Evening of jazz to celebrate naming of VCU’s James W. Black music center

By Jacquelin Crebbs
VCU School of the Arts

Virginia Commonwealth University’s W. E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts will be the site of a jazz concert celebrating the life and musical legacy of pianist Jimmy Black, whose death in 2004 stunned a host of devoted friends and jazz fans.

The event, at 8 p.m. on Oct. 16, is free to the public and also celebrates a $1 million commitment from W. E. Singleton and his wife, Dale Harman Singleton, to the VCU School of the Arts. The gift, benefiting the Department of Music’s Jazz Studies Program, names the nearby music instruction and rehearsal facility in memory of the Singletons’ lifelong friend.

Located at the corner of Grove Avenue and North Harrison Street, the newly named James W. Black Music Center is scheduled for major renovations, with a projected completion and reopening date of Fall 2007.

The Sunday evening concert will feature jazz artist Tom Saunders and the Midwest All-Stars; guitarist, banjo player and vocalist “Fast Eddie” Erickson; vocalist Steve Bassett and the music of the Jimmy Black Trio; and Daniel Clarke and the Neighborliness Jazz Quartet. All the artists have played significant roles in the musical friendship of W. E. Singleton and Jimmy Black.

Vocalist Steve Bassett was a frequent soloist with the Jimmy Black Trio, and they recorded several CDs together. 

Daniel Clarke, a pianist and graduate of the VCU Department of Music’s Jazz Studies Program, gained the professional attention of both Singleton and Black.

“Daniel is the recipient of the only annual Bill Singleton-Jimmy Black ‘We Like What We Hear’ Jazz Scholarship,” W. E. Singleton said. 

Saunders’ appearance holds special significance as he performed with Black on many occasions in Richmond and his band’s CD was the last music that W.E. Singleton and Black listened to together prior to Black’s death.

The Richmond-born jazz pianist engaged and enthralled generations of Virginia audiences for a half century. Black initially entered the music spotlight as a University of Virginia student in the 1950s. When a snowstorm prevented a back-up band from joining trumpet great Louis Prima and vocalist Keely Smith for a UVA spring formal, Jimmy Black’s student jazz trio joined Prima and Smith on stage. They were an instant hit.

“I’ve heard a lot of jazz piano players over the last 55 years,” W. E. Singleton said. “Most of them play well, but not all of them make music. In the good ones that do, I hear style, creativity, subtle tempos and key changes and the general feeling of the fun of jazz. I heard it in Erroll Garner and I heard it in Fats Waller. And I heard it in Jimmy.”

Singleton has been an enthusiastic jazz fan for more than 50 years. He counts among his personal friends such jazz legends as Louis Armstrong, Zutty Singleton, Maxine Sullivan, Gene Krupa, Wild Bill Davison and Count Basie. He has collected their recordings and those of other jazz luminaries.

In 2002, the VCU School of the Arts celebrated Singleton’s $2 million commitment to the department’s Jazz Studies program – the largest gift ever made in the United States to support university-level jazz education – by naming the W. E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts in his honor. This additional pledge from Mr. and Mrs. Singleton raises their commitment to $3 million in support of VCU Jazz.