Susie Jones:
Musician, Educator, Public Servant.
Paul Paresa
MUS 411
Professor Sherry Alves
December 2, 2021
Mt. Hood Community College (MHCC) was once considered by many to be the best place to study jazz in the northwestern United States. The jazz department at MHCC accoladed bustling festivals, bursting rosters, and a lineage of profound educators who would collectively prepare tens of thousands of students with the knowledge and skills necessary to begin a career in music. The final years of its heyday were served by saxophonist/educator/performer/band leader/politician Susie Jones, whose tenacity, life of performance experience, and 30 years of teaching prepared and inspired more than three thousand students and countless audiences. She is a pillar of the Pacific Northwest’s history, and a necessary study for those interested in how Portland became a home for jazz. This project aims to finally create a formal biography of Susie Jones.
Just shy of forty miles from the capital of Oregon lies the quiet farming town of Lebanon, OR. Its back door opens to highway 20, which spreads its tendrils to a system of logging roads, fire roads, fishing holes, swimming holes, and eventually the Three Sisters and central Oregon. Lebanon is where Susie Jones was born and raised.
Her Grandfather was a musical man. A saxophone player as well, he performed during the great depression to help bring food to the table. He was such a prominent performer that even on the night of the day that his wedding took place he even played a gig. Susie’s grandfather would bring her mother to gigs while she was still in a bassinet. This early exposure to music is possibly what led Jones’ mother to become a piano player, following it as far as pursuing a degree in music with a Physical Education minor at the University of Oregon.
Susie, her sister, and her two brothers, all played music to an extent as well. Her siblings continued playing in various ways (one brother, a drummer, eventually became a music major) throughout their lives, but Susie was the one who had an early talent and drive for it. In fourth grade she began playing flute. In seventh grade her grandfather gave her his old saxophone. She would go to record shops and grab any records she could that had pictures of flautists (like Paul Horn and Hubert Laws) or saxophone players. Sometimes she would even take these albums back home to Lebanon and try playing along with them.
She continued playing and practicing, and in High School got her first gig. It was with a trio: A woman who played piano, and a man played bass and sang, and Susie. She walked in with her horn to find no sheet music. They said to her, “Oh! You play by ear, too!”[1]. When the songs would start Susie would go to the corner with her horn and figure out the key signature of the song. Once she found out what it was, she would come back to the stage and play. When recalling that gig she laughed and said, “I was just flying by the seat of my pants.”[2]
That gig, and the pay from it, inspired a thirst for more gigs. Susie joined an oldies quartet which featured a drummer, a singing bassist, a guitarist, and Susie, who played saxophone and jumped in on vocal harmonies. This quartet began playing popular songs (like “Moonglow”, a Benny Goodman super-hit from the mid 1950’s[3]) Friday and Saturday nights at the local golf course, and eventually expanded to playing the local Elks Club. After graduating from Lebanon High School she began taking classes nearly a hundred miles away at MHCC, which sits just outside of Portland, Oregon.
By the time Susie made her way to the Portland area in the early to mid-1970s, it was starting to become one of the busiest music scenes on the west coast. So busy that it inspired jazz drummer Mel Brown, and many other popular musicians (both local to Portland and from elsewhere in the US), to move to Portland in 1973. “By 1981, Portland had more live jazz than any other West Coast city. Out of 150 establishments offering live music, forty-eight were presenting jazz in some form or another…” [4]
When she first started attending MHCC she didn’t think of music as being a practical career financially. While Susie still attended some music classes, she primarily sought an education in Science and Mathematics. The music classes began taking over, so when she joined a band and started gigging in the bustling band scene of Portland Oregon, the funk, jazz, and pop music she was playing at night became her daytime habits as well. Gradually the money from her gigs was paying for college, and she realized she wanted to do it forever. She made the switch to become a music major.
Susie was in her element. When her roommates would go out partying at night she would be in the practice rooms running scales and practicing licks. Her musicality strengthened, and her studious nature and hard work were paying off. By her third and fourth years at MHCC she started feeling good about her playing.
After her time at MHCC she began taking classes at University of Portland (UP). At the time UP didn’t have a strong jazz program, but they offered Susie a benevolent scholarship to attend. Because of the programs available, and because of the impracticalities of a financially secure performance career in music, Susie began working towards earning a Music Ed degree. She started working hard at becoming a good teacher, all the while continuing to gig and record her original compositions. Her original pieces at this time were fusion based (fusion is the fusion between rock and jazz). As she continued to study teaching she fell further in love with the education process, and began to feel more and more that what she was doing was valuable.
Jones graduated from UP and continued to play professionally. A bass player friend of hers, who played in a funk band she was in, also played symphonic music (including as a player in the Portland Opera) told Susie about a strings position that opened up in the North Clackamas School district. When he told her about the position she said, “Dave, I don’t know anything about teaching strings” to which he replied, “You’ll learn.”[5] She applied and earned the position.
To prepare for string education across all grade levels, Susie began taking cello, violin, and bass lessons. With her studiousness and tenacity, as well as with help from her concert master, she gained the confidence to begin entering her high school ensemble in competitions. During the nine years she taught for North Clackamas she also began teaching Jazz Band II and some other classes at MHCC. This was also when she earned her Standard Teaching Certificate.
In 1987 she joined a writing ensemble and recorded two albums for Optimism Records. One was called Collage, and the other, Future Prospect, was a project done with Dan Siegel. Susie wrote the title track for Future Prospect under the name Susie May.[6]
A group she was co-leading with Portland Trumpeter Dave Mills, and local trombonist Geoff Craig, called The Kicks Band released two recordings which included the 1989 release, Alive and Kickin’.[7] Alive and Kickin’ received some international press: “…the ensembles are clean, and the group is quite spirited and enthusiastic.”[8]
Her next big gig was for David Douglas School District (DDSD), a position she held for eight years. With her knowledge of jazz band conducting, she raised an excellent band at the High School and continued to teach strings at other schools in the district. “[It was the] best of both worlds. [I taught] baroque music, and jazz”[9]. As well as teaching for DDSD she was teaching at home, this time as a mother. She put her personal compositions aside and starting to focus on her daughter. In 1999 MHCC’s jazz program needed a band director. One of the instructors at the college called Susie and suggested that she apply.
The application process was long. Along with multiple interviews, Susie had to rehearse a symphonic band and jazz band in front of adjudicators. She knocked her jazz band directing out of the park and got the gig.
“I want to make it clear that I did not build the department at Mt. Hood- that I rode on the shoulders of those before me and that they built it. It was Larry McVey and Hal Malcolm who built that program. It was phenomenal… then Chris Bruya… I followed Chris.”[10] – Susie Jones
When Susie started teaching at MHCC in 1999 there were two jazz bands, a symphonic band averaging sixty students, a full choir and a select choir, a jazz choir, and small combo classes. Her partner in jazz was vocal director Dave Barduhn. Her and Barduhn agreed that they would do their best to give real-world experience to students so they could know what to expect if they chose a career in music.
To do so Susie taught multiple genres and playing styles. Every fall would begin with Swing. The band would play the music of Count Basie and other prominent big band figures, then move towards funk and dance music once students knew how to play with a swing feel. Students in the band also had an opportunity to record every year in a professional studio. The yearly recording session would be paid for with profits from The Northwest Jazz Band Festival, a long-running competitive and informative festival hosted by MHCC since 1966. [11] On top of running the colleges jazz band department, she was head of running the festival, which saw up to ninety-five entries (separate schools who applied to compete) and eight divisions[12] that sometimes had to be waitlisted due to full capacity.
Susie contacted Sea Breeze, a Los Angeles based recording label[13], and sent them the professional-quality recordings she and her students had made. Sea Breeze answered her back and said the recordings were so good that they would be glad to distribute them on their label. At the time Sea Breeze distributed internationally, meaning MHCC’s jazz band and combo now had a chance to be heard worldwide thanks to Jones’ efforts. Some of the Albums even got national press with high praise. “The Mt. Hood Jazz Band is best described as an anomaly- a community college ensemble that doesn’t play like one. Director Susie Jones must be given at least partial credit for that.”[14] Of the colleges 12 albums recorded under the direction of Susie, one was nominated for a Grammy, and another won an award from the International Association of Jazz Education (IAJE).
The band’s tour schedule was also international. One year they were selected to play for the IAJE conference in New York (Founded in 1968 as National association for Jazz Education, the IAJE is no longer an organization, but prior to 2008 was a yearly conference that rewarded scholarships and awards to musicians and educators)[15], and for six years in a row were selected by the Portland-Kaohsiung Sister City Association (PKSCA) to travel to Portland Oregon’s Sister City, Kaohsiung, in Taiwan to represent the musical arts of Portland.[16]
Susie enjoyed her time at MHCC. “I felt like I was going to Disneyland every day.”[17] Even with all her success at the school, she still took time to take jazz lessons with Randy Porter, a prominent Portland-based pianist and educator.[18] In her lessons she worked on improving her improvisation skills, directing skills, and bringing expertise to her students. MHCC was her playground, and the school and community it was based in benefited greatly from it.
Toward the end of her thirteen years at the school it became clear that the music department, and the jazz department therein, were being dismantled. Her colleague in the jazz department, Dave Barduhn, said this in 2011: “Most of last year, the music department felt under attack and under siege, that we were being disrespected. I can tell you, I love this job, coming and making music with students every day. Last year wasn’t about that. It was about defending ourselves.”[19] In 2011 she retired from MHCC.
In 2012 Art Abrams Swing Machine Big Band released an album called Speak Low: Swing Hard, which featured Susie.[20] Art Abrams Swing Big Band is an ensemble that Jones has been a part of for some time, and still gigs with when the opportunity arises.
During the process of retirement, and the year that led up to her decision to do so, Jones attended a few board meetings and saw that board members weren’t aware of what was happening in the school on a day-to-day basis. She decided they needed someone on the board that had a good understanding of what happens on the inside of the college, so in 2013 she ran for MHCC Board of Directors on a three-tier platform of Keeping College Relevant, Keeping College Affordable, and Attracting Investment.[21] She won and served on the board for a full term (four years).
While on the board for MHCC Susie, just like she had many times before, took time to study the job. She learned boardman-ship, what to do with what money the college had, and what the community expected from the college.[22] She did this while making sure to be fair to all college departments, not just the music department she excelled in leading for twelve years previously. When Jones moved addresses she moved voting zones, and rather than run against a friend who sat on the board, she decided to step away.
Her next move was to run for Multnomah County’s Board of Education in 2017. Having been a board member for four years previous, she felt that she could bring a grass-root educator’s perspective. Susie realized while on the board at MHCC that every board member needs to be willing to do the research and put the work in and found that a good board should be balanced with different perspectives. She won and served on Multnomah County’s Board of Education until 2021.[23]
In 2020 she recorded a record with the experimental jazz group Better Than Street Racket. The album is called Bandemonium and is available on most online outlets.[24]
Currently Susie doesn’t serve on a board, teach lessons, or have any gigs lined up. Instead, she’s reaping the rewards of being a brilliant, hard-working person with a legacy of thirty years of teaching, eight years of public service, and a lifetime of playing music. Her thousands of former students range from non-musicians to film scorers, jazz pianists, occasional players, and much, much more. Her time as public servant may very well have been the reason there is still music at one of the most highly regarded music schools in the entire pacific northwest. When asked what kept her going, she said, “What kept [me] playing? …The Music.”[25]
[1] Jones, Susie. Interviewed by Paul Paresa. Audio recording. Online, October 28th, 2021.
[2] lbid
[3] Unknown. “Moonglow by Benny Goodman.” Playback.fm. Accessed November 15, 2021.
[4] Darroch, Lynn. “Rhythm In The Rain: Jazz in the Pacific Northwest.” Ooligan Press. 2016. Pg. 81. Accessed on November 9, 2021.
[5] Jones, Interview.
[6] Thom Jurek. “Biography, Dan Siegel.” Allmusic.com. 2021. Accessed November 16, 2021.
[7] “Alive and Kickin’.”, The Kicks Band. Seabreeze Records, 1989
[8] Yanow, Scott. “Alive and Kickin’ review by Scott Yanow.” Allmusic.com. Accessed on November 16, 2021.
[9] Jones, interview.
[10] lbid
[11] Unknown. “Northwest Jazz Band Festival At Mt. Hood”. Wherevent.com. 2018. Accessed on November 10, 2021.
[12] Unknown. “Jazz Festival Information”. Mhcc.edu. Year unknown. Accessed on November 10, 2021.
[13] Unknown. “Sea Breeze Records”. Twitter.com/recordsbreeze. 2019. Accessed on November 10, 2021.
[14] Bowers, Jack. “Mt. Hood Jazz Band & Combo 2006: My Foolish Heart”. Allaboutjazz.com. 2006. Accessed on November 10, 2021.
[15] Unknown. “The International Association for Jazz Education”. Apassion3jazz.net. 2008. Accessed on November 10, 2021.
[16] Unknown. “Portland-Kaohsiung Sister City Association”. Pksca.net. 2021. Accessed on November 10, 2021.
[17] Jones, Interview.
[18] Unknown. “Teaching Experience”. Randyporter.com/about. Randy Porter. Accessed on November 15, 2021.
[19] Mata, Mike. “Susie Jones Retires Due To Actions Made Last Year by Administration”. The Advocate. December 9, 2011. Accessed on November 10, 2021.
[20] Abrams, Art. Speak Low: Swing Swing Hard, Art Abrams Swing Machine Big Band. August 10th, 2012.
[21] Jones, Susie. “Candidate’s Statement for County Voters’ Pamphlet”. Multnomah County. May 21, 2013. Accessed on November 10, 2021.
[22] Toth, Carrie. “Mt. Hood Community College District Board of Education Agenda Session #930.” Mhcc.edu. March 8, 2017. Accessed on November 11, 2021.
[23] Unknown. “Susie Jones.” Ballotpedia.org. Accessed November 11, 2021.
[24] Bandemonium, Better Than Street Racket. 2020.
[25] Jones, Interview.