BLUES EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS FOR CHILDREN

T. J. Wheeler has performed his Hope, Heroes And The Blues education programs for over 170,000 children in schools in some of our nation's largest cities, through the rural delta regions of the Mississippi River, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Washington state and even to the Arctic Circle in Finland ... talk about chillin' out! Bookings are made on a sliding scale basis. For information, call (603) 929-0654 or write to the BBC at 9 Towle Farm Road, Hampton Falls, NH 03844. Or, send an email tjwheeler7@yahoo.com

HERE'S WHAT THE PROGRAM'S ALL ABOUT
Throughout our nation's history the education system, as well as children's media, has too often ignored the contributions of African Americans. This neglect breeds ignorance and racial intolerance in white youth and can have damaging effects to the self-esteem of young African- Americans. Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X.

Through multi-cultural and African American studies programs, some of this is slowly changing. Heroes such as Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X are being studied somewhat. The lives and legacy of blues musicians, however, have yet to be fully recognized by the majority of primary educational institutions.

Negative stereotypes of blues music as being nothing but a sad, feelin' sorry for oneself, self-deprecating, self-defeatist kind of music unfortunately still abounds in adults as well as children, regardless of color.

HOPE, HEROES & THE BLUES continually sends the message to youngsters that the Blues, through coming out of the hardest of all times, helped to keep HOPE alive. By helping to relieve the burden of every day "dues" paying that most African-Americans pay (both today and throughout history), the Blues made it a little easier to face each day.

Discussions include how we can challenge ourselves to recycle our own fears, problems and even hatred into a positive force in our own lives and in the lives of those in our communities. Drugs, as seen as another form of slavery for everyone, is a topic that is gently addressed in the workshops.

HEROES ...
The important contributions that the heroes and heroines of the Blues have made are taught. Often this is done through a personal slide show documenting T.J.'s own history of studying and working with greats from Furry Lewis and Bukka White to Roosevelt Sykes, Pinetop Perkins and countless others.

How these figures overcame such obstacles as racism and poverty to create the foundation of the 20th-century American music, the blues, is stressed. And, like all heroes, they are held as examples of what we can do in our own lives.

When the opportunity arises, T.J. brings in regional or visiting blues artists including John Jackson, Mr. Johnny Billington, Tommy Ridgley, John Sinclair, Rockin' Jake, Malcom "Shorty" Jarvis and Bruce "Sunpie" Barnes to name a few.

THE BLUES ...
Muddy Waters sang the blues had a baby and they called it rock-n-roll. That's the double truth, Ruth! Rock-n-roll had plenty of brothers and sisters as well as cousins galore! The blues was the foundation for many other twentieth century forms of music including jazz, soul, pop, R & B, and rap. It was also a major influence on country & western, bluegrass, reggae, gospel and even neo-classical music. Why don't the majority of us in our country know more about such an important art form? What can we learn from the BLUES, to make our own lives richer? All of this is explored on T.J.'s workshops/concerts and residencies.

T. J. Wheeler Brief Biography I was born in Bremerton, Washington (4/16/52). The guitar came to me at the age of 12, inspired by the Beatles, the Stones and a local Bremerton band called the Sonics. A western swing player by the name of George Shoape, was my first teacher. By the time I was 15-16 I was technically living on Bainbridge Island WA, though in truth I was spending a fair amount of time hitchhiking up and down the west coast. Musically, during this period I was playing (after a brief infatuation with acid rock) in a Jug Band, basking on street corners from Bellingham to San Francisco, gigging in coffee houses, and hanging out at a Black Jazz & Blues Bar on the Seattle waterfront called the "Swingers Tavern" (where I frequently sat in with a organ combo called "Little Willies Trio". Willie, was as round and dark as his Hammond B3 and was a burning player). At 17 I was running my own coffee house near the Ferry on B. I. Which featured live acoustic music every weekend. We picked the location because it was right next to the Winslow Police station. Since before the coffee house the police seemed constantly intent on tracking the where-a-bouts of my friends and I, we figured this was the perfect location as well as solution to our harassment problems. Forming a duo with a great young harp player named Gary O' Neil, (both at the age of 18) we moved to Seattle, learned a lot of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee numbers and played wherever we could. Once a month I continued to produce a concert series at local community halls on B. I.. Frequently, during this period, I was also performing in a group called the Pile Drivers Blues Band. Which included such notable Seattle musicians as multi instrumentalist Doug Bright and jazz guitarist Robin Kutz. Some of the old haunts at that time were Pig Als (in the old Public Market) The Rainbow and Mac's Tavern on the Island. Though I wasn't playing too much of it at the time I was listening and studying a lot of Jazz from Miles and Coltrane to Mingus and Jimmy Smith. At 19 I was playing every Saturday night in Seattle in Pioneer Square at a club called the North West Passage. Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotton and Son House (who I had seen in Seattle a year before) were my biggest influences during this period. Tired of only occasional chances to see live country Blues and wanting more direct influences I ventured beyond the borders of the Pacific. At the ripe young age of 20 I found myself traveling steadily throughout the south learning, playing and sometimes even living with such notables as Bukka White, Furry Lewis, Sleepy John Estes and Bates Stovall. These southern sojourns kept up for the better part of four years. The spring and early summer months I would spend in the deep south. Late summer and fall I'ld be back on the Island and in Seattle. There I would continue to study Jazz guitar with Robin Kutz and gig around town. The late fall through winter I mostly would live & gig in Colorado, hanging out with Philadelphia Jerry Ricks, Mary Flower, Tim Obrien and many others stemming out of the Denver Folklore Center. Innovative chromatic & Blues harp player Pat "Hatrack" Gallagher (whom I had met and played with in the Seattle area) invited me out to New England when I was 25. We played as a duo called the "Ragtime Millionaires" as well as with our own band. 30 years later were still doing the same, only hopefully a little better. Throughout the late 70's to the mid eightys I continued to help bring Southern Blues artists to the greater Boston area. During this time I played with a succession of Blues greats including the fore mentioned Bukka White and Furry Lewis as well as with Roosevelt Sykes, Big Joe Turner, Louisiana Red, Pinetop Perkins, Big Joe Houston, Peg Leg Sam Jackson and others. More & more I also began backing up hard swinging Bluesy Jazz artists, working pick up gigs with the likes of Ike Roberts, Benny Waters, Tiny Grimes, Jim Mazzy, Lenny Breau, Rozwell Rudd, Dick Honson and Wild Bill Davis. Throughout most of the eightys I led some heavy hitting B3 organ style groups. As host of a all night Jazz & Blues radio show for a year and a half in Portsmouth, I also kept researching and learning about the history of America's most original art form. In the summer of 1983 I moved to Italy for a year doing a variety of Jazz and Blues clubs concerts and festivals (and also reacquainted myself with Bluesman Philadelphia Jerry Ricks who was living in Torino just down the street from American virtuoso finger style guitarist Duck Baker). We were known throughout Torino as the "Three Muscatels"! Upon my return to the U.S. in mid 1984 I decided to make a more focused attempt at developing Blues education programs. Blues in the School programs began for me as early as the mid 70's but at the time it was exceptionally hard making most public schools as well as Universities and Colleges, for that matter, see the educational value of Blues music. I decided that a formal non profit organization was going to be needed to really make an impact in the school system. In January of 1985 the Blues Bank Collective was born. This was co-founded by Black History researcher/scholar Valerie Cunningham and myself. We determined early on that not only would we educate children to the Blues but that we would use th Blues to make the greatest possible impact on our own community as well as beyond, targeting especially the inequities left over from the Jim Crow era. Within a month we were putting on the very first Black Heritage Festival (a month long series celebrating Black History month). The same year we made a documentary video film on B. J. Johnson. B J was a folk Bluesman who brought the Blues to Portsmouth in the early 60's from Baton Rouge Louisiana. Our education programs continued to grow over the next few years as did the Black Heritage Festival, the Portsmouth Blues Festival (the oldest Blues festival in New England) our nursing home Blues & Jazz concert series and last but not least our activism. This agenda included the fight for a Martin Luther King Holiday in NH, homelessness issues, and helping rid the seacoast of a wannabe KKK branch in Exeter NH. After working as a musician on two presidential campaigns by Jesse Jackson I was inspired to show that the Blues though born out of racism, sorrow and overall hard times was still at it's core a music undeniably of HOPE. It's orignal African American pioneers, opposed to the negative stereotypes that they were too often portrayed as, we're HEROE's for us all, regardless of ones race. Finally I felt it fundamental that our schools systems should be teaching how BLUES is at the center of the foundation of 20th Century popular music. With a grant from the Ben & Jerry's Foundation, my first Hope Heroe's and the Blues tour took place in the late fall of 1989. In a whirlwind of three weeks I performed a combination of concert/workshops from Boston, Chicago, Davenport IA, Memphis to Atlanta GA. The program went to Inner city Schools, Libraries, Blues Society gatherings, Reform Schools, after school programs and even an all Black nursing home across from the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta, GA. For the next few years I was on a nonstop campaign to get Blues In the Schools' started in as many parts of the world as possible. My goal went far beyond just trying to get organizations to book me. The real mission was to inspire schools, Blues Societies, etc to get a viable B.I.T.S program going and growing. In the last 12 years I've personally seen over a quarter of a million students throughout the U. S. and around the world (often time seeing each student several times as a part of a residency). I feel blessed and proud to have had the privledge to do education programs with such great Bluesmen as Honey Boy Edwards, James "Son" Thomas, John Jackson, Mr. Johnny Billington, Eddie Kirkland, Tommy Ridgly and Roy Gaines as well as somewhat younger Bluesicians as John Sinclair, Fruitland Jackson, Corey Harris, Sunpie, Mary Flower and many many more.

The Blues Bank Collective is a W.C.Handy Award winning blues education organization whose mission is: To further awareness of Blues Music and its African American heritage To show the historic context that gave birth to the Blues To use the music as a means of positive social change And, whenever possible, to eliminate all forms of racism, intolerance and prejudice.

DRAWING: B. J. Johnson (1906-1986) was a great Portsmouth bluesman and teacher, as well as an inspiration to all who knew him. Art by Steven Lee.
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Blues Bank Collective
PO Box 4076
Portsmouth, NH 03802
Voice:  603-929-0654
Email:  tjw@bluesbankcollective.org
Web:  www.BluesBankCollective.org
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