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| A final beat: Renowned drummer Jack Mouse leaves lasting legacy in Emporia and beyond By Bobbi Mlynar Special to The Gazette Aug 13, 2024 Some say you can't go home again. Jack Mouse could and did. He just didn't get to stay long enough. After decades away, Mouse — an internationally renowned jazz drummer — had returned to Emporia in 2022 with his wife, jazz vocalist Janice Borla, after decades of being gone. "Jack really never lost his love for Emporia, even though we were away for so many years, " Borla said in an interview on Saturday. "I knew I wanted to get Jack back here because the sirens were calling." Once the decision was made, the move came quickly. One of Mouse's grade-school classmates, Karen Wayman Sommers, noticed a house in her neighborhood was for sale. Mouse and Borla watched a virtual tour of the house from their home in Naperville, Illinois, made an offer, and bought the house all during the Memorial Day weekend. "We had to move fast, and we had to make a decision right now from photos, " she recalled. They moved into their new home in July. They weren't here to retire, however. Their lives remained packed with composing, performing, and educating. They released a new album in August 2023, and with Borla's help on notations, Mouse had finished and recently published a book about drum methods to enable drummers to create their own specific sounds. "The last thing on his bucket list was getting that out, " Borla said. "We just made it by the skin of our noses." Gone too soon But last week, Mouse's return to Emporia was cut short. "He'd had a rough month or so with lots of health issues that converged, unfortunately, at the same time, " Borla said. After arriving at the Newman Regional Health emergency room on Aug 5, Mouse soon was on a helicopter en route to the KU Medical Center in Kansas City, where he died on Thursday, Aug. 8. He left behind hundreds, if not thousands, of former students, fellow performers, music-industry associates, and fans who acknowledged him as an outstanding leader in his profession. "He wanted to be remembered as a wonderful player; that's who he was in his mind, " Borla said. "Even though he was a gifted, gifted teacher … that never was supposed to overshadow his playing, and oftentimes, it did." Mouse had succeeded in most every aspect of the music industry – performer, band leader, composer, teacher, side man, author, entrepreneur, percussion instrument designer, and, frequently, as a father figure to many of his students and fellow musicians. Mouse seemed to have been born to make music and to teach it to others. A real little drummer boy There never had been any doubt about Mouse's passion for drumming. He had set his career path at the age of four, and began following it studiously after a generous woman brought her son's used snare drum to the youngster's home. The woman — Gertrude Burnes — was the mother of another Emporia musical prodigy, LeRoy "Speed" Burnes. (Burnes later went on to international fame and tweaked his professional name to "Roy Burns.") "She showed up at my front door and said, 'I want him to have that until he can get one of his own, '" Mouse recalled during an interview about Burns' career after his death in May 2018. The snare drum was only the beginning. Drummer Burns — who at 14 was already playing professionally with The Counts, a local band — began shepherding Mouse into the world of music. The two maintained a professional relationship and personal friendship for the remainder of their lives. "He was my first teacher, " Mouse was quoted saying in the article. "He was the first drummer I ever saw play live … at a city band concert in Fremont Park." Burns made an impact in every facet of the business, Mouse had said then. Mouse didn't mention the impact he had made himself. He received an Aquarian Award of Achievement from Aquarian Drum Heads for his contributions as a performer and jazz educator, and, along with Burns, in 2018 was inducted into the Emporia High School Hall of Fame. In 2022 Mouse was inducted into the Emporia State University Music Department Hall of Fame. This weekend, Mouse garnered praise for his own contributions to the music industry, and his kindnesses throughout their careers. Mad about music Mouse's classmates at Walnut Elementary School knew from the beginning that Mouse was destined for success. "He was always a musician, " said Mike Gann, who met Mouse when they entered kindergarten. "He was a child prodigy. "I do not know why we ended up being such close friends, because really, we had nothing in common. I had zero musical talent whatsoever. But we ended up being best friends." Karen Sommers, also in the same class with Mouse and Gann, remembers attending what surely was Mouse's first-ever concert, given at Walnut School when he was in third grade. "His mother brought his drums to school, " Sommers recalled. Mouse began playing "and we started chanting 'Go Jackie, go!'" After Mouse reached his teens, he too began playing drums with The Counts. Mouse also gave lessons at Counts leader Robert Lenigan's music store, where his students included Sommers' brother, Jim Wayman. Gann sometimes traveled with The Counts, to help Mouse set up the drums and to listen to the music. "We had a lot of fun times together, " Gann said. "He had a good sense of humor." Mouse left Emporia after graduating from high school to attend the Berklee School of Music in Boston, Gann said, before returning home to attend the College of Emporia. "He graduated from C. of E. (in 1968), and felt that was a fabulous music education, " Sommers said. "A lot of well known musicians came to C. of E. because of Jack Mouse, " Gann said. The United States Air Force Academy then recruited Mouse to join its famed jazz ensemble, the Falconaires, where he was featured soloist while touring and recording with the group from 1969 to 1973. By his late teens, Mouse already had been performing with musical greats, and he continued that trend, playing with Tex Beneke, Ralph Flanagan, Buddy Morrow, Bob Crosby, Sammy Kaye, Ray Eberle, Les Elgart, "Peanuts" Hucko, Clark Terry, Doc Severinson, Mike Steinel's Chicago Jazz Quintet, the Four Freshmen, Dan Haerle Trio, Bob Bowman, and a host of others named in Mouse's biography online at jackmouse.com. Ever-ready helping hand Bowman, a string bass player who grew up in Topeka and now lives in West Yellowstone, Montana, had been attending veterinary school at Kansas State University in Manhattan when Mouse called and asked him to come to Emporia to perform. Bowman left the university and began playing gigs with Mouse here, in Kansas City, and beyond, including time performing with Thad Jones and Mel Lewis jazz orchestra in New York City. They also made many recordings together in Chicago, Bowman said, and in recent years, performed at the Emporia Granada Theatre. "He really helped me out a lot, " Bowman said. "He got me good-paying gigs and stuff, clinics, kinds of concerts, things that were fun." The pair also participated in a music camp in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, when that camp coincided with a camp for bagpipers. "There were a lot of Scottish people up there, " Bowman said. As serious as Mouse was about his music, he wasn't shy about playing pranks when he wasn't performing. Bowman and Mouse were staying on the second floor of a Regina dormitory when, late at night, the piercing sounds of a bagpipe awakened them. They found a man sitting on the nearby fire escape, apparently practicing on his bagpipe. "Jack filled a wastebasket full of water and dumped it out on him, " Bowman said, laughing. "We had a lot of good times together." Master of all things music Max Popp, one of Mouse’s former students at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, said Mouse’s “resumé reads like a who’s who of heavyweights of jazz and popular music.” As an endorser of Yamaha drums, Mouse had encouraged Popp to get a set for himself. Popp said with a family, a mortgage, bills, and two drum sets already, he couldn’t afford a Yamaha kit. “Jack wouldn’t take no for an answer and said he would see what he could do, ” said Popp, who now lives near Edinburgh, Scotland. Mouse contacted Yamaha, forwarded Popp’s resumé and performance schedule to the company and a few weeks later, a company representative got in touch. Ultimately, Popp received a “gorgeous new drum set that will last me for life. “Once again, Jack took a chance on me, selflessly putting his name on the line, vouching for me …, ” Popp said. Popp credited Mouse with changing the course of his life. “More importantly, he was a loving husband and unwaveringly dedicated father to his ‘musical children, ’” said Popp. “What sticks out most to me was Jack’s selflessness, and upon reflection, how that selflessness opened up so many doors for me.” The couple found ways to open doors to music for others, too. They founded Flashpoint Creative Arts in Naperville, to create music events, workshops for a variety of groups including civic organizations and at-risk youths with financial and limited resources, and twice-monthly improvisation therapy sessions for children on the autism spectrum. The latter project had begun after a representative of the Naperville Rotary Club approached them about bringing in a class of Little Friends Krejci Academy students to observe Mouse’s combo rehearsal. Finding words through song “At some point, he brought me up to address the issue of vocal improvisation, ” Borla said, explaining that she told the students she would sing something to them and they should sing it back to her. “Then I asked if anybody would want to come up and do it. Sure enough, a boy put his hand up, ” Borla said. As they sang back and forth to each other, Mouse noticed one of the school’s directors tearing up. The director explained the young man hadn’t said anything in class for two years. “At that point, we were totally moved, ” Borla said. Mouse and Borla held a concert at the end of the year. “Four or six students were able to come to our concert and perform themselves, ” Borla said. “They brought the house down because they did so well.” The program continued until the COVID-19 pandemic forced it to shut down. In 2019, on a trip to Emporia, they held a similar workshop. Katy Just, special education coordinator, brought seven groups with diverse disabilities to the Emporia Granada Theatre, and Mouse and Borla worked for one hour with each group. “We had a wonderful time, ” Borla said. “Jack was constantly coming up with new things for us to do.” Jazz camps: an innovation Mouse earlier had become an instructor in a relatively new program — jazz education camps — pioneered in the 1970s by jazz great Stan Kenton. Mouse had participated in the camps, including the Clark Terry Great Plains Jazz Camp, held for 11 years on the Emporia State University campus. “That was his favorite one, because he could come home and be in Emporia for a week, ” Borla said. As a teenager, Kevin Rabas — ESU professor of English and modern language and a past poet laureate of Kansas — was one of the students at the Terry camp. Mouse taught him how to vary the “ride cymbal pattern” then. A few months ago, Rabas took another lesson from Mouse, this time on technique and body mechanics. “I was practicing up to return and see how I did, and learn more, ” Rabas said. After the earlier camp, Rabas had taken lessons in Kansas City from Todd Strait, who in turn had been taught by Mouse. “I was a little ways down the branch in the tradition, ” Rabas said, “but Jack was always teaching me.” Rabas remembers Mouse as always generous, always willing to answer questions, always willing to share his secrets, and holding nothing back. “He shared, ” Rabas said. “He let us in. He welcomed us into the tradition. Not everyone great is kind, but he was.” Kitchen conversations In the late 1980s, as Mouse and Borla were sitting at the kitchen table, they discussed the Saskatchewan camp and the emerging attention to vocal jazz in a choral setting. A solo camp was needed. The conversation reminded Borla of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland movies, except instead of saying “Let’s put on a show, ” Mouse and Borla said, “Let’s put on a jazz camp.” “It was like the blind leading the blind, but it was a valiant attempt, ” she said. So, they did it, and it worked out. “Jack and I tended to work that way. … It was a good team. We complemented each other, ” she said. Chemistry came through Chris Heim of Wichita, who earlier worked at a jazz station in Chicago, talked about “an incredible array of musicians” the couple brought in for their camps. At the end of their jazz camps on the Naperville College campus, Heim would emcee the public concert that wrapped up the students’ camp experience. “Jack obviously was such a presence, ” she said. “There was a general genial and warm and welcoming quality that he had.” Heim described him as quite committed to the music, with a love and energy for it that came through everything he did. The couple also assembled a top-quality band and teachers to work with the student vocalists each summer. “It was really important to have champions like that, ” Heim said. “They just had wonderful chemistry together.” Stealthily subtle Neil Tesser, who has covered jazz in the Chicago area for more than 50 years, found Mouse’s style unique. Tesser is a Grammy Award-winning journalist, radio host, music critic and author. He said though he did not often review Mouse and Borla, he emceed concerts at the jazz camp. “The thing about Jack was, you don’t think of drummers necessarily as being understated, ” Tesser said, “… and Jack was understated but without losing the power to propel a band.” Tesser said Mouse’s ability to balance volume with intensity made him valuable in many different groups. “He was very almost stealthily, subtlely, making his contribution to the overall performance that was happening on the stage, ” Tesser said. He particularly was impressed by Mouse’s performance on the “Three Story Sandbox” album, done with Borla and multi-instrument musician Scott Robinson. Tesser described the album as full of mood pieces and tone poems, unstructured and freely improvised, rather than songs. Mouse plays only cymbals as accompaniment for 95 percent of the piece. “It’s really beautiful to use just that range of the percussion sound, ” Tesser said. “He was one of the drummers who had this talent that I admire, who would make his presence known without making it overbearing.” Music accompanies life lessons Amy Beth Kirsten of New Haven, Connecticut, said Mouse and Borla took her under their collective wing at a time when she needed their wisdom in her world. She is a composer and teaches at the Julliard School in New York and at the Curtiss Institute of Music in Philadelphia. For many of his students, Mouse was more like a mentor and a father figure, Heim said. “Certainly, for me, that was true. … The two of them together were such a force in my life and in so many others’ (lives), ” she said. “They had a way about them.” The couple gave her the stability she needed and were role models for what she would become. “When he introduced me as his surrogate daughter [it]was one of the most awesome days of my life, ” she said. Mouse was straightforward with high expectations. He could be tough, she said, but there also was a twinkle in his eye. She could tell from the look on his face that he knew when she had not practiced enough between lessons. “You can’t hide from Jack, ” she said. “It’s my responsibility as a student to show up, to show the work I’d done the past week.” Music was only a piece of the lessons Mouse gave her. “It not just what we learned in rehearsals, it was all the life lessons. … His influence is incredibly huge, ” she said. Now, she hears herself saying the same things to her own students as Mouse said to her. “If you think about it, my students are also his students, ” Kirsten said. “He was this wonderful giver of influence. Everything that I became and that I am, I owe to Jack and Janice.” write your comments about the article :: © 2024 Jazz News :: home page |