are three lists: There’s one by arranger, by title, and then by subject, so what I did to find the pieces was to write—Well, I started with what I knew and what I had, and then I wrote publishers that I knew published and asked them to send me—I told them I was writing a book and it had been accepted for publishing and could they send me pieces, and many of them did. I also wrote arrangers and asked them to send me or tell me so I could order, and most of them were just really, really helpful. And so that is how I got the information, and at the time, it was about as complete, you know, but it goes out—This is ’98 and this is what, 2013, and there’s been another book written since that is not quite like this, but it also lists arrangements. But it’s two or three years old already—more than that.
ST: Really, how long did it take you to write this?
PT: [pause] I don’t know exactly because the first few chapters are history and so on, and characteristics and stuff. I worked on that—My [husband] was living in Boston at the time and so I went up to see him in the summertime and that’s what I did, was to work on the book. And then, what I did was to write to all the publishers, and arrangers in some cases, and ask them to send me music. I went over to UNCG to the library in the music department, or the School of Music, and got some information there, but I have a number of sources myself, and while he was in Boston, we went to the Brattle Bookstore and found me all kinds of books there. And one of the ladies who was a subject—He was working at the Human Nutrition Research Center in Boston—and one of their subjects was a retired music librarian at New England Conservatory, and she gave me a copy of a book that was one of the primary history books that I was using. Then he managed to find me other books in the Brattle Bookstore, stuff like that. In fact they invited him out to their house and let him browse and he found some things.
ST: And what did you say the name of this bookstore was?
PT: Brattle, B-R-A-T-T-L-E. It’s a fairly well-known bookstore [of] used and old books.
ST: Is it mostly in the Northeast?
PT: It’s in Boston.
ST: Just in Boston. Okay. That’s really interesting. And so you wrote your book—Well, you got your PhD while you were in Florida. You were also teaching at the time.
PT: Yes.
ST: And you were teaching at—? 19
PT: Hillsborough Community College.
ST: Hillsborough Community College.
PT: Yes, that’s in Tampa.
ST: So you were able to go to school and teach at the same time.
PT: No, I took a year off, and then—I took a year off, and then I took another semester to do the dissertation. But I started by taking classes in the summertime.
ST: What was your dissertation topic?
PT: I wrote on my piano teacher. What was the title of that dissertation? [laughter] Oh, my heavens.
ST: You don’t have to tell me the title; you can just tell me what it was about.
PT: It was about my piano teacher. My piano teacher, whose name was Gray Perry, in Tampa—I studied with him in Tampa for several years—was a student of, a pupil of [Theodor] Leschetizky who was a well-known teacher.
ST: How do you spell that? Sorry.
PT: L-E-S-C-H-E-T-I-Z-K-Y, I think. That may be “T-I-S-K-Y.”
ST: It doesn’t have to be exact. I don’t think I even know how to begin how to spell that.
PT: It’s spelled a lot of ways. You know it’s one of those Polish names, I guess, that’s spelled a lot of different ways. I think it’s “S-K-Y.” He had studied with a pupil of his, and he had also studied with Isidor Phillip who was a well known French pianist. Phillip, spelled
P-H-I-L-L-I-P, I think. That was—I learned a lot from all my teachers. Now Mr. Ericourt, you learned from him by listening to him play. He didn’t really articulate how to do things but you watched what he did, and he taught a particular kind of touch, too, which I use, not all the time because I don’t think it should be used all the time. But then Mr. Perry, he was in his eighties when I studied with him, but he was about as energetic as anybody, any fifty-, or sixty-year-old. He drove back and forth, you know. He had a home in Tampa, and he came there on weekends. That’s where I took my lessons. And he taught in Bradenton, [Florida] which was an hour away, and he drove back and forth. He just was a phenomenal man. He talked very slowly. He was from Arkansas, and he had to have been in his eighties when I studied with him.
ST: And what did you write about him?
PT: His pedigree. He studied with Isidor Phillip; he studied with, as I said, a pupil of Leschetizky; and he studied with—Oh, what is the man/wife’s name—Virgil, Mrs. A.M. 20
Virgil in New York, and these were all fabulous teachers. They weren’t necessarily performers, but they were teachers, and he was able to bring together much of what he learned from all of them into—I hate to say a method, because he really didn’t have a method—but the way he developed technique and so on, it was—I’d never had a teacher like that. He was really, really fabulous. He was a big influence on me, and that’s why I did my dissertation on him, just to show—And my committee, particularly the pianist that was on my committee, was fascinated by him. He was in his eighties when I was studying with him.
ST: And even as an adult and having a master’s degree in piano performance, you continued to take lessons.
PT: Yes.
ST: Really, and, I mean, at what point are you—do you know so much that you—Can you always be taught?
PT: I think so, I think so. If for no other reason, it helps to have another pair of ears listening to what comes out. You can always learn. In Tampa—After I got the degree, I did not do solo piano performances anymore, but I did work with another pianist, and we did duo piano concerts, and it was interesting for him to listen to me, and me to listen to him, and to adjust our techniques to each other so that we could—so that it sounded, you know, good. So that was kind of fun.
ST: You would think you would stop taking lessons once you’re, you know—
PT: Oh no, you can always learn from somebody,
ST: And what did you teach at Hillsborough Community College?
PT: I taught the piano major classes; I taught piano class, the minor classes; and I taught—
ST: So people who majored in piano and people who minored.
PT: And then people who did not major in piano. They all had to take piano. And I had the—The last few years, I had the chorus and the vocal ensemble because I’ve had a lot of choral experience, and I taught music history and keyboard harmony.
ST: And so you always taught in, like, higher education. You never taught in the schools.
PT: I taught one year in elementary school in Colorado; loved it. The only reason I didn’t—We couldn’t—My husband couldn’t get a job there, so we came back here for our vacation not knowing what on earth we were going to do, and we got jobs at A&T.
ST: How old were you when you took your first piano lessons?
21
PT: Too young, I think. I think I was four.
ST: And do you remember, have memories of your first piano teacher?
PT: Vague memories. I don’t remember the lessons so much, but I do remember vaguely. The teacher that I had after that, Mrs. Brown, I do remember.
ST: And this was when you were living in Greensboro, before you moved to West Virginia.
PT: Yes, and then in West Virginia, my teacher Mr. Phillips; I remember him, and he was a native of Oberlin, Ohio and went to Oberlin, and was a major influence, or a major reason that my parents found out about Oberlin and decided that that was where I was going to go.
ST: And who was your music teacher at Dudley?
PT: Julia Ruth Morrison, or Richmond, her name is now. And she was very, very helpful to me; always very helpful.
ST: Julia Ruth Morrison.
PT: She was Morrison then; she’s Richmond now.
ST: And was she, I guess, a Dudley teacher.
PT: Yes.
ST: And she’s still around and—
PT: Yes, she’s retired, of course, but she’s still—She lives right up the street. But there were a number of people who were very, very helpful. The people at my church were very supportive of me; my parents did everything they knew to do, everything they could do; and I’m very grateful for that.
ST: Did either of your siblings play piano or do anything with music?
PT: My brother didn’t; my sister took piano lessons a little bit, took some lessons from me, but you know, she just did it for fun.
ST: And when you were at Dudley, did Miss Morrison—Was she a driving force, too, in going to Oberlin, or did she want you—
PT: She encouraged me a whole lot. I mean, everybody in my life, everybody has been very encouraging and still are.
22
ST: Well, that’s great. And do you ever do anything with the music school at UNCG now? Do you ever stay connected or visit or—
PT: When I was here before, I went to concerts all the time, and I know some of the people over there, but I just don’t fly around like I used to.
ST: Does your choral group ever play at UNCG?
PT: No, we never—We never have been invited, but we sing primarily at churches. We’re still going; I don’t know how much longer we’re going to go because everybody—not everybody—but many of them are my age or a little younger and we’re not getting any younger. My son is involved in it, and he’s one of the younger ones, but—
ST: And do you sing in this group, or do you direct it?
PT: I direct it. No, I’m not much of a singer. I can carry a tune and I kind of know what to do with my voice, but you can do without me. [laughter]
ST: Well, what impact do you think your time at UNCG has made on your career and your life?
PT: I think it was kind of unique because it was the performance—It’s the only performance degree I had, and I enjoyed going to the concerts; I enjoyed participating in things. I just thoroughly enjoyed it.
ST: And do you think it was a valuable experience for you; was it—
PT: Oh yes.
ST: Is there anything else you’d like to share about UNCG; any other stories or memories of professors, your classmates, anything you can share that I haven’t asked about that you can think of?
PT: The year I went there, Dr. Hart, who is now retired, H-A-R-T, it was his first year there, too, and he was very, very supportive. He taught one class and I took that class. It was a teaching, a theory class, and actually he had hired me. He hired me to—I was supposed to teach at UNCG, and right after he hired me, my husband went down to Florida and got a job, so I had to go then. He says, “That’s what I hate about you women with these husbands. Your husbands take you off.” So I never was, I was kind of disappointed but it was good for us to move.
ST: Really. That’s really—I’ve really learned a lot about music; there’s so much to know, and you’re quite an accomplished woman. I mean, you have a lot of things under your belt that you’ve experienced and—
23
PT: I’ve been very fortunate, and I have to give credit to my family and to my mother and father and my husband because they all have been very, very supportive. I couldn’t have done it at all if they hadn’t been supportive.
ST: What had you heard about UNCG in terms of just the graduate school before you came; I mean, was it—Would you have ever considered going if you hadn’t been living in Greensboro or was it just a, We’re here; I might as well go because I need the experience.
PT: Well, I think it was a combination of things: it was helpful that I didn’t have to leave Greensboro because we had a house and everything—not this one—but we had a house and, of course, my husband was here so it was helpful that I didn’t have to leave, and UNCG had a good enough reputation, you know. I didn’t feel like I was sacrificing anything. I enjoyed it and I learned a lot.
ST: And you, I guess, retired from Hillsborough after how many—
PT: Twenty-seven years I was there. I didn’t work in Florida the first year we moved. My children were real little, and I stayed home with them, and then when they were old enough to go to daycare and stuff like that, so I worked the second year we were there, worked the entire time.
ST: And do you still teach piano, or do you still do—?
PT: No, I don’t. I just don’t. I have a church job, but it’s conducting. I can play the organ; in fact, I played the organ the other day at a funeral, but I don’t play anymore.
ST: And did you learn organ just as the second instrument you had to—
PT: Actually, I went to Oberlin with piano as a primary instrument and then switched over to organ, so I did organ at Oberlin and at Illinois, and then, since I was teaching piano at A&T, I thought perhaps I ought to get a little bit more training in piano, and I was glad I did. It was a good experience.
ST: And so you will still play for certain events or certain people you know; I mean, how do you—
PT: I don’t do much playing, and I don’t teach. I sort of half-way teach my grandson, but he doesn’t want to learn much, [laughter] and I don’t force him. I just—teaching, unless it’s going to—If I had the opportunity to teach an advanced student, I would, but teaching beginning students, I just don’t have the patience to do it anymore. They don’t practice, and most of them don’t want to do it; their parents are making them do it, you know. And I don’t feel like I want to do that anymore.
ST: Do you still play on your own?
PT: Not very much. 24
ST: Really, why is that?
PT: I don’t practice. Now I can sit down and play when I need to play. I have a church job, but it’s conducting so I don’t need to, but if I need to do the piano, I can. I had to play the organ at a funeral the other day, unexpectedly, but you know, I could so I just went on and did it. But no, I don’t do much piano playing. Do I miss it? Sometimes, but it was really hard work. You just don’t sit down and play stuff. My neighbor in Tampa said to me one time, because I would just disappear for whole periods of time. I was practicing four hours a day, and it’s hard to get four hours a day into your day, and she would say, “Why do you have to practice; don’t you know how to play?” So, I don’t know what I said to her because there wasn’t anything to say to her. She just didn’t understand.
ST: Right, and you are probably the most critical person on your own playing, whereas if I heard you play, I’d probably think you played perfectly, but you probably see every mistake or hear every mistake—
PT: Yes, somebody asked, you know—I was practicing four hours a day and my kids were, oh, maybe nine and seven, or something like that, and a friend said, asked my daughter (who was the older), “Did your mom make any mistakes?” and she said, “Yes, twenty-seven.” Because they’d heard it over and over and over again, so she said, “Yes, twenty-seven.”
ST: Well, that’s so interesting. Well, I don’t really have any other formal questions unless you have anything else you want to share or would like to—
PT: I really, really enjoyed UNCG. It was just right; it was something I could do, and I couldn’t really be a part of, you know, the [campus] life completely, but then I didn’t need to be. I was older so I didn’t need to get involved it everything, but I really enjoyed it.
ST: And I’ve actually heard that from a lot of music students in general, even as undergraduates, that, you know, your time is spent in practice studios and you just don’t mix with the regular students as much because you’re so—especially at UNCG—which has a serious music program, that people came because they wanted to do music. They didn’t necessarily do the college thing, because they wanted to be musicians.
PT: Well, if you’re doing performance, you have to practice; you have to practice. And people don’t understand that, you know. “Four hours a day.” But if you don’t practice, it doesn’t happen.
ST: And did you say you recognized any of these names on here, because I know we have some music people on those lists?
PT: Yvonne Cheek, [Class of 1967].
ST: Yvonne, I was thinking that was the one you probably knew. 25
PT: I didn’t know her sister. I met her sister later.
ST: And how did you know Yvonne?
PT: I think I met her over there. Marian Thornhill, [McClure, Class of 1964] is a Greensboro person. Shelia Cunningham [Sims, Class of 1962] is also a Greensboro person, but I have not seen her in, I bet you, forty or fifty years because they live out in California, and I haven’t seen them. I think that’s all. [pause] JoAnne Smart Drane.
ST: That was the lady who was the first black student.
PT: Not a music major though.
ST: No.
PT: Was she from Greensboro?
ST: I don’t think she was originally. [unclear] but I think I got confused, but I know she student-taught at Dudley. She may have—
PT: I don’t—That name. Ada Fisher, [Class of 1970], now. I think I have met her. I know her sister. [pause] Oh, I see: interviewed as of March first. You would not have interviewed Claudette [Graves Burroughs-White, Class of 1961] because she died several years ago. Elizabeth Withers, [Class of 1963]: I bet I know her parents. Elizabeth Withers Stroud.
ST: And that’s yours to keep.
PT: Well, thank you.
ST: You can hang on to that, if you’d like. And the only other thing I have—
[End of Interview]