Interview of Albert McNeil

1.1. Session 1 (February 12, 2007)

PATTERSON

And the change would eventually be for the better.

MCNEIL

Right.

PATTERSON

Yeah. You know, thinking about the other side of black music in L.A., the African music that was here that came through, and that's been here all along, not -- you know, really, African-based music -- of course, the heyday was in the Eighties when it really started to come through and have a place to play. So that's another part of L.A., black music in L.A. that hopefully I can shed a little bit of light on that.

MCNEIL

Well, of course I think the influence of the so-called Black Muslims has played an effect on some aspects of black -- that school down there, it was Central Avenue in the Thirties, I believe it is. It's a black Muslim school. It's a parochial school where they teach in the language Arabic and they teach the Koran and teach all those things. And they wear these uniforms, they wear the traditional Arab -- chadar for the women, and all that kind of stuff. When I drive through there, I'm just amazed, as I knew that place when, and I look at it now and I've seen the spread of the city. I experienced that.

PATTERSON

Yeah, so do we today. (laughter)

MCNEIL

Yeah, the spread of the city.

PATTERSON

(inaudible)

MCNEIL

So what happened to you guys that you got lost?

PATTERSON

We decided, because we were so intent on being on time, and not being caught in traffic, we were really ambitious about it. So we said we're going to leave at three o'clock and get down near Dr. McNeil's place and find a coffeehouse and read until it's time to come here. So we had -- you know, we were going to be like, wow. We have to go (inaudible) because you don't want to be late, and you never know about traffic.

MCNEIL

No, not in this town, no.

PATTERSON

Right. It's good to go early and then you get a lot done, rather than being three hours in traffic.

MCNEIL

You'd better get your cup of coffee, tea. You need a shot of something. You have a choice of chamomile, which is calming to me.

PATTERSON

I have the green. Yeah, it's calming. I was looking through your discussion with Betty Cox a little bit.

MCNEIL

Oh, really? Oh, did you listen to that --

PATTERSON

With Margaret Bonds? I haven't had the... I haven't yet.

MCNEIL

I haven't heard it myself! I'd like to hear it.

PATTERSON

OK, we're with Dr. Albert McNeil on February 12, 2007, and I guess we'll start right at the very, very, very beginning.

MCNEIL

Wherever that is?

PATTERSON

Wherever that... You know, I was thinking about your parentage and you spoke about when we talked briefly before, that your mom is from Puerto Rico.

MCNEIL

Yeah. Well, let me backtrack a little bit with that. I did not know that I was an adopted child or had any of those lineages until my parents were dead. Nobody in my family ever mentioned the fact that I was adopted. My mother had worked for the Children's Home Society in California which is an adoption agency, and my father and mother had been vaudevillians. They had been a singing and dancing act. They had gone all over the world, practically, and settled finally in the Watts area because they were able to get this half-acre place and they were playing like they were farmers or whatever, and raising chickens and turkeys and all that kind of thing. That was -- I guess my first remembrance of the earliest part of it, when I was a little boy, like three, we lived at 21st and Central Avenue, and I vaguely remember that but my mom did not like living in that area. She had heard about the great expanses of moving south, into the Watts-Willowbrook area. There was this field out there and houses and they wanted to have that kind of -- my dad was very conservative. My mom was the one that did all of the...

PATTERSON

Was was your mom and dad's name?

MCNEIL

McNeil and McNeil, that's what their name. My father's name was John Joseph, and my mother's name was Rodia Desdemonia McNeil. They were both from Louisiana. My mother was from the Creole part of New Orleans, actually an area called the Treme. Treme, accent aigu on the last E, and was very proud of that heritage, while my father lived in what they would call the uptown. They had uptown, downtown, back-of-town, and Canaltown. New Orleans had that kind of a descriptive thing. And my father was born in Opelousas, Louisiana and my mother was born in New Orleans. She had three brothers and she was the only girl in the family, and she was next to the -- well, she was the oldest, than the others. That's what I found out eventually. And they were on the road in Chicago, and my mother said she was tired of that life. She was tired of being a vaudevillian. She was tired -- and her mother lived here in Los Angeles. Her mother had come here about 1917 or something like that, and my father's brother had moved to Santa Monica in 1910, and was a pioneer, actually, a real pioneer, Walter McNeil, and brought his family with him, and they were among the very very small little black community in Santa Monica. As a matter of fact, he is a charter member of the Calvary Baptist Church that had joined the First Baptist Church. Now, they're the only members of our family who were not Catholic. My father had become...

PATTERSON

Your uncle?

MCNEIL

My uncle had become a Baptist, but he had a very good job with the Southern California Edison Company, and so that's where he decided -- I remember spending many of my summers in Santa Monica, with my cousin Marjorie McNeil, who had graduated from Santa Monica High School, back in the year one I guess it must have been. So I knew that Santa Monica area pretty well. It was a very interesting community because there was a little small black -- but no enclaves of blacks. They were kind of like scattered around. Not many, but there were enough, you know. And as I said, I spent my summers out there with my uncle.

PATTERSON

When your mom and dad were in New Orleans, did they meet in the entertainment field? Or did they...

MCNEIL

Yeah, yeah, their singing and dancing. That was the whole bit, and my mom was about 17, my father was about 21 when they got married, which violated everything holy in the family because...

PATTERSON

Why?

MCNEIL

Well, because he wasn't a Creole, you see. And they all said, well, she married that Negro, you know. (laughter) As opposed -- you see the prerequisite for being a Creole is light skin and a French name, you know. So my mother was related to the Dejoie and so all of that. Gonzales, spelled with an "S," and all of that. Boye [Creole spelling of French Boyer] was another name. And believe it or not, the Creole influence down there, some of it was Haitian because one of my cousins' father was Haitian, Albert Boye. He was a Haitian and he had married a woman called Adrienne Boyer. Now, Maria Boye Brown still lives. She survived [Hurricane] Katrina, poor thing, and she had a horrible time down there in New Orleans, but she had moved into the convent in later years. Not that she was infirm, but she loved being in a convent situation, and the water was up to the third story, so she lost everything, and her son and her daughter, they kind of are taking care of her now.

PATTERSON

So they were related to your mom and dad?

MCNEIL

Yeah, cousins.

PATTERSON

And your dad, McNeil...

MCNEIL

Yeah, he was a McNeil...

PATTERSON

It was John McNeil, and...

MCNEIL

They were from Opelousas and Lake Charles, Louisiana. That's where they seemed to be. The McNeil clan was out there. I didn't know many of them. It was a Campbell McNeil and some other names like that. Real Scotch-Irish names, which is the funniest thing because they were anything but Scotch-Irish, but because they were products of the system -- if you're born in slavery, or somebody, took the name of the person who owned you, more or less, or whatever. And my mama was always happy to announce that she was not enslaved and never had been. Or any(?) of her background. I don't know anything about the background farther than her mother.

PATTERSON

What was her mother's name?

MCNEIL

Her mother's name was -- oh, gosh. You know, I don't remember! I did remember that at one time, but not using it, I don't remember.

PATTERSON

Yeah, yeah, (inaudible). So, here they are, young people in New Orleans.

MCNEIL

They went off with the circus.

PATTERSON

Oh, OK! Now, did they know each other before they went into vaudeville?

MCNEIL

I don't know much about how they met. All I know is they did meet and they formed this team called McNeil and McNeil. Yeah. Stupidly, when I lived on 48th Street, there was a trunk filled with everything about my mom and my father, all of her costumes. She wore the most elaborate hats and ostrich feathers and all that. They were really -- they were with a group called Silas Green from New Orleans, a minstrel show, minstrel organization. And they used to tell me all about it, because they had all these musical friends. Duke Ellington had come to my house, and you name the people.

PATTERSON

And while you were here in L.A., growing up?

MCNEIL

Yeah, when I was a little boy.

PATTERSON

Wow.

MCNEIL

And my father would go down, when Duke would play downtown at the Paramount Theater, which no longer exists. He would go backstage and they all knew him and it was kind of an interesting thing. Believe it or not, I used to be ashamed of that relationship, but I don't know why. I didn't want to -- I don't know, I just felt uncomfortable.

PATTERSON

How old were you when you were feeling that kind of way?

MCNEIL

This was six, seven, eight.

PATTERSON

You were uncomfortable with the whole entertainment scene?

MCNEIL

Yeah. It was overwhelming to me. I appreciated these people, though, believe it or not, because my father and mother used to flip out over them. They thought they were really -- I remember once we were downtown, at the old Pantages Theater. They showed movies. It was a movie theater, but they also had vaudeville. But they would go down there. One time, I guess I was about ten, the projectionist -- the film broke or something, and the manager came out on the stage and he said, "Is there anybody here? I'll pay you good money. You want to entertain for about 15 or 20 minutes until we repair this?" You know, my mother and father volunteered. Well, I thought I would die! (laughter) I was so embarrassed! No, don't do that! They went up and they did their routine! I'd never seen it, because I was a child, baby, you know? And everybody was just applauding. They sang and danced and told jokes in-between. I tell you, I thought I would die. But they got, what, some enormous amount of money. I don't know what it was. Twenty dollars, maybe fifty bucks. It would've been a fortune in those days.

PATTERSON

For filling in?

MCNEIL

Yeah, for doing that.

PATTERSON

Wow.

MCNEIL

But now, that was the closest thing that I ever saw them to, their routine, but I have pictures. The pictures in that trunk, in the house that I left when I got married.

PATTERSON

You don't have them?

MCNEIL

No! I have very little of anything. I do have some pictures. My wife was the archival person. She has boxes of stuff, and next time you come I'll drag out some of those pictures. We do have pictures of them in their costumes and so on and so forth.

PATTERSON

Oh, great. OK, we've got to see them.

MCNEIL

But now, being in a minstrel show, you know, the band wore white gloves and they blacked their faces, even though the faces were black! It's a very crazy thing to understand that, but that was the way it was done.

PATTERSON

Now, when they performed at the Pantages, sort of impromptu that way, what year was it? Do you remember?

MCNEIL

Oh, I have no idea.

PATTERSON

Well, what decade, you know. Just sort of approximately.

MCNEIL

Oh, it was about the Thirties.

PATTERSON

In the Thirties, yeah, yeah.

MCNEIL

I'm sure it was about the Thirties.

PATTERSON

At the Pantages Theater. And you were just surprised. It's like, wah, that's my mom and dad!

MCNEIL

Oh, I just thought horrible!

PATTERSON

(laughter) Little boys getting embarrassed, huh. I know, I know.

MCNEIL

But yet, and still -- and I look back on it now. They were in their glory. They just thought it was -- my mom -- of the two, my mom was the aggression. She was the active one. She was politically active too, all through my life, and she encouraged me to be aware of politics to the point where she was always fighting for causes. I think I told you, the last time, that in the local school, 111th St. School, my mother was president of the PTA and I was going to a Catholic parochial school. I never went to public school until I got in the tenth grade. Then I went to Francis Polytechnic High School downtown.

PATTERSON

So she was very active...

MCNEIL

I did one year at Jordan High School, David Starr Jordan High School on 103rd Street, and then my mom, they had -- I wanted to study organ, and that was one of the few schools in the L.A. Unified School District that taught pipe organ lessons. And of course, you had to get a permit to go out of your district. My mama, being a good politician, she got that permit like that, no sweat! And yet, I led a little pack of students who lived near me -- well, three of us went downtown to school.

PATTERSON

So at the time, you were living at -- so at the time, you were living where? Were you down...

MCNEIL

I was living in Watts, at 11111 South Alabama Street. [laughter]

PATTERSON

South Alabama Street.

MCNEIL

Believe it or not, I remember the time when they changed all the addresses in that area. It used to be four-digit addresses and they changed ours to be 11111, because we were on the corner of 111th and Alabama Street. It was so interesting, how that (inaudible) the place.

PATTERSON

Remind me to tell you something about the elevens. It's very interesting. And there was an 111th St. School as well.

MCNEIL

Where my mom was a president of the PTA.

PATTERSON

I'll tell you later, though. But OK, so you're in way south and Polytechnic was closer to downtown.

MCNEIL

Oh, downtown L.A., it's where L.A. Trade Tech is right now.

PATTERSON

So how did you get there?

MCNEIL

On the red train.

PATTERSON

As a high school student, with the red train?

MCNEIL

Yeah. I caught a red train. It went down to Sixth [Street] and Main Street and transferred to a yellow train, yellow streetcar, and got off on Grand [Avenue and Washington Boulevard].

PATTERSON

So this is where the streetcars have the tracks and the streets and that.

MCNEIL

Yeah, of course. And of course, the red car system was fabulous. It could go between 65 and 70 miles an hour. You were downtown in nothing flat. You see, that's the travesty of what's happened to L.A. When they destroyed the red car system, they really destroyed our mobility, but (inaudible) by putting in freeways. My godfather used to live in Fontana. I could catch the red train in Watts, go downtown to the Sixth and Main Street Station, transfer to a San Bernardino red train, and go all the way to Fontana. I could've gone to San Bernardino. It was a fabulous system. And what it did as the idea of freeway systems began to happen, then developers began to say, OK, we'll built these houses out here cheaply, we'll go in here, and so on. And the people began to move away from the city and now look what we have. We have just a congested mess. Tom Bradley tried so hard to reactivate the red car system. Look on Exposition Boulevard. That whole right-of-way that runs -- would run all the way to Santa Monica, actually. Look at San Vicente, and Venice Boulevard. Those were arteries that would go to the beaches, to oceans, Ocean Park, Santa Monica, Malibu even, the red train went, and out here. Right here at my corner used to be the Redondo Beach red train, would run right straight to Redondo Beach. It's the most amazing deal. I've seen all that change.

PATTERSON

Yeah, and the buses can't compete with that straight thoroughfare of the (inaudible), clutter the streets.

MCNEIL

No, no, and the bus system, they clutter the streets (inaudible) or not, particularly -- now on the freeway system, the diamond lane does help, but we could get downtown like that. (snap)

PATTERSON

So you jumped on the train and went to high school and just got right downtown. So, okay. (inaudible)

MCNEIL

What happened? Did I do something? Oh. (noise)

PATTERSON

It's just that your new sitting position is... (pause) I'm going to tuck this under your arm so you can (inaudible).

MCNEIL

How's that?

PATTERSON

That's perfect.

MCNEIL

Oh, OK. Well, you guys have had quite a day, is all I can tell you! (laughter)

PATTERSON

Yes, we have. And we're driving out to Agoura Hills in the morning, just (inaudible).

MCNEIL

Oh, for heaven's sakes. Who's out there that's a...

PATTERSON

Margaret Douroux.

MCNEIL

Well, Margaret lives in Agoura? Well, isn't she fancy! I knew her as a little girl.

PATTERSON

Oh, really?

MCNEIL

I used to play for her dad, Earl Pleasant.

PATTERSON

Oh, my gosh.

MCNEIL

He was a gospel singer.

PATTERSON

Yeah, yeah.

MCNEIL

And the finally became a minister, and then finally had his own church, Mt. Moriah.

PATTERSON

Gosh, it's just so interesting as we do this, the connectedness of many of these few important professionals that you are among, that really were -- there was a network, really of wonderful African-American musicians...

MCNEIL

Well, as I've said before, L.A. at the time was a series of very densely populated enclaves, and say in the Teens and Twenties, the big so-called downtown for black people was like from Ninth Street out to about Vernon, and in that area you had churches. Well, I should say go back to Eighth Street, because going west on Eighth you had Wesley Methodist Church, at Eighth and San Julian. Now, that's the big produce area. And then you had going south, you had Eighth and Town Avenue, you see, which was the big first AME church. Then you go out to Paloma Street, 18th and Paloma, you had the People's Independent Church, which was one of the most important churches socially, because if you were anybody of any consequence you were in that church, any of these three churches. And eventually, at 24th and Griffith, the Second Baptist Church, which was a huge institution with -- designed by Paul Williams, you see, who was the black architect of the time, who designed Angeles Funeral Home, which is now out here in Crenshaw. Well, originally, it was on Central Avenue and -- Central and Jefferson is where the original Angeles Funeral Home was. And of course, you had the Catholic Church, St. Patrick's on 33rd Street, and then going south off of Central and 43rd, you had the Philips Temple CME Church, which is another big church that had a lot of social influence in the community, you see.

PATTERSON

When you were living as a little boy -- but the first residence you lived in was at...

MCNEIL

21st and Central, but that was only as I was a tiny little boy. I moved -- we moved to the Watts area when I was seven, six or seven.

PATTERSON

And then were did you live? That's when you lived at 111111?

MCNEIL

Yeah.

PATTERSON

South Alabama.

MCNEIL

And stayed there for years.

PATTERSON

What was that neighborhood like?

MCNEIL

Pardon me?

PATTERSON

What was the neighborhood like as you remember it?

MCNEIL

That whole area was wonderful. Germans, Italians, blacks, Hispanics, because next door to me were the Sepulvedas. My first tacos and enchiladas and all that were with them, because whenever they had a special day, they made tostados. It was a very interesting kind of thing. Then the churches in that area, you had down at 108th and Compton Avenue was the Grant AME Church, which was a very important church for that community, you see. And then out on 115 Street was the so-called "elite" black people. They had the most gorgeous homes on 115th Street from Compton all the way to Wilmington Avenue. I mean, beautiful homes, well-tailored lawns, but I mean, all the latest homes of that period, the Thirties and the Forties. I mean, beautiful homes, but these people were either schoolteachers or people working the postal service, or -- and a lot of them living in the area were domestics. I remember my closest friend was a Doctor Oner Barker. He and I graduated from UCLA at the same time. He went on to become an internist, and a very outstanding internist. Oner died just a couple of years ago, but Oner Barker, his brother Edward became a leading architect by going to Cal Berkeley, graduated from the school of architecture. Oner went to UCLA and eventually to Howard University Medical School. His sister became a surgical nurse, who was very big in the L.A. County nursing system. His other sister Adelaide Barker became a specialist in speech pathology for L.A. Unified School District. It was a most interesting...

PATTERSON

And they lived down there with you?

MCNEIL

No, they all lived on the same block. They lived around the corner from me. Everybody out there -- I don't know if you've heard of Buddy Collette, who is -- Buddy Collette lived out there. Britt Widmown, who was an absolutely fantastic musician, Britt played in the Ellington band. He was a trombonist, excellent trombonist, got into Ellington Band, and his brother -- Britt played the piano, too, like a crazy man. Well, Charlie [Charles] Mingus lived about three blocks from me. Charlie lived at 108th and Compton Avenue, and my mother wouldn't let me play with Charlie because he had the nastiest mouth. She said that he used to cuss and swear like a sailor, but he was studying bass with one of the principal players of the L.A. Philharmonic. I mean, you look at that community -- I learned to play piano -- Oner and I studied piano with the same teacher, Lucille Blaychetti, her name was. She was married to an African, and her name -- actually, her maiden name is Blanton, B-L-A-N-T-O-N, Lucille Blanton, who was affiliated with the Wilkins Academy of Music, which was a downtown black school. Now, there were two important music schools for youngsters, Gray's Conservatory -- G-R-A-Y-apostrophe-S -- Professor Gray, and Professor William T. Wilkins, who -- these men, these people, these guys had studied in Europe. And they were like nineteen and twenty and, the nineteens and twenties and the thirties and the forties, they were the one turning out the musicians, the young musicians.

PATTERSON

So these were private institutions that...

MCNEIL

Private institutions and all the parents would say -- everybody studied piano when mine was growing up. They studied piano. They studied how to dance, how to tap dance and ballroom dance. I was taught all of that when I was a kid, and the interesting thing about that was that it was a social thing, though. You were not anything in your community unless you were doing these things, studying piano, going to dance school, playing your recitals, and Mrs. Blanton -- Blaychetti -- had brought all of us in the Watts area to downtown, to the big churches downtown for our recitals, because Professor Wilkins's Academy was downtown. When I say downtown, I mean in the Twenties and Thirties streets. Twenty-eight, whatever. So we'd have a recital twice a year, and if you were good enough, you played (inaudible) recitals. And of course, Professor Wilkins was a very weird man. I thought -- he had his hair all over his head, and he wore this bouffant, a tie, you know, and he was very eccentric, and got so mad with me once because I didn't do the Beethoven sonata I was playing correctly. He tore my music up, and my mother was just furious. (laughter) But he would pull these tantrums, you know, and scare us kids half to death! But we were playing the top literature, Chopin, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. We knew that as children!

PATTERSON

So your mom was taking you to this Wilkins School, to receive education... Now, how old were you when you started studying?

MCNEIL

I started studying piano when I was about eight, they bought a piano for me.

PATTERSON

So at home, what was your first experience with the piano? Did you just start playing, or did you get lessons right away?

MCNEIL

No, no, no. You learn that -- but you know -- I just -- Oner and I were competitive, so he was taking from the same teacher.

PATTERSON

Which was?

MCNEIL

And we was -- I said we're going to play Bach and play Beethoven and we're going to do all these things. And of course, he was taller than I am, bigger than I am, longer fingers, and he could play the Revolutionary Étude of Chopin, for example. I mean, it was quite a big thing with the left hand, and my hands -- I'd be struggling, and I'd do it with two hands, you know. But anyway, no, it was a wonderful environment to learn music in that area.

PATTERSON

Now, your first piano teacher, do you remember who that was?

MCNEIL

Her name was Myra Shivers, S-H-I-V-E-R-S. Myra Shivers. She had a twin sister. And her sister was a member of the Board of Ushers of the People's Independent Church. Now I don't know how I got Myra Shivers for my piano teacher, but...

PATTERSON

And you went on and you both had her.

MCNEIL

Anyway, my mom got her.

PATTERSON

Ah, that's great.

MCNEIL

At that time, she came to the house, you see. The teacher came to the house to teach the piano lesson. I remember as we got older, we would go to Mrs. Blaychetti's house, to take our piano lessons, and then eventually down to Professor Wilkinson's Academy. In L.A., our folks would take us down there to have these competitive -- what they call -- they call them juries now in the university, where you get evaluated for how you're doing, you know, in the company of other kids.

PATTERSON

So, Myra Shivers started you out, and you began to learn some of the literature, some of the classic literature, and then Lucille Blaychetti, she was also a teacher of course?

MCNEIL

Oh, yeah, she was part of the Wilkins Academy, excepting she was the so-called Watts Branch. I look at it now, yeah. So that's how we -- and she was a teacher in the academy, who lived in the Watts Area.

PATTERSON

Did you go to her place to study?

MCNEIL

Yeah, she lived across the street from me.

PATTERSON

Oh, OK. So you had all this culture, really, around you -- you know, families interested in culture.

MCNEIL

Listen, that's what I'm saying. You know, what a lucky situation. Everybody says, "Watts? What is that place?" And yet, I lived -- on one side of my house, lived an Italian family. Another side was a Hispanic family. Around the corner, blacks. And so you had these -- we were devout Catholics at the time. My mom is the one who pulled out of the Catholic Church. She became disenchanted with the fact that she felt the church fostered segregation. And my dad's two sisters were nuns, and in the Order of the Holy Family in New Orleans, and that was a segregated order of nuns. Only black women could be in the Sisters of the Holy Family. And like the -- in Baltimore there's a mother house called the Oblate Sisters, O-B-L-A-T-E, that -- Oblate Sisters, Baltimore, were also segregated order, just like the priests -- some orders of priests were segregated. The Josephites, the Order of St. Joseph, the mother house -- their provincial headquarters is in Mississippi someplace. I've forgotten. But no, one of my cousins -- when I went to New Orleans, the shock of my life, I think I was seven years old. I'd never been, but my mom was always, we're going to go to New Orleans. My dad never went back to New Orleans, ever been. When he came to California, that was it. He didn't want to go back there. Well, we were in the Treme, the French Quarter, staying with my cousin Adrienne Boyer, and it was a wonderful situation. The house we lived in had to be 200 years old, because the walls were like three feet thick. And we stayed in that place -- we had hurricane lamps with no electricity, and we had shutters on the windows because it rained -- I mean, in New Orleans, it rained like I don't know what, but you cross the little courtyard for the kitchen. It was on the other side of a little courtyard. Now, in the kitchen there was a second floor to that, and there was a building there. There was a walled patio, typical French style Spanish influence, the way I look at it. The house came to the sidewalk -- you walked on the sidewalk, so that you walked out of the street, into the house. You could go through the gate and go through the patio, but that was the structure of the house. There were huge rooms, with the walls -- oh, heavens, like ten, twelve feet high. And I remember sleeping in a bed with my cousin Marie, who is down in New Orleans right now, under a mosquito bar, the netting, because the windows were always left open and I remember clearly them cooking red beans (laughter) on a little -- they called it a furnace, but we would call it a hibachi, a little low one like that, and the beans would boil all day. It would cook all day, then you would eat them at night. It was wonderful, wonderful, and they knew how to buy food. I remember going to this French Market around the corner from where we lived. Now, I've been to Europe many times, but -- and I could see this market right now, a complete replica of something I had seen in France. I mean, a roof-type thing, open air, with stall all up and down and a pathway that you could walk down where you could select vegetables or meat. I remember my mom liked to go to a six o'clock Mass in the morning on Sunday, and I remember it was so wonderful, because we'd go by Reuter's Bakery, R-E-U-T-E-R, Alsatian, and get hot French bread. I mean, it was hot, and it smelled so good. We'd come home and she'd cut it up into little pieces, and we would have -- we would dunk our French bread with jam on it, into this hot coffee, which was chicory, and for me my mom would make it three-fourths water, milk, and a little tiny bit of coffee, and she would drink the straight stuff which would make your hair stand on end, you know, it was so powerful! (laughter) They put chicory in, and it was called Louisianne Coffee. I'll never forget that, and that is the fond memory of my first trip to New Orleans, excepting when we got off the train, we were on a segregated train. I had never experienced this. We got to El Paso [Texas]. My dad had put us in a compartment, and I never could figure out why.

PATTERSON

Now, he wasn't with you, though?

MCNEIL

No, he never went. But we knew -- one of my oldest sisters' husband was a Pullman Porter, and he ran from L.A. to Chicago, but he knew what would happen if we got to El Paso and were put up behind the engine, because that's where black people were put. They were taken from the normal car and put up in a car directly behind the engine. That was only black people up there, and you were not allowed to go to the dining car, but my parents knew all these Pullman porters so that when we -- he got a compartment for us, and they would bring us food from the dining car, you see. So we had -- we were very comfortable. Or, I remember one time we went down there, when we didn't have that luxury, and I remember seeing black people with shoe boxes filled with fried chicken. That was the only thing they could eat because there was nobody coming through the car selling food, and the train never stopped long enough to get off and go get food, so they carried food. Fried chicken was the thing that lasted longest and was the most tasty. They would have bread. They would have thermos jugs with milk and with coffee. It was horrible! To think people had to be treated that way!

PATTERSON

What did you think of that as a little boy?

MCNEIL

Well, let me tell you, when I got off the train the first thing I did was we were going to go out to my cousin's place on the streetcar, so I jumped on the streetcar and I ran right down in front. I wanted to be behind the motorman. I'll never forget, my mom came and she stood in the aisle and said, "Al, come here." "Why, Mom? I want to be here. I want to see the man drive the train, the streetcar." She said, "You can't sit there. You see this sign here?" And I said, "What sign?" She said there was a sign that said "for colored only." "We have to sit behind that sign." "Why?" And I don't understand that. And she said, well, you're in New Orleans and you're in the South, and black people -- well, she didn't use that term.

PATTERSON

What would she say?

MCNEIL

She would say "we." "We can not sit there." I was destroyed. I couldn't understand that. So all my little cousins were half-white looking, you know. I'll never forget. Then we went to Mass, Saint Augustine. A-U-G-U-S-T-I-N-E. Saint Augustine. It was the parish church in the French Quarter, near the French Quarter, the Treme as we called it. Well, we went down to take Communion. One half of the Communion rail was for blacks, and the other half for whites. The blacks could not go to the white part of the communion rail, and -- that's why eventually my mother left the church. She said I will not be persecuted in my own church like this.

PATTERSON

And because she married a black man, it was her family now that was being rejected, even though she...

MCNEIL

Yeah, she was ostracized by them because of that.

PATTERSON

Yeah, yeah, so I imagine that was tough for her.

MCNEIL

It was kind of a... and then I grew up with that. And I grew up with the feeling that there was something wrong with a society that doesn't recognize a person for their worth and for their contribution.

PATTERSON

Even as a little boy you had a...

MCNEIL

And yet the color of their skin is important, even though the color of my skin, I could be anything. But my mom taught me to think, well, you're African-American. She never voiced that, but she said, "But you are with us. And so you have to be the best. You're going to go to university." I knew from the time I can remember that I was going to go to college. It was without doubt. My baby sister, same thing. We were -- it was just like -- and the same thing with the people in that community of Watts. They were going to make it. Charlie [Charles] Mingus. Ornette Coleman. All of them lived out there. I mean, you could just name the people right down the line who came from that humble surrounding, that had good musical background and training. Nobody would believe that that area could produce people of quality, but it did. You know?

PATTERSON

And you all were going to school together as well? 111th Street School?

MCNEIL

Well, I went to Catholic School down the street, St. Lawrence.

PATTERSON

OK, St. Lawrence. And they were -- the public school was 111th Street.

MCNEIL

Yeah. Then I eventually -- my mom sent me to Saint John's Academy on Washington Boulevard, which is around the corner from Bronson, Bronson had used to be there. It moved to the Valley eventually. And then I came back to St. Lawrence, and went as far as the eighth grade, and then I went to Jordan High School for one year, the ninth grade, and then I found out there was an organ at Polytechnic High School and my mom said, "Don't worry. You want to go down there, you're going to go down there." She got me a permit and I used to catch the red train, transfer to the yellow streetcar, and went to Polytechnic High. I graduated from Polytechnic High School.

PATTERSON

So when you were a little boy, what was your exposure to the so-called black church? You were going to Catholic school, but the other African-American children in the area -- were you...

MCNEIL

I would it's this mother of mine again. She loved good music and she loved good preaching. That's what attracted her to the People's Independent Church. She thought that Dr. N. P. Greg was the something gift from god, because the man -- she loved a good sermon. She said the priests do this watered-down homily and she got sick of that. Well, around the corner from where we lived was a church of the Four Square Gospel, and my mom and I would sneak over there. I said sneak, and my dad was not happy about that, because he was more devoutly Catholic than anybody. And yet, we would go around the corner, the storefront church, and listen to Reverend Moses Davis, the Reverend Davis preach. And one day, I think I was about twelve, thirteen, they start singing a hymn and I recognize the hymn and they said to me, "Go out and play the piano." And I said, "Well, okay." So I figured out the key, and I began to play. I would go over there all the time and learn to play by ear whatever they were singing. So I started out doing that kind of thing at the Church of the Four Square Gospel around the corner -- and I'm a good Catholic at the time, going to Catholic school. Well, black people loved to have men's days and women's days, where the women take over the service and the men take over the service. Well, they began to hire me when I was 12 and 13 and 14 years old as the pianist for the men's day service.

PATTERSON

And your mom didn't mind, because she loved the church.

MCNEIL

Oh, she loved it. She thought it was fabulous. Now, I'm being exposed now to the black church. I mean, really lock, stock, and barrel.

PATTERSON

And your dad, he just didn't want to have much to do with it? Or did he complain, or just let you guys do what you were going to do?

MCNEIL

He was kind of a follower. He could kind of care less what we were doing. But my mother is like -- I remember going to -- my mother and I went to -- used to go to Andrae Crouch's grandfather's church at 33rd Street in Compton. It was Church of God in Christ. My mother would go there on Sunday nights, would take me, and you talk about some jumpin' music. They were like -- they were the Holiness. They were called the Holiness People. There was speaking in tongues and they had the tambourines and the drums. This was a violation of anything in the mainline churches. I mean, you say People's Independent Church had a huge pipe organ. They were the ultimate, ultimate. This was the middle-class, upper-middle class black church, where you didn't go there unless you were dressed properly, you see. Dress code -- I mean, this was very important, but you had your doctors and lawyers, schoolteachers. Your Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company was born in that church. Angela's Funeral Home was born in that church. Conner-Johnson Funeral Home was born in that church. I mean, that was the kind of church it was. It was a revolutionary church. By that, they were all -- the minister was a former African Methodist, AME minister. And they wanted him to go to a -- he was at Eighth [st.] and 2nd Towne Avenue First AME, and the bishop said he was gaining so much popularity, because he was a very charismatic man. They were going to send him to a little church in San Bernardino. The congregation said no. Five hundred people walked out of that church one Sunday morning and they went over to Twelfth and Central at the Odd Fellows Hall, and they started having church in there, and they kept building, and within a year they had about two thousand people. They built that church at 18th and Paloma Street, which doesn't exist now. They built that church then because of the strength of the people wanting to have Dr. Greg as their minister. He was an absolutely fantastic man, though.

PATTERSON

And he broke away from AME?

MCNEIL

Oh, he broke away, yeah. He was really trained as an Episcopal priest. He became an AME minister because it was about the closest thing. You'd go to Independent Church and you'd see the candelabra and the crucifix and the cross, acolytes, vestments, and that choir. I eventually became the choir -- the minister of music at that church. As a kid, I started directing their high school choir, when I was 16, and working next door in the New Hope Baptist Church, which was next door to it. And then when Dr. Greg died, Dr. Clayton Russell became the minister there, and he was a protege of Dr. Greg, and he came in with the revolutionary ideas he was something else.

PATTERSON

Now, but this is still AME, though. Clayton?

MCNEIL

No. No, no, no. It was not -- it was an independent church. It was not AME, nothing. But the heritage was African Methodist. I mean, the chanting and the decalogue that they use and the ritualistic type of service was all from the African AME tradition, very much so, and they sang anthems in the church, everything, but it was really quite -- what they called "high church."

PATTERSON

So you're getting Catholicism, you're getting AME, you're getting Baptists, you're getting Church of God in Christ.

MCNEIL

I knew every church in this town, and I played in most of them.

PATTERSON

So where did you feel your heart lied? Was it just with the music and not with the doctrine? Where...

MCNEIL

I always wanted -- I was just so impressed with the Independent Church. They had such a fantastic choir. Even as a kid, I remember -- I mean, 15, 16, and of course by that time I was going -- I went to the university when I was 17. And so I went directly from Poly to UCLA, and I immediately -- I was a pre-med major, though. I was not going to be a musician.

PATTERSON

How did that happen?

MCNEIL

Because my buddy [Oner] Barker and me, we were going to be Barker and McNeil, medical group whatever. I mean, we were going to change the world. But when I got out there, and I found out about the A Capella choir -- they called it A Capella choir then -- and I thought wow. So I was pre-med until I was a junior, but I was playing and in the university choir. And I was very much associated with the people there, because I loved music, and I changed my major in my junior year, which meant I had to do an extra year. It took my five years to get my degree, but I got both the bachelor's degree in music and a bachelor of science degree in science and a teaching credential. I got the secondary teaching credential.

PATTERSON

That's with those five years?

MCNEIL

And being light-skinned, I was able to get away with -- they were sending all the black candidates for teaching credentials to the east side. I didn't know that until I had done my practice teaching they sent me to Uni High [University High School], which is West L.A., and to -- I can't think of the junior high [Emerson Junior High School] it used to be -- anyways, next to the Mormon Temple right now. It's a school there. I can't remember the name of it. Excuse me. And I did my student teaching, and when I used to tell the kids, where are you teaching, I said I'm teaching at Uni. "What? You're not supposed to be doing that!" Anyway.

PATTERSON

So, when you got to Polytechnic, and you'd been used to Catholic school. Now, all these Catholic schools, by the way, were they -- what was the ethnic makeup?

MCNEIL

Predominantly white.

PATTERSON

Predominantly white. So you were going..

MCNEIL

There was a sprinkling of blacks, sprinkling of Hispanics.

PATTERSON

So you would say, then, based on the exposure that you had in all areas of your life, you had a little bit of everything around you.

MCNEIL

Everything that God had created. Yeah.

PATTERSON

Yeah, so you had a wide exposure and your mom obviously supported you having lots of experience.

MCNEIL

Yeah, my mother -- she was bent and determined to get my sister and me to -- four years younger -- the opportunity to really enjoy people, you know, and I told you, she used to work for central casting. My mom used to help -- there was a man by the name of Charlie [Charles] Butler. Charlie Butler was the black representative to the central casting. Central casting, an agency to collect people for films, generally extras of various sorts. Well, in the Watts area, my mom was the representative of central casting, and she booked people. I'd come home from school sometimes, and the front yard would be filled with all these people. "What are these people doing here?!" She said, "Well, I'm interviewing this one and this one and this one." "For what?!" Well, for an African film or for a New York film, extra people in the street. Yeah, she made extra money that way.

PATTERSON

Wow. Do you remember -- were you interested in those films at all? Did you ever remember going to see the films with your mom?

MCNEIL

Oh, yeah, and I remember a picture called -- with Margaret Sullivan, called "So Red the Rose," and I don't know why that sticks in my mind. And my mom had a lot to do with the people, and she was in the picture too. She says, "I want to make this extra money," and they put some dark stuff on my face and I got into the picture too. It was really weird, I mean really weird. But anyway...

PATTERSON

So your mom was very busy. She was full of...

MCNEIL

But then, she belonged to every fraternal organization in town. My mother died -- you would've thought -- well, Independent Church seats 900. A thousand, I mean. It must have been a thousand people at her funeral. She belonged to the Household of Ruth, the Heroines of Jericho, the Eastern Star. She was a Passworthy Grand Matron of the Eastern Star, which is the big upper echelon of the organization, as you go. She became an Elk. She was a member of Hiawatha Temple of the IPBOE, the Independent Benevolent Order of the Elks, that's what it's called. And then, well, you name it.

PATTERSON

What are all these organizations dong? What were their...

MCNEIL

They were -- in a sense they were mutual aid societies that they provided funeral expenses, they provided sick benefits. They were like insurance companies excepting they had these ritualistic implications, which is very much black, when you stop and -- black people love to dress up in these weird costumes and create these organizations. I remember my mother was very big in the Eastern Star, which is the -- that's the women's group. The men are the Masons. So my dad became a 32nd-degree Mason, which is the highest you go that way, from what I understand. Oh, she loved it! She loved that, and she had all kinds of associations with fraternal -- and the fraternal organizations were very strong in L.A. I don't know how they are now, but I know they were then.

PATTERSON

Do you think that that was because black people sort of had to take care of themselves in many ways?

MCNEIL

Yes, of course, of course.

PATTERSON

And that they had the social services available to them?

MCNEIL

Of course. I think you paid a dollar and a half a week, or something like that. Your little dues were paid in there, and if you died, they made sure that you were buried, because you had burial insurance. If you were sick, you'd get sick benefits. And I think it was absolutely another way of preserving the integrity of the people.

PATTERSON

Yes, and it was very self-sufficient, the community then.

MCNEIL

That's what I meant when I said the population was dense, because you see, everybody knew what was going on, you see. It was a fascinating period to live in.

PATTERSON

When you were a little boy, you were playing with all these different varied children in the neighborhood, and they were all these different ethnicities. What were the variations of music you were exposed to just in the neighborhood, like as far as popular music, not church music, but some of the other kinds of music.

MCNEIL

Oh, there were -- like the Woodmans, for example, people in my community. I'd play the popular stuff, but it was not good for me. I don't know. I didn't lean that way. I was more of a classicist, I guess I would say. I learned to embrace all music, but I was interested in choirs and choral groups. That fascinated me.

PATTERSON

Did you start singing when you started playing piano? Did that sort of happen simultaneously?

MCNEIL

That -- I'm sorry?

PATTERSON

Singing, did singing happen around the same time as piano playing for you?

MCNEIL

Oh, yeah. I used to play for choirs.

PATTERSON

And did you sing yourself when you were little?

MCNEIL

No, a little bit. My voice is -- I can sing soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, I guess, but when I'm teaching somebody something, you know. No, as far as a singer, no. I played for a lot of singers, though, like I played for Margaret Douroux's dad, Earl Pleasant, and Arthur Peters. They were out here. They both came from Louisiana, and they came to the Independent Church because that church was the first church to have a radio broadcast on Sunday morning.

PATTERSON

Wow, how did that happen?

MCNEIL

Because Clayton Russell was a go-getter. He was the minister. He got Angeles Funeral Home to sponsor a 30 minute broadcast live from the church. Came on at 10:15, off at 10:45. Church started at 11. And it was that program that used to electrify Los angeles because Russell was a political activist. I remember when there was a strike in L.A. because there were no black bus drivers or streetcar drivers, and the people said they were sick and tired of it, that there were no opportunities for blacks in the field of transportation. He says on his radio program one morning, tonight at seven I want everybody to come to this church who's interested in doing something about getting opportunities for black men and women to drive buses and streetcars. The church is rammed, packed, and jammed. They all march downtown to wherever the headquarters were. Do you know what? In less than a year, you saw black people beginning to drive buses and stuff like that. That's his influence. He ran for county supervisor. He almost won. Well, you know, he had people like Adam Clayton Powell, who was a great black preacher in New York, but who was also a congressman. They were like that, close buddies. Clarence Cobb was another black minister in Chicago. They were the same kind of vein, activists. They were collaborating all the time. So any time you wanted to see anything happen politically, it was at the People's Independent Church.

PATTERSON

So it was a launching point for political movements as well as...

MCNEIL

Oh, right there. Russell and all the people were very strong Democrats. They really did a lot to shape this town.

PATTERSON

And it was an independent institution, not sort of burdened or -- if that's the right word.

MCNEIL

They became part of a coalition of independent churches throughout the country. They finally got together -- they still do it, and they have a conference every year of independent churches.

PATTERSON

But still based on the AME models?

MCNEIL

No, no, I think they're more eclectic now.

PATTERSON

OK, so what was your dad doing during this time?

MCNEIL

Making a living, I guess. My dad was in the background, kind of somewhat. Very supportive, but he was never an activist.

PATTERSON

Did he love music at all?

MCNEIL

Yes, very much so.

PATTERSON

What was his favorite music?

MCNEIL

Jazz.

PATTERSON

Really.

MCNEIL

He used to play the drums. He was a complete drum percussionist. He used to get little gigs, working in little social bands, and he'd play a little gig here and a little gig there.

PATTERSON

Around town?

MCNEIL

Around town.

PATTERSON

Were you close to him during that time when he was playing music?

MCNEIL

Pardon me?

PATTERSON

Were you close to your dad?

MCNEIL

No, I was never close to my father. For some reason -- I don't know. First of all, I didn't look like him, and I couldn't figure out why. There was just -- I don't know. My father was in another world. I respected him and everything like that, but I never felt close to him.

PATTERSON

So it was really your mom that you...

MCNEIL

Yeah, we went everyplace. My dad didn't want to do all that running around. He'd rather stay home and fool around.

PATTERSON

So with your sisters -- now, you had an older sister and a younger sister.

MCNEIL

She's gone, too. She's been dead a long time. But she was never living with us. When I was born, she had already gone, so I told you the difference in ages. She was very much an activist in her own way. She lived down in the Willowbrook area. There used to be an artificial lake created in Willowbrook called Leaks Lake. And around Leaks Lake, black people had built a kind of resort area, like little shops, and you could go boating on the lake. But she lived across the street from Leeks Lake, and she never had to work. Her husband provided for her. He was a cook on the Santa Fe railroad. He gave her everything, a new car, every year. And she was -- she lived very well, my sister Lorena. So when she got tired of living in the area, they bought one of those big mansions on Victoria, 2000 Victoria, right off of Washington Boulevard, big colonial house, because he had only one daughter, but the one daughter had three daughters, and so the house was like for them.

PATTERSON

So it wasn't your sisters' children, it was from another marriage, a first marriage?

MCNEIL

No, no, no. My sister had one daughter.

PATTERSON

Oh, and she had...

MCNEIL

And her daughter had three daughters.

PATTERSON

I see. I understand. So she had it made, so to speak.

MCNEIL

Oh, yeah. Lorena was quite a lady, and when I found out that I was adopted, she was the first person I went to. I said, Lorena, please tell me something about my background.

PATTERSON

What gave you a hint that might have -- why did you go to her? What motivated you?

MCNEIL

Well, because I wanted...

PATTERSON

OK, well, that story we'll start on the next tape. We ran out of tape. Wow. This is great. I'm a very visual person, so everything you're saying to me -- I love stories. That's why this project is so interesting for me, because to hear the descriptions of the neighborhoods and...

MCNEIL

A phone number for her. I really need to get in touch with her. There's a very close friend of mine who is applying for a job out there. I guess she's got an opening, and she (inaudible) something like that. And he is very well qualified. (inaudible) and he wants it. He just got his DMA(?) from SC. He's a bassist.

PATTERSON

Oh, really? Yeah.

MCNEIL

He's a Brazilian, but he knows everything there is to know about American jazz and Brazilian folk music and speaks Brazilian, obviously -- I mean Portuguese -- and talented.

PATTERSON

OK, well, you don't have...

MCNEIL

Mention it to her that I know a guy who's applying for that job.

PATTERSON

OK! And you could recommend...

MCNEIL

And he came to me Sunday, he said "would you mind writing a recommendation?" I thought, well, I'll do better. I'd like to talk to her on the phone, but just mention to her that I'm going to call her.

PATTERSON

OK, I will, I will. Just -- do you have -- I can give you the -- they'll connect you to her secretary right away. Yeah, Donna Armstrong.

MCNEIL

I don't know her.

PATTERSON

Yeah, she works with the chair, you know, so she was with Professor Rice when he was the chair, now with...

MCNEIL

Jon Robertson is not there anymore, is he? He used to be chairman of the department.

PATTERSON

No, no, no. No, but Tim Rice came in.

MCNEIL

He used to direct the orchestra.

PATTERSON

Oh, OK.

MCNEIL

Symphony orchestra, yeah.

PATTERSON

So Tim Rice, he's a Bulgarian music specialist, was chairperson when I came in, and then as you know, Jackie J.J. took over -- was it two years now? She's been chair, and Donna's great, her assistant. She always works with the chair. And she arranges stuff, and she's great, so organized, does so much. But OK, I'll definitely tell her.

MCNEIL

Just mention it to her.

PATTERSON

Yeah, I will.

MCNEIL

Because he really wants the job. I think he's very competent, too. He's played for me a couple of times. He's quite good.

PATTERSON

How are we doing? We are... (inaudible) OK, now? Are we on? OK, you were just starting to tell us about your adoptive parents or the situation of your adoption. Your oldest sister let you know somehow, or gave you some sort of clue. What happened?

MCNEIL

I won a scholarship to study in Europe through the Westminster Choir College of Princeton, New Jersey, which is an adjunct of Rider's University, which is part of Princeton University, whatever. And I went looking for -- I had to have a passport, so I went downtown to the Bureau of Vital Statistics and they said we have no record of your birth on this date. And so I remember, my mother had dropped dead of a heart attack a year before.

PATTERSON

What year was this?

MCNEIL

I guess about 1950 I don't know, can't remember. '49 or something like that. Say, between '49 and '50, someplace in there. So I couldn't find any papers. But I remember we had a safety deposit box in the bank, and I knew there was nothing in there but memorabilia, papers. There was no jewelry or anything that I know. It was all memorabilia. At least, I thought. And so I went to the bank and I opened it up, and on top of there was a paper that says Superior Court (inaudible) and then my name, Albert John Joseph McNeil, herein after to be known as John Joseph McNeil, and I opened it up, and I knew. I (inaudible) feeling, wow, that it said that my name, my real name, is Alfred -- Alfredo Morales. And I thought, what is this? Well, I knew what it was, and I was kind of like, wow. So I called a friend of mine on the phone. I said, come to the bank. He said are you overdrawn? I said no, I'm not overdrawn. (laughter) Come to the bank. And I handed him the paper and he said what's this. He said, listen. Your parents, your mother, whatever, they loved you. They did. So don't take it like that. I said, but it's not that. It's the name. If it was Albert Smith or something like that, but look. That's a Hispanic name. Morales. So, I didn't say anything to anybody. I didn't tell my sister. Nobody. i didn't tell anybody, because I didn't know which way I was supposed to go with this or how I was. My mother worked for the California Children's Home Society as a social case worker, and now I found out that she adopted me and she adopted my sister.

PATTERSON

Your older sister that we were talking about before?

MCNEIL

No, my younger sister, who looks like me. Fair, you know. My older sister was fair. For a while, I used to think me and my older sister's, my mother -- you don't know what to think. But I remembered, years later, when my son was about 15 or 16, I went over to the Children's Home Society. It used to be on Adams Boulevard. And I walked in and I said, you know what? Here are my adoption papers. I said I need to know something about who am I, where did I come from. Oh, we can't do that. It's against the law. All those records are sealed, you know. I said come on, you can tell me. I'm not going to sue anybody or anything like that. This is ridiculous. So she's like, come back in a couple of weeks and I'll go dig into -- the papers are not available, you know. So I came back. So she handed me a picture and said, oh, this is a picture of your mother. Well, it was very interesting -- I have a copy of that same picture, with my birth mother and my adopted mother together. And I remember asking my mom, well, who's that lady holding me? She said "that's your babysitter," and it was really my mother. And the only word she could tell me, that when my mother came to California, she was 16, and they said "your father was 35 and we don't know his name."

PATTERSON

Did he come to California with your mother?

MCNEIL

No. He used to work for my mother's family.

PATTERSON

He was back in Puerto Rico.

MCNEIL

He used to work for my mother's family in Puerto Rico. Now, you think about the logistics of that. There were no airplanes flying over, so she had to come on a boat and whatever arrangements they made to get her here, and why here? Why?

PATTERSON

Why not New York? It was closer...

MCNEIL

Right. But there is a woman in this building, my condo complex, who is a genealogist. And she got to work on my case. She went through everything. It took her a year. She got all the bills, the census bureau things, and everything that you can think of, and found out that when my mother came here -- well you see, I used to go to Puerto Rico a lot. I had a lot of friends there. I was curious. My mother may have been walking the streets. How do I know? We went through five parish churches and looked into their baptismal records. But see, my mother's name was Esperanza Morales. But you're supposed to have two names -- in the Hispanics, you have -- it could've been Esperanza Morales Rodriguez, or Hernandez, or something like that. But when you got the two names you really can go to the source of what that is, with only one name. This woman in this building did all the things she found. She found out that my mother's other name was Sanchez, so my real name is Alfred Morales Sanchez. She has the papers, and yet my mother did not leave Los Angeles right after I was born. She went to work for somebody in Pasadena, and that's the end of the story. We don't know what happened.

PATTERSON

And so your mother wasn't around to really talk to about it.

MCNEIL

Oh, my mother?

PATTERSON

Not your birth mother, but your adoptive mother. She wasn't around to talk to you about it. Did your older sister remember?

MCNEIL

She would not discuss it. She would not. When my baby sister died, my niece came and said, "Uncle Al? I just found some papers that say that mama was adopted."

PATTERSON

From a different family, not the same family as you.

MCNEIL

No, adopted into the McNeil family.

PATTERSON

But was she related to you from...

MCNEIL

No.

PATTERSON

So your mom knew your birth mother. Were they friends, do you think?

MCNEIL

And she knew Dottie's birth mother. Being a caseworker, she was privy to all the paperwork and must have decided this is what she wanted to do.

PATTERSON

And your older sister was born to your mom and your dad as you knew them, or was she -- she wasn't adopted, your older sister.

MCNEIL

I don't know. I can't answer that.

PATTERSON

Wow, what a woman she was. She just -- she must have had such abundant energy and very humanistic woman.

MCNEIL

And very active, and I guess the reason why she didn't want -- maybe she just wanted to feel that I was her child, period. And you know, there were a lot of little things that happened. I remember one day, just a small thing. It was pouring down rain once, and I must have been about eight, seven or eight, and it was a huge puddle of water there, and she said, listen, get on my back. I'm not going to let you walk through that water. And the water was up almost to her waist. And I thought, you know, the little things like that, you have to have some deep feeling of love, I guess is the word, for me in this situation, that she would -- and she would tell me many times, say you know, Al -- she used to call me Abby. I don't know why. But she did. And she would say -- well, I know why. Because when I was a little kid we lived next door to some Jews, the Simonoft family. I'll never forget that. And they called me Abby, so they kind of picked up with that Abby business. But I remember she told me that she was at -- you are going to have the very best that I can push you into, because I want you to be a successful person.

PATTERSON

What a heart she had, huh?

MCNEIL

Yeah.

PATTERSON

Huge heart, and I'm sure you were lovable (laughter).

MCNEIL

Anyway, that's kind of awesome to talk about yourself, I mean, but this is... Trying to reconcile in my own mind both cultures has not been easy sometimes.

PATTERSON

How, why?

MCNEIL

I don't know. I feel that in a sense -- now, her taking me out of whatever I was into as a baby, and bringing me into this world, probably was the best thing. How do I know? But your curiosity comes. Do I have brothers or sisters someplace? What was my mother's situation, that she felt so desperate that she had to give me up? And maybe there's a little bit of sense of rejection, because when you take a person out of their birthright, or their birth situation I guess, how do you reconcile that? I mean, I don't even know what I'm saying, but I know that I have some feelings about it. Maybe that's what I'm saying. You have some feelings about it.

PATTERSON

Absolutely. I mean, it has to be.

MCNEIL

Because I remember, I was directing my choir in Germany on tour, with the Jubilee Singers, and I remember this man walked up to me and he said -- he was taking autographs. I said, "I don't want your autograph. You're not black. You've got nothing to do with this." And I thought, hey, you don't know what you're talking about. I've been so thoroughly involved in African-American things, you want to call it, because I went through the period of colored and black and Negro and all those combinations of descriptions, you know, that it makes you feel like you're without an identity here, if that's the word. And yet, and still, I'm very proud of my background. I'm very proud that when I go to Spain -- and I made it my business to learn to speak Spanish, and I think I do very well with it. I have Spanish friends, Spanish-speaking friends. But yet, I don't deny my environment and my mother and father and the people that have nurtured me and given me the richness of the culture that is also mine. I feel that very strongly.

PATTERSON

When you went back to Puerto Rico, what did you feel? Did you find any places that you may have been connected to? What city was your mother...

MCNEIL

San Juan. Well, I went to many all over the island, but I went to Ponce, I liked very much. It's in the south part of -- and there's a very good friend of mine, Professor Tarrant, who is at the Catholic University in Ponce. And then I have another good friend, Professor Luis Olivieri-- oh, bother. Anyway, he's at the Mid-America University, musicians, both of them, composers. I was booked into the Bellas Artes, which is the big hall in San Juan, with the Jubilee singers. Because my management in New York -- I didn't always go to Puerto Rico on that tour, and it was the most amazing thing to happen to me. My friend is Luis Olivieri. He's Puerto Rican. He's a professor of music. Luis was in a class of mine that I taught at Dartmouth one summer school. And I looked at Luis and Evelyn, his wife. I said "where are you from?" "Puerto Rico." I said, "Really? I want to know you better." I said, "I'm Puerto Rican, I think!" (laughter) And we got very close. So when I performed there, and I was able to tell this audience of about 2,000, I said, you know, I'm directing the Jubilee Singers, but I think I'm Puerto Rican. And they applauded. But you suddenly felt a relationship to the people there.

PATTERSON

So it's like your life had suddenly gotten much bigger.

MCNEIL

And yet, I don't deny any of the experiences I've had.

PATTERSON

Yeah, it's just an addition to, huh?

MCNEIL

Yeah. But this man, as I was saying -- I told you, man, in Germany, he really upset me. "I don't want your autograph because you're not black." I said, you know, you don't know my country, do you? I said, you know, in the United States, if you have one drop of black blood in you, that's what you are, forget it. Somebody asked Tiger Woods the same question. And he came back with this resp -- he said, I am what I am, but I'm not going to deny either of my backgrounds. My mother is Thai, my father is black. So I'm Thai-Black, I'm not black. This predominance of the black thing is supposed to be the most forceful thing, just like you're hearing more and more of this biracial thing, so where does it... I remember a big discussion about why the census does not make consideration for people who come from two heritages. You know?

PATTERSON

Yeah. Well, racism is...

MCNEIL

Because you're equally involved with both.

PATTERSON

If your parents are -- if you're first generation. Yeah, the racism thing drew radical lines. One drop meant you were all the way on the other side.

MCNEIL

That's right, that was the whole thing.

PATTERSON

So you now know that you're Puerto Rican and you have this heritage. How did it affect your association with Hispanic music? Did it?

MCNEIL

Well, I always have had a strong affinity for it, always. It just enhanced it. I became more aware of it, and I wanted to know more. And when I studied Puerto Rican music, the folk forms of Puerto Rican music are fascinating. They have the quatro, the small instrument that they play, and I can't even think of the various forms. There were the coastal people, had one form of music, and the people in the mountains had another form of the folk music, and the people on the coast were much more involved cosmopolitan, and more isolated in the mountains, so they had -- that was a little more of the pure music there. But if you know what the ingredients of Puerto Rico are, you know it's Indian, African, Spanish. Spanish-white, Spanish as opposed to -- hybrid Spanish is a different culture. Then you know that Columbus came there, and to many of the islanders -- the Arawak Indians were probably the most important people that he destroyed, literally, with the diseases that came from Europe, because they cohabitated and brought all this stuff with them.

PATTERSON

What about the classical music? Actually, you trained one of the musicians that you -- that later became a music educator in Puerto Rico, so there's a classical tradition there.

MCNEIL

Well you see, there is a so-called aristocracy in Puerto Rico. The people who are "I am pure Spanish," blah blah, and "I have any of these mixtures in me," that exists too. And then you have indigenous Spanish -- Puerto Rican composers. Pablo Casals, who was definitely of Spanish -- lived his last life in Puerto Rico and brought the Casal festival there, which is a great festival. And loved Puerto Rico for the fact that it did represent such a combination of backgrounds.

PATTERSON

Yeah, makes it fascinating, uh huh. And so coming back to Los Angeles now, you have this Latino population here. Did it make you view your surroundings in Los Angeles with a little more open feeling?

MCNEIL

Well, yeah, I'm excited about it. I don't directly, but one of my best friends is from Guatemala and I'm the godfather of his children and we see each other socially. As a matter of fact, I've been to his little town, Asencion Mita, right near the El Salvador Frontier, and spent some time and took my wife down there. I went by myself first, and he comes from a very aristocratic family. All of his family members, a lot of them are doctors. They really came up the hard way. His father used to own the bus company in the little town of 15,000, and now his daughter goes to Davis. As a matter of fact, I'm going to be there and walk in the academic procession because of Melissa, you know what I mean? Because I think what a joy that is, and we've been very tight together. And I enjoy it because he came here illegally, but his wife was getting her citizenship. They knew each other in Guatemala. He's been here for twenty-some-odd years. You talk about self-made. He came with ambition and is now vice-president of his own bank. I mean, he went to City National Bank and he went to the Korean Bank, but now they've formed a bank of Latinos, and have this bank and it's going very well. So they've been going three years, but he's vice-president of it.

PATTERSON

Here in Los Angeles.

MCNEIL

Yeah, he graduated from Northridge with a bachelor of science in finance, and already had had a good background in a private school in Guatemala. But I'm saying -- and decided to leave, and his story would make a film scenario. It's just fantastic, how he traveled, from Guatemala through Mexico, got a coyote, went to Tuscon. The coyote dropped him off. He met another Guatemalteco and they went to Tucson. The guy wouldn't take them any farther. Wouldn't bring them to L.A. He didn't know where he was. The only thing he knew how to do was call and make a collect call. Called his wife to be and she drove all night with her brother and they didn't know where he was in Tucson. They drove around the streets, around the streets. He said "I'm in front of a restaurant. I'm here." And luckily, he looked up and she saw him. Went to a hotel, took a shower. That's how he got in town. And then of course he went through the legal process. He had to go back to Guatemala, go to the embassy and then do the whole thing. But I mean, the story is so interesting. And then I met him. But he was going to Evans School, which is a school, continuation school for immigrants at the corner of Figueroa and Sunset Boulevard, big school. Goes from six o'clock in the morning to one o'clock at night, to cater to teaching English and teaching (inaudible).

PATTERSON

Do you remember the name of it, by the way?

MCNEIL

Evans School. E-V-A-N-S.

PATTERSON

Oh, I'm sorry, you said that, yes.

MCNEIL

And girlfriend of mine's husband, Robert Rupert, was the associate superintendent for continuing education, and he died suddenly of a heart attack. Well, his wife Connie thought the best thing she could do was make a scholarship for aspiring young students who went to Evans School. She invited me to the commencement. That's how I met Francisco. She (inaudible). So I met three of them. I met a Mexican. I met a Cambodian. And Francisco. And so after it was all over, you guys graduate. You know, he'd already graduated from high school. He graduated from community college in Guatemala, so he went through that school like crazy. Didn't speak a word of English when he came. You talk to him now, he talks like we talk. I mean, all the clichés, all the slang, the whole bit. Anyway, I met these kids and I said, well, you know, they chose my as a professor at the University of California, and I said, well, if I can help you guys, here's my card. And so what are you doing right now? Nothing. Let's go eat! So, we went out and had lunch, and I said give me a call. So all of them called me at various times, but Francisco called and he said "I'd like to talk to you about -- " He said "I really want to go to LACC but I'm afraid that I don't have a green card." I said, "You go. You can get in there. Go ahead." He went to CC, did all the general ed things, and then the time came to go to State College. He was scared again. Now, he's working full-time, eight hours a day, and going to school. That's what blew me away. And he finally got -- a counselor came over to City College from Northridge, and I said, tell him frankly your background. Don't lie. The guy said, don't worry about it. We can get you in. He graduated summa cum laude with a finance bachelor of science degree. I mean, it makes me look at people who don't utilize the opportunities that are here who are citizens.

PATTERSON

The fear. The fear that they won't be successful. Did you find that the African-Americans that you grew up around felt more empowered then than they do now, knowing that you're dealing with students and...

MCNEIL

I think the whole climate of things is so different now. When I was growing up, all my associates, everybody wanted to make something of themselves, all of them. And we were living in the so-called -- of course, we were in a mixed community. It wasn't all black, not the way it is now, or wasn't all Hispanic, Italians and Germans and blacks and enclaves of blacks. Remember I told you about 115th Street being kind of like, as they call it, the Sugar Hill of the area, you know?

PATTERSON

You also mentioned 36th Street when I spoke to you before.

MCNEIL

Yeah, that's the little enclave there. It's amazing, from Vermont to -- let's see -- from Vermont to Normandy. And from roughly Exposition to Vernon -- to Adams, I mean. That was a little area of blacks.

PATTERSON

That's interesting. Did you know -- did you associate with them?

MCNEIL

Oh, yeah. I knew people there. Had some cousins who lived in the area.

PATTERSON

Oh, really? Uh-huh.

MCNEIL

Yeah, on 36th Street, an uncle and aunt that lived in that area. My mother's brother and their wife.

PATTERSON

So you had this extended family from your adoptive parents that you...

MCNEIL

Oh, yeah. Oh, I had -- at one time I had all kinds of aunts and uncles and cousins, but most of the people are dead off now.

PATTERSON

Coming from Louisiana up here to Los Angeles.

MCNEIL

That's right. My father's aunt was the first black policewoman in California, Georgia Robinson, lived on Mariposa right off of Wilshire, when it was a dirt street, 1911.

PATTERSON

Did she look black? Like, did she have the sort of the...

MCNEIL

No, kind of mulatto-looking.

PATTERSON

Mulatto-looking.

MCNEIL

Yeah. It was my dad's mother's sister.

PATTERSON

Wow. That's such a fascinating time, you know, the dirt road and the first black to do something.

MCNEIL

Yeah, that property, they just sold it a couple years ago, but I mean, it was -- like my cousin Nancy McCloud, her name was. But she was a Robinson. Her mother was a Robinson and went to Hobart Boulevard School, you see. It's right over there right off of Olympic. So fascinating, and she was a schoolteacher. Nancy was one of the early -- I mean, her mother was one of the early black schoolteachers in L.A. There weren't that many around.

PATTERSON

So they came up from Louisiana and just really dug in and became part of the fabric of the society and the...

MCNEIL

Oh, yeah, and seemingly had a lot of motivation to succeed.

PATTERSON

Yes, yeah, and they brought that with them. Now, even though your father's family was supposedly not in the elite in Louisiana, but they had their own sense of motivation and...

MCNEIL

Well, it was kind of interesting. My uncle Walter, my Aunt Georgia took my Uncle Walter when he was in his early teens out of Louisiana and brought him to Colorado, and they grew up -- he grew up in Colorado with Uncle Morgan, Aunt Georgia's husband, and his whole perspective on everything was quite different, because he moved to Santa Monica back in the year 1911.

PATTERSON

So he was living around white people in a white and black community.

MCNEIL

That's right. There were two segments. My father stayed in the black community and was in show business, while Uncle Walter became more elite and lived in a white community. His wife was as white as a couch, and my cousin Margie was the same.

PATTERSON

So the mindset was that -- one of entitlement when they came here, and so they behaved and excelled accordingly. So it's a mindset. Yeah, you would be trapped by your expectations.

MCNEIL

I think we'd better stop, don't you think? It's 8:30.

PATTERSON

Yeah, that's fine. Yes.

MCNEIL

But anyway, it's fascinating. You guys have got my little mind going like that.

PATTERSON

You've got me going.

MCNEIL

On the psychiatrist's couch.

PATTERSON

Have you here until midnight. (laughter) Thank you, Dr. McNeil. Wonderful.

MCNEIL

Well, that's great. Then give me a ring next week. Let's set another next time. We can see what we're going to do.

PATTERSON

Yeah, OK. Mondays are still good, so we'll...

MCNEIL

Yeah, Mondays is still good.

PATTERSON

OK. So I'll just call you, like (inaudible) call you at the beginning of next week, maybe.

MCNEIL

Yeah, and then we can put it on the calendar and I can see what's happening. OK. How can I help you guys?

PATTERSON

Oh, don't worry. You can just go ahead. I'll take your leash off here. (laughter)

MCNEIL

Well, don't get lost going home, for god's sakes.

PATTERSON

We did that adventure. We won't repeat it.

MCNEIL

We were going to eat dinner! That's all right.

PATTERSON

Oh, hope we didn't go too much overtime. Thank you so much for the tea. It was so needed at the time (inaudible)

MCNEIL

(inaudible) because a pot would stay warm.

1.2. Session 2 (March 12, 2007)

PATTERSON

...about, you know, please let...

MCNEIL

No, Dr. Floyd started that. (break in tape) I was telling somebody the other day, can you believe Charlie Mingus and all these people grew up right, a couple blocks from where I lived as a kid?

PATTERSON

See, that's amazing. That's wonderful, though.

MCNEIL

And it was just amazing.

PATTERSON

OK, we're at March 12th with Dr. Albert McNeil. 2007 is the year and we're picking -- this our second interview. Charlie Mingus. Did he play the bass at the time?

MCNEIL

Bass, double, and he studied with one of the principal players of the L.A. Phil, way back in those days. You stop and think that he had parents that were really insightful and really got him -- that community out there where I grew up, Watts-Willowbrook area, was a very isolated community almost, because even though Watts-Willowbrook area was multi-ethnic, you had blacks, you had Hispanics, you had Asians, and the community was your typical little town, like 103rd Street was downtown where you had all the stores, you know what I mean, and St. Lawrence Catholic Church was just at 102nd Street down there. That church was a multi-ethnic, multicultural church, and when I saw the transition and all that's gone through, sometimes it's shocking to me, because -- and it was a slow evolution, but it was amazing, because I lived next door to an Italian, you know, and on one side was Hispanics, Mexicans, and across the street and down the street was more blacks, and it was really funny. I think I told you my mom was president of the 111th Street School PTA, and I was going to parochial school. I didn't go to public school, elementary school. But she was very much gung-ho for politics. She believed that was the redemption, you know, for our people.

PATTERSON

Yeah. You had an eclectic background, even, coming up, which is great. And then when you mentioned that you got in touch with your Puerto Rican heritage, and how did that -- did it influence your musical sensibility or did you incorporate anything just based on your emotional feeling about (inaudible)?

MCNEIL

I don't think so. Well, you can't really spell this out, because I had always thought that I was a Creole, that my mother lived in the Creole section of New Orleans, my father was not. That was so-called French-Spanish influence. And she took me to New Orleans a couple times to show me off as being whatever. No, I don't think so. I was too much older. But my perspective was more academic than it was -- it was emotional, yes, because I often wondered who my real mother was. I mean, I know her name now and I know that she was from Puerto Rico and all that kind of thing, but you also have the feeling in your mind, why was I put up for adoption? And she, being very young, all of these things. You begin to wonder, do I have brothers and sisters, et cetera, et cetera, who are they? What kind of woman was my mother? I knew what my adopted mother was like, and then of course I had -- my emotional connection to her was very strong. Because I had no other source. I was surprised, however, to find out, and yet not. I know I didn't look like my father, and I always felt something here. My mother, possibly, and my younger sister and my older sister. We all looked very much alike. So -- and nobody in my family ever said anything about my adoption or my sister's adoption, which I found out after she died, you know. We went to our older sister, both of us, and she wouldn't talk to us about it, wouldn't discuss it.

PATTERSON

Do you find that's the case in black families? We don't talk about things?

MCNEIL

Yes, oh, yes. Looking back on my childhood, anything that was like that, nobody talked about that. Nobody talked about divorce or marriage or breakup or fighting or abusive behavior. You just didn't talk about that. No. So I can understand that dynamic completely, you know.

PATTERSON

When it was time to go to college, I don't know how you felt coming out of high school, but can you talk about that time when you were transitioning from high school and deciding what you were going to do for the rest of your life?

MCNEIL

Oh, yes, I had pretty much determined. This buddy of mine who took from the same piano teacher, Oner B. Barker M.D. We were going to be doctors together, and I was gung-ho on being a doctor but I had a piano background and I'd been playing in churches as a kid, and I started playing in churches when I was like 14, 15, 16, and on up. Being a good Catholic, you're not supposed to go to a Protestant church in those days, but my mother, as I told you, really loved the People's Independent Church of Christ and she was enamored of the minister there who was a very brilliant man, a wonderful speaker, so we'd go to Mass in the morning, or I'd play Masses in the morning, and then we'd go to this Church. And because it was a so-called social church in Los Angeles, and it was the birthplace of the Golden State Life Mutual Insurance Company. It was also many morticians were there, Conner-Johnson Company, the Angeles Funeral Home. All of these places kind of started within that church and those people were all members of that church, so that represented a middle and upper-middle class African-American congregation. The services were rather formal. The minister himself was a former Episcopal priest who had been an AME minister. And as a matter of fact, the pastor of the first AME church of L.A., when the bishop decided to move him and the people said no, no, no, we're not going to accept that, and they walked out of the church, 500 of them and eventually founded the People's Independent Church.

PATTERSON

So going back to 18 years old or so, finishing high school, and you knew -- you thought you would be a doctor, but you had this piano background and you loved music and you'd always been involved in music, when did you begin to formulate the long-term picture? Like, now you have the choir and that, and did you -- when did you start to say, well, this is going to be my profession?

MCNEIL

After my first year at UCLA, which was a very difficult year for me, taking chemistry and zoology and a whole lot of other things. And then my dad became ill, actually terminally ill, and I'm looking to the future and I'm thinking, unless my mother mortgaged the house, how could a medical education be provided? Because in my day, you didn't have such things as financial aid and grants and all that. You either paid for it yourself or you didn't get it. So I debated -- well, as a sophomore, I decided in my high sophomore semester that maybe I ought to become a music major, because at that time I was playing for the UCLA A Capella Choir, and I was acting director with the Men's Glee Club on campus, but I was working in a Baptist Church as a choir director.

PATTERSON

Which church?

MCNEIL

New Hope Baptist Church.

PATTERSON

Oh, New Hope, right.

MCNEIL

And where I brought Don [Lee White] in, who became my organist. (laughter) And that was quite a decision for me. When I made that -- I made up my mind, said I'm going to become a teacher of music, public school teacher, and I'm going to have a choir, and I'm going to do this, that, and the other. So that's when I made up my mind, which meant that I, instead of graduating in four years, I graduated in five years with a bachelor of arts degree, a special secondary teaching credential, and a general secondary teaching credential, so I could teach music K through 12, so I was thinking in terms of a job that I had to have, and of course, when I graduated and took the city exam, out of 150 people I think I placed second. But then they called me downtown and said there was no job for me, because "there's no jobs in the high school here for a minority like you, period," is how they put it. And I was so upset, because I had already at that time -- I was working on my Master's degree and working at night with the department of water and power. I work from 11 to 7 in the morning. I worked at night, went to school in the day. I had to pay my way.

PATTERSON

When did you sleep and do your homework?

MCNEIL

I'd come home about 7:30 and go to bed. My mom would wake me up about one o'clock in the afternoon. And then I had classes on certain days, and I had choir rehearsal on certain nights, prior. And I'd go from choir rehearsal to my job with the department of water and power. And that was so funny, because the department of water and power was not hiring black people in key clerical roles, and I used to work the counter in the operating division, and the chairman of the board of trustees -- his name was Gilbert Lindsay, who became a very famous L.A. city councilman, Gilbert was chairman of the trustee board but also in charge of maintenance for the entire plant, all the plants for the department of water and power. So one day he comes rushing up. "Al, hey!" And he walks into the office and tells my boss, "He directs my church choir!" Well, they didn't know what I was. And I wasn't passing for anything. But I thought, well, I'm going to lose this job. I came home and told my mom, I said, gee, I'd better look around for something, because Gilbert blew the whistle on me, just like that. It was something else.

PATTERSON

Did anything come of that? Did they...

MCNEIL

No, nothing, because I had -- see, when I didn't get the secondary teaching job in L.A., in the daytime I went back to USC and got an elementary credential. I did it in sixteen weeks and I was starting to teach elementary music at Hooper Street School. So a couple of weeks after Gilbert had come in and made all this declaration, I was able to resign and go teach at L.A. Unified School District as an elementary music teacher. It was really something, and I lived to tell him -- I said, you know what, you almost made me lose my job. "Oh, Al, I wouldn't have done that." (laughter) Yes, you would! And isn't that something? They would not hire blacks, the department of water and power in clerical positions, where you were obviously -- like working the counter and that type of thing. Maybe in the background, yeah, and for janitorial services. That used to be -- L.A. had all kinds of discriminatory quirks, like in a school district. Black teachers couldn't go any place but in the black community. They couldn't. I had -- my cousin, as a matter of fact, my father's aunt, her daughter became one of the first black principals at L.A. Unified School District.

PATTERSON

What was her name?

MCNEIL

Her name was Marion McCord, and she was very close friends with Mrs. Brewington. No, Bessie Burke. Bessie Burke was the first black principal at L.A. Unified School District, and my aunt, my great aunt Ann Georgia Robinson, was the first black women police officer in L.A. -- in the police department, and lived in a house over at 969 South Mariposa when that was an unpaved street. They built that house about 1912, something like that, so they were old pioneers here in L.A.

PATTERSON

Now, these were your mother's family?

MCNEIL

No, this is my dad's family. All this was on my father's side. But Aunt Georgia was quite a historical person. First black woman police officer, founder of some of the social organizations. One of the -- her daughter was one of the founders of Pi Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, because that's when all that started, you see, and black people were getting a chance to go to UCLA. Well, actually, it was out there on Vermont, was where the campus was originally, before it moved to Westwood. This goes back many years, you see. I think the UCLA campus started about 1929. That's when they moved it out there. But it was where L.A. City College is now that used to be the UCLA of its earlier day.

PATTERSON

And were they taking black students from the beginning?

MCNEIL

Yeah, there were a few, but very few, and I know in my day, even in my day, there weren't that many black students on campus.

PATTERSON

What did it take for you to get into this school? What was the application?

MCNEIL

See, I eventually graduated from Polytechnic High School. I went to -- left parochial school in the tenth grade and did my eleventh and twelfth grade at Polytechnic High, used to be at Grand and Washington where L.A. Trade Tech is. That used to be the old -- that Polytechnic High, and they had a big four-manual pipe organ in the auditorium and I went there to study organ from Watts-Willowbrook. I used to ride the red trains downtown to study organ at Poly, you see. My mother managed to get me a permit out of the district where I was in. I was in the David Starr Jordan High district, even though I didn't want to go -- well, she didn't want me to go there because I wanted to study organ, but she didn't want me to go there period, so I started a little migration of about -- there were three or four of us who used to catch the red trains and go to Poly, from out there.

PATTERSON

And then while you were at Poly, you decided you wanted to go to UCLA.

MCNEIL

Well, when I graduated, I graduated with all A's, so I was a gold seal bearer, so you immediately get entree to the University of California. I was a member of the California Scholarship Federation, CSF, and when you have a gold seal on your diploma it's automatic admission to University of California, and that's what happened.

PATTERSON

So how did it feel -- now, you could've passed in wide circles if you wanted to, just enough that you could kind of like work in the front office at DWP. How did that ability to move among communities feel?

MCNEIL

You know, I was so imbued in the African-American community, I didn't even -- you know, I didn't even think about the fact that I could pass. I had a lot of relatives who could too, but when I got the job at the water and power, I never made any statement about what I was or what I wasn't, one way or the other. I just passed the civil service examination, hi, and then they hired me and they knew I was a college student, and that was very a plus. So I just got the job. The only thing that drew my attention to it was the fact that I didn't see any other blacks doing the kind of things that I was doing.

PATTERSON

Yeah, you were young. You probably weren't thinking about that political stuff.

MCNEIL

It never really crossed my -- the only time I got worried about it is when Gilbert Lindsay came up and said to me, went and told my boss that I was his choir director.

PATTERSON

And then you were like, ooh.

MCNEIL

Now see, I'm like every bit of like 21. So, and working at the Independent Church because A. C. Bilbrew, who is a great name in the black community as far as music is concerned, A.C. Harris Bilbrew. Fabulous woman, and had great influence. Sure Don has reams about A.C. Harris Bilbrew, because she was quite a lady in this town. She ran a radio program on KGFJ and it was an amazing little station and didn't have that much of a spread. I think maybe only to the black community, but I remember going there for some reason or other. It was on top of a building on Figueroa, one of the car dealerships, and you had to go up back stairs to this little room and there they had the transmitter and all that stuff there, but she ran this program. And when I started working at People's Independent Church of Christ, it was the first black church to have a radio program in Los Angeles. It was on KFOX, which used to be out of Long Beach. That's where KFOX was, and it doesn't exist anymore, but I mean, it was sponsored by Angeles Funeral Home, that half-hour broadcast that came directly from the People's Independent Church of Christ, every Sunday morning from 10:15 tom 10:45, which meant that people on the way to church could hear that program. This meant the choir sang. A.C. Bilbrew was one of the announcers. An attorney by the name of David Williams, who became a Federal Judge, he was our family lawyer but a brilliant black man who became a federal judge and I think his sons are now judges. Now, of course, he's deceased.

PATTERSON

Did he contribute to the show? Was he part of it? You mentioned him in terms the radio show.

MCNEIL

Oh, yeah, yeah. He was active in the church and he became the announcer for the KFOX program, you see, because he had this brilliant voice and so he was one of the announcers, even though he graduated from USC, one of the few black men to graduate from the law school there. That school was also very prejudiced, because Dr. [Clayton] Russell who was the pastor of the People's Independent Church wasn't allowed to swim in the swimming pool at USC, because he was black. I mean, you see, a lot of this subtle kind of prejudice and of course you know everything was pushed -- all the black people pushed into South Central area. Now, the thing that made it so unique was that you had lower, middle, and upper-middle class blacks living in that proximity, and living well. I mean, they had lovely homes and whatever and ever and ever, but after 1954, when the so-called Covenant Restrictions were outlawed by the Supreme Court, it meant that every state in the Union had to do this, to eradicate this slowly. It was a slow process. Finally, black people were able to move out of the South Central area. There was a little enclave over on West 36th Street, Jefferson and West 36th, West 37th, between Normandie and, oh gosh, between Normandie and Vermont, just that little stretch. There were black people who lived in there and they were the only people who were allowed to go to Polytechnic High School, because other black people went to Jefferson High School, which was over on 41st and Hooper, see, which is now an all-Hispanic school now, I understand. But anyway, the area was really, how should I say, compressed. And as conditions began to improve and more black people were getting to come, that whole thing began to spread, so that you began to go beyond Slauson Avenue, finally all the way to Watts-Willowbrook, and all the way to Compton. It came just like a stream and to the west it became to come as far west as Crenshaw eventually, you see.

PATTERSON

The Bilbrew radio station, when the music was broadcast, was it that the singers were actually in that little studio, singing?

MCNEIL

No. She did recordings and she interviewed and some sang live. It was an interesting conglomerate, and she was -- she had a very deep voice. As a matter of fact, if you didn't know she was a woman, you'd think it was a man, but every now and then there'd be certain nuances. She was just a fantastic woman. She, at Independent Church, would put on the most spectacular events, pageants and -- I put on operas when I was there. I put on the opera Carmen and I did things like that because I was at UCLA learning all this stuff, and as fast as I learned something at UCLA, I would do it here. I did Messiah, one of the big classical works, and opera night I would have people dress to come. I mean, literally, it would fill that church, a thousand seats, and it became a social thing to do.

PATTERSON

Yeah, because this is secular music now in some cases, and yet the church was the scene for it.

MCNEIL

That was the center of the cultural activity in Los Angeles.

PATTERSON

Yeah, yeah. Now, how did she capture some of these musical events for broadcasting? Were they recorded somehow?

MCNEIL

I can't truthfully answer that. I think some were. I wasn't into that aspect of it, but I know that she was a pioneer broadcaster and then the church broadcasts on KFOX became the pioneer church broadcasts, and then Dr. Russell himself was quite a social activist. Like he would say on the radio program, I want everybody here tonight at six o'clock because we're going to discuss why black people can't drive buses, and do you know, that church would be packed. They went down and stormed the transit system demanding that black men be allowed to drive buses in the town. Now, this was in the Fifties, and then I did the boldest thing. In the last Fifties and early Sixties, I did a work called "And They Lynched Him on a Tree" by William Grant Still, and that First Baptist Church -- it required a black choir and a white choir, and we did it in Independent Church in the late Fifties, early Sixties. It's a fantastic work. It has to do with a lynching, with how a mother feels, and then still said something like we cannot have this kind of thing continue. We have got to look at people as being people and being human people. It's a great work. I've done it just recently, a couple years ago. I did it over at El Camino College as a part of the Living Legends program that Hansonia Caldwell. Do you know Dr. Caldwell? Yeah, Domingus Hills. Yeah, she put that Living Legend thing on and I did "And They Lynched Him on a Tree." I didn't have a white choir, so I used a black choir to do it.

PATTERSON

Did Still [William. Grant] call for a white choir?

MCNEIL

I probably could've had a white choir more easily now. Can you imagine in the late Fifties or early Sixties, having something so racially charged as that? Well, the place was packed.

PATTERSON

Now, how did you pull together these white singers?

MCNEIL

I happened to know that John Burke, who was a friend of mine, I think we were UCLA students together or something like that. He was a director of music at the First Baptist Church of Los Angeles. And I called him, I said, "John, I have this -- " See, Still was living right here in Los Angeles. I knew him personally. I knew his wife Verna Avery. I mean, I approached him and I said I want to do this work. Can I borrow your orchestrations? Now, here I was every bit of, what, twenty-eight? Twenty-nine? Something like that, and I needed an orchestra. At that time, I knew a guy who was the concertmaster of the Glendale Symphony. I had the Glendale Symphony, all white, I had the white First Baptist Choir, and I has the Cathedral Choir of the People's Independent Church of Christ, and we did "And They Lynched Him on a Tree," and Still was in the audience. It was a really -- I did a lot of his stuff. I did some of his ballet music, which he has. I'd forgotten the African name, now, for it. But he was so receptive to me. As a matter of fact, I did a William Grant Still weekend, a festival of the music of William Grant Still.

PATTERSON

When did you do that?

MCNEIL

It was the early Sixties, and he had piano music. He had written vocal music, and he had written -- and we culminated with it "And They Lynched Him." We did a Friday, a Saturday afternoon, and a Sunday afternoon.

PATTERSON

That's at People's Independent.

MCNEIL

At People's Independent Church.

PATTERSON

Talk about your relationship with him. How did you meet him and come to interact with him and...

MCNEIL

I don't remember how I met him, but I remember he used to live on Victoria, right off of Pico, before he moved over on Gramercy, and somebody took me there. Somebody knew I was interesting in music and knew I was interested in composition. And he was interested in having his stuff performed. It's very difficult, a black composer. In his day, he said he was not going to scrub floors. He said he was not going to wait tables. He was going to be a composer, come hell or high water.

PATTERSON

And how old was he when you met him, about?

MCNEIL

I imagine Still must have been in his early fifties.

PATTERSON

Early fifties. And you were in your...

MCNEIL

I was in my early thirties or something like that, twenties. Late twenties, early thirties, something like that. And his wife was so responsive. But that was an interracial marriage. She was white and he's black.

PATTERSON

What was his wife's name?

MCNEIL

Verna. V-E-R-N-A, and she always went by her maiden name, Verna Avery. She didn't call herself Verna Still. Eventually she did, I guess. Her daughters still live in Arizona right now, and she's always sending me information. She's still selling her father's material, his music and stuff like that. Don would probably know how to get in touch with their daughter. But anyway, he had a daughter and a son, I believe. I don't want to get them mixed up with Bobby McFerrin, because I know the McFerrins, too, but Robert McFerrin, who was a fabulous bass/baritone in the Metropolitan Opera, the first black bass/baritone. And his wife, Bobby's mother -- Bobby's mother and I have always been very close. She just retired from Fullerton, where she taught voice for a long time. But I knew Bobby as a little kid, and I met him once recently. Of course, that didn't go any farther than it did, I knew you when kind of thing, you know what I mean. But yeah, that was my relationship with William Grant Still.

PATTERSON

So you met him and he wanted some of his things performed, and...

MCNEIL

Well, he told me this of his stuff and I said, look, you bring me all your stuff. Let me see your piano music. Let me see your vocal music. Well, the church choir was very talented. I had some great sopranos in there. I had a couple of pianists in there and -- one of the pieces was called the Seven Traceries. It's a suite of seven different pieces. We'd perform that. It was a William Grant Still festival, of his music, culminating with "And They Lynched Him."

PATTERSON

You mentioned you used the Glendale Ensemble of musicians, out of Glendale you used an ensemble of musicians that played with you.

MCNEIL

I used an ensemble from the Glendale Symphony.

PATTERSON

And what was their experience like, working with this music in a black environment?

MCNEIL

You know what? It was all so wonderfully received, that you didn't feel any -- it was just music, and people just accepted it.

PATTERSON

Were there any whites in the audience as well?

MCNEIL

Yes. I think relatives of the people who sang in the First Baptist Choir were there, yeah. (laughter)

PATTERSON

So here we're in a racist city, or there's a lot of still this subtle racism going on. But in this setting...

MCNEIL

In this setting we did "And They Lynched Him on a Tree," with a black choir and a white choir.

PATTERSON

That's wonderful.

MCNEIL

But you know, when you're young, you're daring, and then the minister of the church was really after me. "Al, come on, you can do it, get out there." OK, and he pushed it hard on the radio and everything, you've got to come out tonight, blah blah blah. That was the support he gave me. He let me do anything I wanted to do in that church. As a matter of fact, I give that church credit for letting me hone into becoming a well-balanced, experienced choral director, because I did everything there. I did the "Elijah" of Mendelssohn. I did all of "The Messiah" on two different Sundays. I did all the great oratorio, and did it for the community, but for myself I'm learning as I'm going along. I did Nathaniel Dette's "The Ordering of Moses," which is a very difficult piece, and I had a Dette Festival where we did two days of the music of Nathaniel Dette. His piano music is exquisite, and he has vocal music and choral music, and I was able to find all kinds of little gems to perform. That's how I was able to develop eventually out of their -- what was first of all called the McNeil singers and then eventually became the Jubilee Singers.

PATTERSON

So, you're a UCLA student doing this in the church. As a UCLA student, you had this other outlet for music.

MCNEIL

And I'm learning as I'm going along, you know.

PATTERSON

So you were becoming the professional, just in sort of a natural organic way, growing from a student and going through university.

MCNEIL

Thank god the church was the kind of church -- I should say the leadership, Dr. Russell. Just as he allowed me to be a revolutionary with music, he was a revolutionary politically, because he started some markets here. He opened a home for delinquent boys. And of course, a lot of unfortunate things happened that helped him on his demise and being disgraced, because of so-called suggestions of embezzlement and a whole lot of things like that. But what he did when he was there was absolutely unbelievable, because he had that drive. He had that ability to -- he was charismatic to draw people. That church would be packed! You had to have two services on Sunday, nine o'clock and 11 o'clock. And the church seated thousands. You had a couple of thousand people there, and overflowed with speakers and all that kind of thing, you know.

PATTERSON

Was his church his whole -- took up his whole time? What was his family life like?

MCNEIL

Well, he was married. He had one son, who is a minister now. And let me say this. It was the social church to belong to. It was the reflection of Abyssinia Baptist Church in New York, where Adam Clayton Powell was the minister. They were close, personal friends. It was that kind -- show business people came to the People's Church. You had -- I remember one Sunday I looked up and who did I see but -- one of my favorites -- Ella Fitzgerald for example, would come. The movie stars would come. As a matter of fact, when a picture called The Imitation of Life was made, they used that church. And they used Dr. N. P. Greggs as the minister in that film. Remember, she was passing for white, because she was very fair. I'll never forget, her name in the movie was Peola. The kids would call me that sometimes. You're Peola, come on, you're blah blah blah, something like that. I think that was what they called her, something like that, I remember. But anyway, that church situation was unbelievable. And there were concerts in there. I remember hearing the famous Hall Johnson Choir in the Independent Church. I remember the early gospel singers, like Roberta Martin and Sally Martin and Rosetta Thorpe. They were all in that church. They'd all come to Los Angeles, that church, and had hit that radio broadcast. There'd be guest artists on there, you know. So that was the kind of church it was.

PATTERSON

And you were in there as really a driving...

MCNEIL

I'm just a kid! I mean, I'm just learning. I'm awed by the whole experience. I had a choir of, let's see, about seventy.

PATTERSON

And New Hope was next door.

MCNEIL

New Hope was next door. I started at New Hope, and got -- and then the woman A.C. Bilbrew was the director of the choir at the Independent Church, and Reverend Russell called me. I was directing at that time the high school choir at the Independent Church and directing the senior choir at New Hope. And Dr. Russell called me up one day and he said, "A.C. is going to go back to Philadelphia for a year. I want you to come and direct the senior choir." It was called the senior choir. I said, "I don't know what to do with those people." He said, oh, come on. You can do it. The first Sunday, those people wouldn't sing for me. If it hadn't have been for my sixty kids, my sixty voices in my high school choir, they would have had no choir. So I -- well, I said, "What am I going to do?" He said, "Well, who's the choir director?" I said, "I am." He said, "You figure it out." So as fast as I -- and they had a very nice music library at that time, lovely things to do. And they believed in anthems. They always had some, serious classical material. Of course, the hymns and spirituals and whatever, that was all made up of the repertory. But then I began to project stuff from UCLA. I said we're going to do "Messiah" here, and all that kind of stuff. They had never done the "Messiah." They'd done the Hallelujah Chorus and they'd done some excerpts, but not the entire work, you know what I mean. But the entire work -- to do it, it would take about two hours, and I knew that was a lot of music to learn. But we got in there and learned it, and we did the whole thing for so long that we had part one on one Sunday and part two on the next Sunday. That type of thing. So -- but it was because I had support from him. So the first Sunday we perform, OK, I use my high school choir. The second Sunday, I said you guys have got to come out, you've got to come out. A few of the old-timers began to say "we want to sing too!" And then it eventually got to the point where there was no room up there. You had to make a decision. Are you going to keep the kids out and have the choir come back? So they said they didn't want to sing with a kid, that he didn't know anything about music, and blah blah blah blah. That was the kind of rumor thing, but let me tell you, thanks to UCLA and my own skills, and my inquisitiveness and my determination, and the support of Dr. Russell, we made it work. And eventually, all the people came back, and it was like -- and I was there at like -- how long was I there? About, oh, maybe 18 years? Maybe 18 or 20, something like that.

PATTERSON

And you just had the courage -- well, it sounds like your mom had instilled...

MCNEIL

Pardon me?

PATTERSON

It sounded like you grew up with the confidence because your mother was always supportive, too, because to be such a young man and have that kind of confidence...

MCNEIL

She pushed all the time. And you know, even though she was not my birth mother, but she had a vision for my success. And she was going to make sure it happened. I remember some sunny afternoons there, "You've got to go play for this tea," I don't want to do that. "Come on, you've got to play for this -- these people are going to be able to help you." Blah, blah, blah, and she belonged to everything in town. She was very much into fraternal life like that. Sisters of -- what did they call it, the Household of Ruth, the Elks, the Knights and Daughters of Tabor. I mean, you name it, she was in it. She was passed this and passed that and when she died the church was filled with all these people from these different organizations that she was a member of.

PATTERSON

Did you have time to have a social life as a young man? I mean, it sounds like you were so busy!

MCNEIL

(laughter) Well, I was going to school. Of course, I got married once and divorced.

PATTERSON

Oh, when you were very young? While you were at UCLA?

MCNEIL

No, just after I graduated.

PATTERSON

Really? So you fell for somebody?

MCNEIL

Yeah, it was another little choir director, and it didn't last of course, because by that time I was getting very ambitious. I didn't have any money so I had to bring her home to my house and she had to live with family, and it got -- you can't have two women in -- well, anyway. (laughter) Then I got a chance to go teach back at Lincoln University in Missouri and she wanted to go with me, and I said, "I'm only going to be making $200 a week, or something -- " Not a week! Got, that would be too much. A month or something like that. I said I can't afford it. She said, "Well, I'm going to go home." So she lived about four blocks away. She went home to her mother. So when I came back, we didn't have anything, so it was a simple agreement to disagree. So we were married two years. Thank goodness we didn't have any children, so that took care of that.

PATTERSON

Well, it was an experience, another experience.

MCNEIL

Well, it was an experience. I told you, I was a mama's boy, so I didn't know what was going on. But I found out.

PATTERSON

So when you went away to teach, this first teaching post.

MCNEIL

Yes, well, I went to Missouri. And that was a trip! I had never been on any length of time a black college campus. And Jefferson City, Missouri -- the Lincoln University was an all-black school, founded right after the Emancipation, 1865. Was founded 1867, and the man that hired me, Dr. O. Henderson Fuller, a Ph.D. from Iowa, used to be my wife's teacher down at Prairieview University in Texas, when I said that -- well, we weren't married, so she didn't know anything about that, but Dr. Fuller saw me do a demonstration at a conference in Detroit, and he said "I want you to teach summer school at my school." I said, "I've never taught university! I have no idea about this." He said, come on. We want young men. We might be able to keep you there. I said, I don't know about staying in Missouri, but anyway, I went back on a train of course, and I was so impressed. I had the summer choir, then I taught a class in Music Education, music education methods for elementary, junior, and senior high, but primarily for elementary and junior high. That was my field anyway. But they didn't have any books in the library that I wanted! So I call my sister up and she had to get all the books together and put them in a box, ship them back to Jefferson City.

PATTERSON

Which sister was this that you called?

MCNEIL

Dorothy Marie, she was my young sister.

PATTERSON

What year was this, that this happened?

MCNEIL

Fifties?

PATTERSON

Was in the Fifties, yeah? You had already graduated UCLA and had a marriage, a short-lived marriage, and then went off...

MCNEIL

And I was teaching elementary music in the L.A. Unified School District.

PATTERSON

OK, so you already started at Hooper then.

MCNEIL

Yeah, at Hooper, yeah. They wouldn't hire me at a secondary school, because they didn't have a school to send me to, so I had this experience back there, [at Lincoln University, Jefferson City, Missouri] which was wonderful. As a matter of fact, I did it two summers in a row. But anyway, eight week summer school and I had a ball, and I had these kids that -- they were from all over the Midwest, and to see black people in academic robes at their summer graduation and the pomp and circumstance of it, and to see them doing things. I remember Dr. Scruggs who was the president, and Dr. Fuller, and it was all very influential. I felt proud of what I was seeing, you know. I had a lot of adults coming to summer school who were enrolled in my music ed methods classes, and I was able to teach them what I had been taught at UCLA, you know, and at that time we didn't have computers and we -- we had the old-fashioned purple ditto reproductive mechanism and you couldn't reproduce books because we didn't have that. We had mimeographs that you'd get black all over your hands and everything. It was really horrible. But anyway, I managed to have things reproduced and they used my books in the library and I'd send for others. And I felt that although it was a great experience for me, I'll never forgot going down on High Street. Jefferson City is a very beautiful place. It's in the mountains and the hills. The Missouri River runs right there, and the capital is there in that city. Typical domed capital building. And I remember one night, I was kind of by myself. I was lonely. That year I was staying in a dorm room, and I walked down to the Greyhound Bus station, and I got -- I went in there and got a malt and everything. So the next morning in class, I said, you know what, I went to the movies last night on High Street. They said, "What movie did you go to?" I said, you know, the one by the Greyhound Bus Station. "You went in there?" I said, "Yeah." "We're not supposed to go in there!" I said, "What do you mean I'm not supposed to go in there?" "Black people can't go in there!" I said, "You're kidding me!" Then I thought -- I said, "Well, I sure was in there!" (laughter) I was telling him that I went to a good movie. And the kids -- that was telling me that there was segregation right there. You couldn't go in a movie house. I thought, that was a real thing for me. And then I began to realize that this school, which was what they call a "land-grant college," because that meant the government had given X amount of dollars for schools for minorities, for blacks primarily, by giving them the land and then the school was built there. They call them land-grant colleges, federally supported. As a matter of fact, while I was there, they opened up the -- well, they wouldn't let blacks go to the law school at Columbia, Missouri, where the University of Missouri is, the main campus. But the Supreme Court said you had to provide equal but separate education. So they built one building for the law school where they had only one student in that building completely furnished with books and everything on the campus of Lincoln University, to keep them from going to the law school at Columbia, Missouri. Can you imagine that? It was an eye-opener. You talk about -- you begin to really sensitize to what it meant to be deprived and enslaved and kept from getting a good public education. That's a public school, sponsored and governed by the state of Missouri, you know.

PATTERSON

So as a young man, you were awakening to what racism really was in this country.

MCNEIL

Oh, yeah, it really hit me. And I became absolutely -- well, my mom had done a very good job if taking me to New Orleans and showing me all kinds of things down there, but to experience it yourself -- so I was afraid to go in that theatre the next time. Could have gone the second time, I guess, or third, but you feel -- ooh.

PATTERSON

Yeah. And mostly because of just how you felt in your heart, not so much how you looked, but how you identified inside.

MCNEIL

Yeah. Well, I identified with this whole thing, and I thought, geez -- like you said, when I found out that I was Puerto Rican, Spanish or whatever, it made no difference, because the impressions, the emotional -- initial emotional impressions were there. And I know that's as much discrimination against Latino people and Puerto Ricans, as you can imagine. New York, they hate Puerto Ricans. Well, I say "they," meaning things have changed a lot, but there's always this feeling that you're Puerto Rican so you're on the low rung of the ladder, the social ladder, even though Chita Rivera, you can name off a lot of successful Puerto Rican actors and singers and composers. But my identity has always been strongly African-American, because I was brought up in that environment completely and utterly. And so the only thing that you often question in your mind is, but what would have happened if I had been brought up by my birth parents? If, you know? But thank God, I had -- my mother is the only mother I know -- to guide me and to help create a life for me. You always have a feeling of rejection when you think about -- did your mother just give you away, stuff like that. Why, were the circumstances so horrible that she couldn't keep me? Then again, you look at divine providence, if you have any kind of sense of religious belief, and it was in the plan that this was the way it's going to be, and hopefully I brought joy to my mother, and she was able -- even though she didn't tell me that I was adopted, I knew nothing about that. And I had to go through the traumatizing event of trying to discover, who am I? What am I? What do I identify with? What do you do? It becomes -- I can imagine how Tiger Woods felt, when some of the reporters, Ebony Magazine and some of the black reporters were saying, "Well, you're black," he says, "Well, you know what, I don't like to come out and say that, because what do you I do with my mother? She's from Thailand. Do I reject her side of my identity? What do I do?" And my argument is that we accept both sides. I look at it, and I say -- I made it my business to learn to speak Spanish. I made it my business to find out about the history of Puerto Rico so I have some idea of that country. As a matter of fact, I used to teach a class at SC where I taught about the music of Latinos, particularly Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, and African-Americans and Africa. Those are my four subjects that I taught at SC. And I have a textbook and everything that I kind of put together myself, and through my publishers, because I used to write junior high textbooks for Silver Burdett Ginn company. That was another very interesting thing to happen to me when I was at Dorsey High School. When I was at Dorsey High School, one day I got a call on the telephone.

PATTERSON

You were teaching there?

MCNEIL

Yeah. I was head of the choral department at Dorsey for seven years. We had the most fantastic music department you ever want to have.

PATTERSON

When was this?

MCNEIL

All during the '60s and early '70s. Do you know Michael Wright? He says he knows you.

PATTERSON

Michael Wright. I don't know --

MCNEIL

Anyway, you probably don't. Anyway, because I was talking to him last night, Michael was in my choir at Dorsey. As a matter of fact, I have several of my singers who sing with me who have been with me since I was in high school, taught high school. I had 125 singers in my concert choir at Dorsey, and a girls' choir of 60, and a mixed chorus of 90. I had that many kids in my choral program at Dorsey. We had four full-time music teachers. Band, orchestra, instrumental, full-time music history, full-time piano. And I taught the theory classes and the choral program. So it was a fantastic program, and that led me to be nominated to teach at the University of California.

PATTERSON

You left Hooper [Street School] to go to Dorsey?

MCNEIL

No. That's a long transition. From Hooper, I went to an all-Hispanic school called Hammel [Street School], on the East Side, where I was able to cultivate my Spanish, and I did a lot of songs in Spanish; I did one of the first performances of a Christmas pageant called Las Posadas; I did that at Hammel Street School. Hammel Street School was one of those mega-elementary schools, where you had so many Latinos over there, because you could look out of one hill -- very hilly over there -- one hill is one school, you look at another hill, another school, look at another -- it was that concentrated. I think we had 1,800 kids at Hammel Street School. It became what they call -- you had a special music program, a special language program, a special art program, and a special P.E. program, all taught by specialists like me, I was in music. We had an art person who had -- and so on. And, oh, that was a great experience.

PATTERSON

So when did you leave Hooper and go to Hammel?

MCNEIL

Because my superintendent was going to lose that area. Her name was Dorothy Harson at the time, and she said, "Do you want to go with me to the East Side? And I said, "Well, I've been at Hooper for two years; I want to move on, I want to do something else." I was going to become an elementary school principal, because I wasn't getting into secondary music. But anyway, I went over to Hammel. Fabulous school.

PATTERSON

Was that like '50 -- mid-'50s?

MCNEIL

That was like '52 or '3, something like that. And so while I was at Hammel, the superintendent called me up and asked me to take the secondary music exam again. I said, "Why? So you can send me to another black school?" He said, "Well, please give it some serious thought. We'd like you to go to a school." I said, "Where?" They said, "Carver Junior High." And I said -- well, at that time, Carver had four full-time music teachers. I said, "I'll go on the one condition that if I don't like it, I'm coming back to the elementary division." I went over to Carver, mid-year, and here were these kids three times the sizes of mine. I tell you, I walked into this boys' homeroom, seventh-grade homeroom, and they said -- ninth-grade homeroom, I'm sorry -- but, "Where's Mr. Rearden?" I remember that name, because he had been one of eight substitutes. I said, "Well, he's not here. I'm here. I'm the teacher." And I said, "Sit down." You know, here you have boys' homerooms, girls' homerooms; it was sexually separated. And I thought, "What in the world is this?" So I knew I was going to have a boys' glee club, 50 boys. But the first three periods were what they called seventh grade general music. They were little babies, kids who just came out of the sixth grade. Well, they're like clay in my hands; they love me. I can play the piano, and I got -- finally when the boys' glee club came around, they want to know -- I said, "I'll tell you who I am. Sit down." And I used a rule or something and slammed it down, and I stayed playing the piano. And I said, "Everybody's going to be tested here." "You play the piano?" I said, "Haven't you ever had teachers that played?" "No." I said, "Do you know one thing?" I tested every one of those boys; I appointed the tallest and the biggest and the blackest boy I could find to be my assistant, and he was like a platoon sergeant. He helped keep those kids in line with me. And I told my principal -- his name was Dr. Purdy; he became my superintendent -- I said, "Don't come and visit me, please. Give me at least six weeks to bring this together." And I tell you, at the end of six weeks, I had a bunch of kids who could really sing. It was the most satisfying, I'm very proud. So then I went down and I told him, I said, "You know what? I don't see any reason why, with the boys I have, and one of the girls' glee clubs, that I can't form a choir." So they said OK. I formed a choir, and we had 90 kids in the choir, boys and girls. And those kids really knew how to sing. When the supervisors of music came out to visit me, they were stunned, because there was just things happening. So they invited us to sing for the Board of Education, we were that good. And I was able to talk to black kids just straightforward. I want that hair combed and straightened, and I want the shirts on and ties and pants, and I don't want you coming down here looking like you're right out of you know what. To me, I wanted to instill pride and discipline. In those days -- I look at it now, we used to have to ride car patrols after school, because kids would fight sometimes. I remember I was on the corner of Central Avenue and Vernon, separating two kids who were fighting. Right now if that would happen, we'd be murdered right there on the spot. That's the difference between now and then. But then I got that wonderful opportunity to go beyond that. When I left that school, one of the vice-principals had become vice-principal of Sun Valley Junior High School in the San Fernando Valley. Now, I left because the ninth grade was being sent to Jefferson, and there was only two grades left at Carver, seventh and eighth, because they were rebuilding the school. And I didn't want to be there. If Dr. Purdy could take all the good white teachers out of there and leave me there, I wasn't going to stay there. I served my time there; I wanted to go on, someplace else. And so I'll never forget the woman whose name was Elda McCann; she called me up one December, Christmas vacation: "Would you like to come up to Sun Valley?" I said, "I don't even know where it is." So I drove out there, big school, something like 2,700 kids in that school; it was on double session.

PATTERSON

Were they white students?

MCNEIL

Double session, they had a morning session and an afternoon session, because you see, the Valley was growing so rapidly --

PATTERSON

What was the ethnic makeup of the --

MCNEIL

Oh, all white. Maybe a sprinkling of Hispanic, but mostly all white. Completely lily-white school. So I went, and I stayed there -- it became a training school for what is now Northridge. And student teachers would come to Sun Valley and work under me and learn the ropes. Then this very same supervisor who told me I couldn't have a job called me up one day, and he said, "I really need you to do a favor for me." I said, "Well, any kind of favor has to go through the principal; I just can't do it because --" He said, "I need you at Audubon Junior High." Audubon Junior High was a training school for USC. And his ex-wife had attempted suicide, and there were three students over there who had to have a master teacher in order to complete that regiment, and he knew I had those qualifications.

PATTERSON

So his ex-wife was the teacher at Audubon then.

MCNEIL

Pardon me?

PATTERSON

She was associated with Audubon, his ex-wife that had committed suicide?

MCNEIL

Yeah, yeah, she was head of the choral program.

PATTERSON

She was head --

MCNEIL

So my superintendent, my principal had told the supervisor, "Listen, you can have him for one academic year and that's it; he's coming back here." So I went over to Audubon; there were two black teachers on the faculty, the school was all white. That's Crenshaw -- all white, I tell you. Phyllis Holloway and I were the two so-called black teachers on that faculty. It was like, that school is ranked number one in LA Unified School District. High academic achievement, as high as you can think of. That Crenshaw school was absolutely fantastic. And I had a bunch of kids that were so talented, and there were four of us on the music faculty. And I eventually became chairman; we began to put on plays and shows, we did everything. I was there seven years. And that's when I went to Dorsey.

PATTERSON

And then when you went to Dorsey, you were back with a --

MCNEIL

What happened? (laughter)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE

She has to change tapes.

MCNEIL

Oh, my goodness.

UNIDENTIFED FEMALE

How are we with time?

MCNEIL

Well, we're doing all right. I thought we could stop about 8:30, that would be great. It's only 7:45 . But you make me think -- I feel like I'm on a psychologist's couch, because you bring -- one thing leads to the next thing that -- I've forgotten half the people's names and stuff like that, and all of the sudden --

PATTERSON

You're remembering them now.

MCNEIL

-- it begins to come back to me.

PATTERSON

Yeah. I guess when you put yourself back in the scene, you see the people's faces. So you were at Audubon for seven years, and then you went over to Dorsey --

MCNEIL

I'm sorry, six years at Audubon. And another six years -- not quite six years, let me see. 1959, '60 -- yeah, 1961 I left Audubon, and I went to Dorsey and stayed at Dorsey 'til '69.

PATTERSON

Ah, so now you're back with a black student body.

MCNEIL

No.

PATTERSON

Oh, really? What was the make-up of Dorsey?

MCNEIL

No. No, no, no. You still had a lot of white people living in the Baldwin Hills; a lot of white people living in what they call the jungle. And you had this horrible real estate thing that was trying to get white people to sell to blacks at enormous prices. It was ridiculous. And you had faculty members telling the white kids, "You don't want to be in this school because you're going to have a lot of black kids coming here, and they're going to lower the standards of this school." And my kids, my white kids would come to me almost in tears. "Mr. McNeil, we don't want to leave, but my mother's transferring me to Hamilton," and another one says, "I'm going to go to Uni," and that type. But it was an awful thing.

PATTERSON

How did you feel about the whole transition?

MCNEIL

I was just angry about the whole -- well, I couldn't afford to be angry; I was too busy doing what I'm doing. But I lived in the Baldwin Hills, so I used to have -- some of my students would baby-sit my little boy, white kids. And they would come to me and they would almost be in tears. I heard one or two of them -- well, two of my little kids said, "We told our mother that we're in the 11th grade; we're going to finish the 12th grade here at Dorsey. We're not going to leave for one year." Because they were having a good time; we had a marvelous music program. Absolutely fantastic.

PATTERSON

Did these kids have a sense of what it would be like to go to school with black children?

MCNEIL

I'm sure they were developing -- they were developing wonderful relationships with each other.

PATTERSON

So they had black students?

MCNEIL

Yes, they had black students at Dorsey. They were not in the majority, but when I went to Dorsey -- well, when I left Audubon, it was beginning to be in transition. When I got to Dorsey, I think my choir was like 60/40, 40% white, 60% black -- and other, and Japanese; had a lot of Japanese that were living in what they call Crenshaw Manor. And on the other side of Crenshaw Boulevard, right by the post office and all that area, it was Japanese. And so we had Japanese students there, a lot of great ones. One of my choir presidents was [Satsunaga], she was a wonderful young lady. And you had a nice enclave of Japanese kids. They eventually -- their families moved to Gardenia eventually; that was the next stop for them. But the school was a wonderful representation of mixed ethnicities, but you could see what was happening. Some of the middle class blacks were moving up on the hill. They were paying these enormous, out-of-reach prices to live up there. And I was one of them, because I wanted to live up there. I used to live around the corner from Dorsey, right on Chesapeake, and used to drive to the Valley. And I used to say, "Wow, driving to the Valley when there's a high school around the corner," and I couldn't be in that high school, you see. But anyway, we had a great time at Dorsey. As a matter of fact, I took two busloads of kids to Las Vegas, and we did what they call -- some friends of mine were having a conference, not -- I didn't want to call it integration, I forgot the -- inter-faith or whatever it was, where kids were going to stay in white homes, and the black kids staying in white homes, and white kids staying in black homes, and all that kind -- it was wonderful, a wonderful situation.

PATTERSON

That was based on the school or based on the church?

MCNEIL

No, this was schoolkids.

PATTERSON

A school activity.

MCNEIL

And it was a social organization up there that was sponsoring this, and -- who are friends of mine, that I knew who lived in Vegas -- it was a wonderful experience for those kids. As a matter of fact, on the bus, they were making some of the white kids honorary Negroes. I mean, they had a little sign, and I used to just laugh; I said, "You guys are crazy doing this." One of my girls now that I keep in touch with a lot, name is -- she used to be -- used to baby-sit my son and her family. And I still keep in touch with her and her family. Wonderful kids. But no, there was a wonderful esprit de corps there, and respect for blacks and respect for each other. In my choir, I had Hispanics, I had -- my choir eventually became more black than anything. But I remember once, I took the Dorsey choir to Huntington Beach to a choral festival of ten high school choirs, and we were 125 kids; I knew we were going to be very good. But the guy called me and he says, "McNeil, when you come out here I don't want you to sing any spirituals. Just sing straight literature." It made me so mad. But I was able to tell my kids; I said, "You know what? I had not planned to do a spiritual; I was going to do the classical things that we want to be evaluated for. But I'm going to do a spiritual, and then you all shut up and let me do the spiritual, because we're going to do it anyway." And a girlfriend of mine who is now deceased, Jane Hardister, used to be at El Camino College, Jane was one of the adjudicators. So I went back to Jane, and I said, "Jane, we're down for three numbers, but there's going to be a fourth one. And, Jane, it's going to be a spiritual." "Go on, Al. Go ahead and do it." I said, "You know that so-and-so over here told me that when we come out here, don't sing any spirituals." Well, we opened up with [Orlande] de Lassus -- oh, I forgot the name of the song. Anyway, it was an echo song by de Lassus. It's a 17th century piece. A big choir with an echo choir someplace, generally behind the choir so you don't see them, but you hear them echo. And of course, we tore the place down, because when we walked on campus, nobody spoke to us, because you're predominantly black. Here we walked onto campus, they were cold, and you got hostile glances, and I'd tell the kids, don't pay any attention to that, because when you get through, they're going to be kissing the hem of your garment, because you are going to be so good. So I did a spiritual called "Mary Had a Baby," by William Dawson. It was fantastic. They were screaming and yelling. And this guy came up to me all red-faced, and I said, "Well, I hope you enjoyed my spiritual," because I really meant to dig him. When we walked off, they were telling them, "Hey, you guys were so good!" We got on the -- we had two buses; I had one of the faculty members ride a bus, and I said, "Now, what did you guys think?" "Oh, we were so happy!" They didn't know I was leaving. That was in November; I left in December. And I tell you, I was so choked up, I couldn't tell them. They were so wonderful. And they sang so well, and they were so enthusiastic. So on the last day of class -- I knew I was supposed to go to Davis in January, and I kept holding off from Davis, holding off, I didn't want to go -- well, I wanted to go and I didn't want to go, all that kind of thing. And so that last day, we were invited to the Board of Education, and so I took the singers down there; we sang Christmas carols for them, and blah blah blah. And the Board gave me a citation for my services in the Board. That's when they found out that I was not going to be there. And it was a mess. I felt -- my heart was broken. But I knew that I had to go on; this is something you have to do. And my first three months, I would get calls, all kinds of calls, from down here. My choir president would call me, Gary Murphy. And then another one would call, "Mr. McNeil, when are you coming back?" I said, "You guys, come on." I said -- I was still living in the Baldwin Hills then -- I said, "You know, I'm not too far away; I'll come down and visit you guys sometime." But it would be the wrong thing to do; you can't come -- it was very hard on the guy who took my place; his name was Gary -- I can't think of Gary's last night. Anyway, he was a wonderful guy, wonderful musician, but they gave him hell. I mean, they gave Gary -- I felt so -- I said, "Gary, if you can last out this semester, a whole bunch of them will be graduated, and you'll have a brand-new group of kids to work with." But leaving in the mid-year like that, they don't have that summer transition to get over it. But that was a wonderful experience, wonderful for me. Wonderful experience.

PATTERSON

Yes. A teacher can make such an impression on a student and change their life. And I'm sure --

MCNEIL

Well, it's an awesome responsibility, but you know, I tell everybody what a blessing it is that you can bring somebody joy. And particularly young minds, and I just -- I had a note that I'm going to show you before I leave -- I just got a note from a guy that was in my Audubon class; he has a PhD. You got -- well, later. You got to read this note. I got a couple of emails from some people who had read about my being downtown at the Walt Disney Hall and wanted me to call them. I don't even remember the names. It was one of those things --

PATTERSON

You don't forget the teachers that touch your life.

MCNEIL

You don't know -- and through music, you have a vehicle. Drama teachers have the same experience. Drama teachers have the same experience, and art teachers that I have known, where you're at close proximity, not necessarily physically, but emotionally.

PATTERSON

Well, don't you think that for that reason, the arts are so important in the schools, because of the relationships --?

MCNEIL

Well, it makes me sick to see the conditions, particularly in LA Unified School District. We used to have the finest music ed program in just about every high school. It was competitive to go to these festivals where different high schools would vie for honors just like a football team. That festival, that idea of competition, and I used to tell the kids that it's not a competition, but it is, because they're listening, and you want to do your job as perfect as you can. And I would tell me kids; I'd say, "You know what we're going to do? We're going to listen to other people, because we're going to learn a lot from other choirs. But you're going to go there to represent yourself, and represent your community, represent your family, represent who you really are. And that representation is something that you don't have to write about, you just perform it. And the admiration that comes from your peers, they will hear this, they will see this, and they will identify with you. They don't care what color you are, but they will identify with the fact that you're outstanding, and they know when you're outstanding, and they know when you're mediocre and nothing." I've heard some of the local LA Unified School District choirs; it made me weep. Horrible. Just horrible. And I don't know what the solution is. I went to Detroit less than a year ago, the National Association had a spiritual competition of choirs. Both university, community college, and high school. I heard some of the best high school choirs in Detroit, would make LA look sick. Those high school choirs in Detroit, I don't know what it is that they've got, but those kids had the pride, they had the musicality; they weren't screaming and yelling, they weren't doing a whole bunch of gospel music. They were singing compositions by black computers; they were singing spirituals, traditional ones, and contemporary ones. I heard Wilberforce University Choir, which is a predominantly all-black school in Ohio. As a matter of fact, if you haven't seen the film Amazing Grace, you've got to see the film; it's all about William Wilberforce. But anyway, I heard that Wilberforce choir, and it was a fantastic collegiate choir, predominantly black. But the presentation was primarily of high school and university. Wayne State University is in Detroit; it's a mixed choir. Their conductor is fabulous; a wonderful composer, arranger. Augustus Hill, his name is. Really -- I was so impressed with him. As a matter of fact, I did one of his pieces at the Walt Disney Hall, he was that good.

PATTERSON

You mentioned Gospel, and sort of with a feeling behind that as -- talk a little bit about how you would compare the genres, and the way that those genres are taught and experienced, say the spirituals, the classical music, as it is -- classical choral music, and then Gospel?

MCNEIL

Well, I think one of my major concerns is, when you look at the spiritual, you're actually looking at the root, the classic root, of African-American choral music. That's where it starts. It starts with the unison spiritual, that means one part, or two and three parts, as the jubilee singers did it in 1871 when they went to the Court of Saint James and sang for Queen Victoria. That was the first time that historians and journalists found out that there was a music called Negro Spiritual. The world found out, because the Queen found out, and history began to say, look at this music that seems to come from formally enslaved people. I'm not talking about the real spiritual that was moaning and shouting and came out of pain and travail; I'm talking about a concert version of that, which means it's put into a classic format, four parts generally. I look at the spiritual as being basic to any kind of spiritual choral singing. If you can sing a spiritual well done, good tone quality, not screaming and yelling, but thinking in terms of what the music does and how it moves from one series of chords to the next. I would say first of all, I have nothing against Gospel music. Nothing. I think it has a wonderful place in our contemporary society. My concern is -- and of course to define Gospel music is extremely important -- to me, it's a synthesis of jazz and blues and accompanied music. You see, accompanied music is something that was not done with the spirituals. Spiritual is a capella, because there was no instruments to accompany it, only the human voice; the feet and the hands, if you wanted to keep a sense of rhythm. Black people were able to hear hymns being sung by whites in their segregated worship experiences. They, in the earliest days, as you can check, the early AME hymnal, which is something like 1819, 1820, Richard Allen in Philadelphia founded the AME Church, he had a hymnal; it had no notes in it, it was just words, and those words were from classic hymn tunes that had gone on before, that had come from Europe, basically. But they (slaves and freedmen)loved those hymn tunes; they loved words like "Majestic sweetness sits in throne." Those are not black words; those are white words. Or even "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound," -- those are white words; those are not black words. Those are not black words. But black people were creative enough to take those words and shape them into what they wanted it to sound like, not straight up and down harmonics and chordal structures. That was the early beginning of what we call the arranged spiritual, because it began to fall into almost a hymn-like tune. The text began to change, because black people began to sing, "Nobody knows the trouble I see," it's personalized. Or, "Fix me, Jesus," or -- anyway, there are so many spiritual texts I can think of. "Praise Him in the morning," for example, it's just to use another expression. So if you look at the spiritual, a capella, no instruments, harmonized simply, originally, and now today, still a spiritual harmonized, but with more exotic harmonies and more unique harmony progressions, and more unique forms. So that's how the spiritual has evolved from its earliest beginnings to its contemporary form. What happened with Gospel? Very interestingly, in the '30s of the 20th century, when the migration started north, you began to have black people going to the large urban centers, particularly Chicago and Kansas City, Detroit, Cleveland, Washington, DC, and New York. At the terminus of some of those rail lines, like the L&N, Louisville and Nashville, they came up from New Orleans all the way through the South, through Cairo, Illinois into Chicago. But those people came to work in the factories, and so on and so forth. World War I, and then after World War I, and then World War II. But prior to World War II, you began to have kind of an interesting music. There was an invention of an instrument called a Hammond Electric Organ; it was a very flexible organ, not like the staid classical pipe organ. But the storefront churches began to evolve in Chicago, on the South Side. Storefront -- people used to call them Holiness Churches, people call the people in those churches Holy Rollers. There was a lot of freedom in those churches. They were speaking in tongues; there was all kinds of use of tambourines. Eventually using instruments, finally bringing in the Hammond Electric Organ, these little storefront churches, where they could really swing. And there evolved out of that a music which we call Gospel music, because the texts were from old Gospel hymns, originally. They began originalized later, but in Chicago alone, you had people like Sally Martin and Roberta Martin, you name it. And you had churches like that, First Church of the Deliverance, which was a quasi-Holiness Church. The man who used to be the minister, his name was Clarence Cobb; he used to have a radio broadcast. He had -- in Chicago, and he had this big choir that was a Gospel-like choir, improvisation, everything taught by rote, original ideas and tunes, using blues-theme ideas. Anything went, drums, tambourines. That was all part of the Holiness thing. But black people were conservative; they didn't particularly like that at the beginning. The mainline churches, like the Methodists and the Baptists, and those mainline churches, rejected classical Gospel music, because it was so worldly. Mahalia Jackson, if you've ever heard her sing -- she was at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Chicago -- and Thomas Dorsey, they introduced those kind of hymns that had a special message to them, had different words. They took the songs like "His Eye is on the Sparrow," and changed the simplicity of it, gave it a little twist and gave it a beat. So now, you're looking at Gospel music, they even have almost full-sized symphony orchestras, strings and drums and everything else, and there's a lot of screaming and yelling that goes on with the music. Now, I'm anti that because I feel it destroys the voice, looking at it from a pedagogical standpoint. If you're going to sing this music, fine -- I've had a couple of my singers lose their vocal ability, because they have pushed themselves to sing so hard and so forcefully that they now have nodules, they have all kinds of things.

PATTERSON

So you're concern is not with the genre itself, as it's expressed, but with the technique, the vocal technique that came come with it if it isn't properly --

MCNEIL

That's right. I think that you can sing Gospel music and still protect yourself, vocally, if you know how to do that. But you know, it's a sensational music. Everybody talks about Gospel today; look at every black choir, and every black choir that walks across the stage is considered a Gospel choir, which makes me very angry; that's not true. Because you have concert formats like mine, and you have Gospel formats, which is that uniqueness, this Gospel. I have nothing against Gospel, because I recognize it's here; it's going to stay here until something else takes its place. I don't know what that would be, because right now, you have spiritual Gospels, and Gospels are doing all kinds of improvisation; they even do choreography, there's a movement design that goes with that. Bobby Jones' Gospel Hour on the internet -- not on the internet, on the -- you can look at it on the cable, and you can see that program, you can see all kinds of things that they do that's unique. Moving and bending and whatever and whatever and whatever. And that's OK, they can do that, because that's what they want to do. But my argument is with young people, you cannot give them a full diet of nothing but Gospel music, because they're losing what's happened before, when we talk about the spiritual, which is the foundation of black choral singing. And I hate to see that going down the drain.

PATTERSON

Would you say there's more then a European influence, but with certainly the text with the structure, and with the manner of performance in spiritual music; there's more the consciousness of Eurocentricity in that music, and then maybe the Gospel music, perhaps suggesting that this may be one of the differences, the improvisational, the spontaneity, the movement, is that it's maybe more Africanistic.

MCNEIL

Absolutely. I would say that -- just like rap came on the scene, what an unusual sociological thing that is, to study it from a sociological position, because it does express some of the feelings of the black community, the mass of the black community. That's why I don't negate Gospel, because Gospel is another expression of the black urban community, and how it expresses itself religiously. You look at black Gospel, contemporary black Gospel, it's hard to tell the difference between that and some of the other secular forms of singing. Almost all the same. The nuances and the different colorations that are given, it's the same; there's not much difference, you see.

PATTERSON

Why do you think that is?

MCNEIL

Well, because that is the style that people want to hear, and people want to involve themselves with; that's how they want to express themselves. And the line that used to be like this between secular music and sacred music, as far as Gospel is concerned, is coming so close that you can't tell the difference between secular and sacred. Only the words. Because the secular has the background, the organ, the different instruments, and so on and so forth.

PATTERSON

Do you think that that comes from some sort of fundamental identity?

MCNEIL

I don't quite understand that.

PATTERSON

If these expressions are found both in secular and in sacred contexts, do you think that may indicate somehow a root that's just manifesting wherever music happens to happen? (laughter) In other words, these techniques somehow are organically growing out of just the black experience, whether it's sacred or secular?

MCNEIL

Yeah, that's true. I would say that -- well, all of these musics, when you finally boil it down, spirituals and gospel, are all expressions of the community, expressions of the people. I guess the one thing that I'm trying to hang onto is, don't lose sight of where we have been, and preserve what I call our heritage. Because there is a contemporary setting of spiritualists now, as opposed to the early spiritual of antiquity. There is early Gospel, if you have heard early Gospel, you know what early Gospel sounds like, and you certainly know what contemporary Gospel sounds like. And the people who represent, like Kirk Franklin, for example, is a good example of contemporary Gospel. Aretha Franklin is an example of a transition from early Gospel through contemporary Gospel to secular music, which doesn't break that line; her secular presentation sounds just like the sacred would sound, because that's that line I'm telling you about, where you can't tell the difference between sacred and secular. The spiritual, you can. It's a less -- obviously -- but you have a young composer -- not young, he's deceased now, but Moses Hogan, brought perhaps the most interesting approach to contemporary settings of spirituals. His contemporary settings of spirituals are absolutely unique. I mean, absolutely unique. You compare Moses Hogan, say, with Jester Hairston; you can see the difference right away. Harmonically, rhythmically -- same words, same text, but a different slant, because he's younger, he was more adventurous with exotic harmonies. That's an example of the transition of spirituals, from, say, a Hall Johnson spiritual, by the way, and Hall was way ahead of his time, because he always wrote complex arrangement of spirituals. But he also wrote for Leontyne Price; he also wrote for Denise Graves; he also wrote for a lot of the great opera singers of today. Jesse Norman can sing a Hall Johnson spiritual. And the uniqueness of a Hall Johnson spiritual is something to glorify; the use of certain really interesting rhythms. And the soloist carries the traditional melody; it's absolutely unbelievable, how you look at Hall Johnson, you look at Augustus Hill, that I mentioned, you look at Moses Hogan; you see distinctive differences in the same setting of the same text of that spiritual, because of the evolution of musical knowledge, the more trained in compositional technique -- there's a man by the name of Adolphus Hailstork, he's a wonderful composer, born in 1941, I believe his year is. And his arrangements of spirituals are undoubtedly classic, because what he does, he utilizes some of the latest ideas, techniques, in the performance of choral music. So he puts it on a classic level, a concert level, so that anybody -- and this is another thing: everybody cannot perform black Gospel. In other words, white people can't perform black Gospel. They try. But you must remember, there's nothing written down with black Gospel; very few black Gospels are written down. Kirk Franklin has published some things. But it's the intonation, it's the use of the voice, it's the use of the technique of performance. Well, with the spiritual, it's a more classic form that composers, black composers, can zero in on it, and write down certain nuances that you can perform. So they're historically preserving this for all time. And that's what Moses Hogan does, and that's what Adolphus Hailstork does. That's what Augustus Hill does. They have managed to capture in black and white those nuances that will survive all time.

PATTERSON

Is there any place for improvisation in the concert hall, the concert spiritual?

MCNEIL

Yes. That can happen with a soloist, because the choir thing is pretty much structured. I did one -- a new one by a young woman by the name of Linda Twine; she's written a thing called "Changed My Name," she's written a cantata. But I did one except from that cantata -- it is fabulous. The rhythmic configuration, just she being a 21st century person, a 20th and 21st century person, was able to bring it to that music in the written score -- those little motifs that are really genuinely African-influenced. But you can see it and hear it, but you can see it, and my soloist improvised on that the other night. She took the liberty of doing some things with that. Now, the choir had to remain that way, because they were the background, and the soloist can now decorate that thing with her own sense of improvisation.

PATTERSON

So you think that's perhaps --

MCNEIL

That is where the improvisation is utilized. Well, in Gospel music, you can improve any time you want, you can just go whatever you want to do.

PATTERSON

Going back to the choir, and People's Independent Church of Christ. You had the choir there, but at some point, the choir became the McNeil Jubilee Singers. How did that happen? [Some members formed the first Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers].

MCNEIL

Hollywood began to always call that church. [Independent Church] "We want some black singers; we want some black singer to do this. We want black people to do that; we want black people to do that." And I decided, well, if they're going to call for black people, I ought to have some (inaudible). So I started off with a double quartet, and when Hollywood would call for something, I'd say, "Call the McNeil Singers. You guys go out and make that money with me." And then eventually, I met this man by the name of Irwin Pernas, who was a promoter, Beverly Hills promoter. And Irwin Pernas called me -- heard my little choir that sang, my little McNeil singers. And he came up to me and said, "How would you like to go to Europe?" I said, "Oh, come on. Everybody would like to go to Europe," but I said, "but I have a wife and a mortgage and a child and two cars and all that." I said, "That's crazy." He said, "If I could get you a State Department grant, would you seriously consider this?" He said, "I handled the Fisk Jubilee Singers last tour," he said. And I said, "OK." So sure enough, 1967, he called me up one day, he says, "I've got permission from the State Department for us to go on a three-month tour of nine countries." So I called all my people together, "What are we going to do?" I said, "I'm going to take a leave of absence; I'm going to get a Teacher's Credit Union loan to pay my mortgage." And I said, "What are you guys going to do?" Then I got two of my high school students who had just got out of high school, they were 19, and I said, "OK, you guys got to go," and then I said, "What can you all do?" They said, "Well, we're gonna take leave of -- how long are we gonna go?" I give them the dates. So in 1968, we made our first tour of Europe. We flew LA-Paris overnight, and then Portugal, Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, England, Yugoslavia. We were "green" as they can possibly be. We didn't realize the man was exploiting us, but that's what he was doing. But anyway, State Department paid money -- well, at that time we were on what they call the economy; we really weren't with the State Department yet, we had to prove ourselves. But I was able to meet nine impresarios that I still go back to Europe with now; they've known me all these years. A couple of years later, we went on our first State Department tour, which was South America. We went Los Angeles, Mexico; Mexico, Costa Rica; Costa Rica, Panama; Panama, Colombia; Colombia, Venezuela; Venezuela, Ecuador; Ecuador, Chile; Chile, Argentina; Uruguay, Brazil. Like that. All the way around. And our government paid the tariff; our money was put in the banks here. And we got the local money for our own use. Two years later, we did the reverse. Florida -- let's see. Trinidad Tobago, Venezuela, Brazil -- just the reverse of that. Uruguay, Montevideo, all the way back until we came back to Mexico.

PATTERSON

How did that feel? You had -- the European tour was first, and you said this guy was a little shady maybe?

MCNEIL

I'm sorry?

PATTERSON

The guy was a little shady, maybe, that -- what happened with that?

MCNEIL

Well, we found out he would go stay in the best hotels, and we would be in these dives, and we were getting a little bit of money. And after about -- I guess about eight or nine years of working with him, I got to know the impresarios -- we would go abroad every other year, you see. And because -- that was really nice for me, I could get off from school -- well, I was at Davis then; I could get a sabbatical quarter every other year. A sabbatical quarter, I wouldn't take a year. If I took a fall quarter off, I could be gone from June to January. If I took a winter quarter off, I could be gone from -- let's see, January, February, March -- I could be gone from April -- I'd be gone from January to April. If I took spring quarter off, I'd be gone from April until the following October. That's how we worked it for me. Then my singers would all do the same thing. They got notice -- they were all working at different jobs; they'd take a leave of absence, they were teaching school, or they were in college, or took time off, and so on and so forth, that we were able to do that.

PATTERSON

Were your singers -- did your singers come out of both the church choir as well as your school?

MCNEIL

Church choir and then some of them -- well, by that time it was just a few church choir, there were a lot of independent singers who auditioned for me, and people that came to work with me and wanted to travel and wanted to have those experiences.

PATTERSON

And how did it feel -- had you been overseas? -- you'd been overseas before, right? Didn't you go to school --

MCNEIL

I went to school in Switzerland for a year.

PATTERSON

Yeah, what year was that that you went?

MCNEIL

Pardon me?

PATTERSON

What year was that when you went to Switzerland?

MCNEIL

Oh, Father God --

PATTERSON

(laughter) Was it after UCLA, and --

MCNEIL

Oh, yes, of course, after UCLA. It was like '51, I believe it was.

PATTERSON

So that was your first time in Europe.

MCNEIL

Yeah, that was my first time. I had been to New Orleans, and I had been to Chicago, but that was my first time to make a transcontinental tour. In '51, I flew TWA to Chicago, Chicago to New York, where I met the other 25 students who were going to go. We went from New York to Newfoundland, and then went from there to Shannon, Ireland, and from Shannon, Ireland to Geneva, Switzerland. It was 28 hours. We were exhausted. But I was so excited: here I was in Switzerland, of all places. We arrived at night, and we had taken a bus from Geneva to Montreux, which is around Lake Geneva, they call it, or Lake Leman, they like to call it. Around that, it took another four or five hours. But the time we got to the [pension], we stayed in like a dormitory, went to bed. The next morning, knock on the door; it was a chambermaid coming in with hot chocolate. Well, I almost had a fit -- where am I, you know. It was just an amazing experience. I was the only minority in that group of 25.

PATTERSON

How did it happen that you were able to go?

MCNEIL

I took an examination. I took a competitive examination with the Church Federation of Los Angeles, and at that time it was a man named Leslie Jacobs who was a minister of music in the First Congregational Church. And he said, "Take this examination." Well, I got all kinds of support. The only thing we had to do, we had to pay our transportation, but once we were there, they paid everything. And the People's Independent Church helped. They were the ones that gave me $2,100. Now, the fare, all that was $750 round-trip, to all those places I mentioned. But I didn't have any money once I got there; my sister had to send me money periodically, because I wasn't working; I had to leave my first job at Carver Junior High, I was at Carver Junior High when I won the scholarship.

PATTERSON

So there you were --

MCNEIL

I went down to the principal and showed him the telegram. He said, "You're going, aren't you?" I said, "But I don't want to lose my job." He said, "Go."

PATTERSON

You got a lot of support from all kinds of angles.

MCNEIL

He said, "You go."

PATTERSON

That's amazing.

MCNEIL

And so I borrowed money to pay the note on the -- I wasn't married -- to pay the note on the house; my mom had just died about two months before, I'd gotten a divorce three months before -- it was -- so it was great getting away from everything.

PATTERSON

Yeah. And how was it to be there actually in Switzerland? What was that like, to have an educational experience?

MCNEIL

It was awesome. I tell you, because we'd go down to the university -- the courses were taught in three languages, Italian, German, and English. And it was sponsored by the Westminster Choir College of Princeton, New Jersey, and Dr. J. Finley Williamson himself, who was the president at the time, came over and taught some of the classes. We had German conductors; we had Italian musicologists -- it was comprehensive; we learned literature, we learned conducting techniques -- literature was very important, the great works of Handell, Mozart, Bach, all these people. And then we learned about vocal technique, and it was just like, it was kind of like I don't believe it happened; it was like a dream. This little guy from Watts finds himself all of the sudden in Switzerland? That's where I really made up my mind what I wanted to do chorally, because toward the end of that, I said, what am I going to do as a conductor? Am I going to be like the rest of them? Am I going to do Bach and Handell and Mozart and everything? I wanted to do all of that, because I felt it was very important, but I also wanted to do something with the spiritual. And when I came back, I met Jester Hairston. And Jester Hairston and I became very close friends; he was like a father to me. He taught me more about African-American music than I could have gotten out of a book. He was a product of his family who were slaves, and he grew up in Pittsburgh, and a white woman gave him a scholarship to Tuft's University in Boston, and he became the assistant conductor of the Hall Johnson Choir. That exposure, that influence on me, and I used to play for him, and he'd go out and give lectures, I'd play the piano and he would sing, and illustrate different stuff. He was 99 years old when he died; he would have been 100 had he lived about another two weeks or so. But he and I were like that.

PATTERSON

So you came back a more mature, professional --

MCNEIL

Oh, the whole thing, yeah.

PATTERSON

You knew better what you wanted to do --

MCNEIL

Knew what I wanted to do, and I was exposed to the European discipline, and that has always lingered with me.

PATTERSON

So when you went back with your choir, how was that experience different? You'd been through a lot more, you'd taught, you'd studied, you'd fine-tuned your professional --

MCNEIL

Oh, it's amazing how that situation and all the others I've had lasted until I was appointed to the university. And one day when I was standing in my choral room at Davis, I thought -- I said, "This is the reason why I'm here." I could compete with any of those professors; I'd been abroad, and I've seen, I've heard -- I heard some of the great choirs in Paris, the Russian Orthodox choirs, and I went to the Sorbonne, which is a great French university. I didn't go as a student, but I went there to hear what they were doing musically, and stuff like that. I was in the Conservatory de Santa Cecilia in Rome, and I could hear what they were doing -- I mean, all of that, it just became like more than reading about it in a book. I was experiencing this. My Jubilee Singers sang in the Conservatorio de Santa Cecilia; my little boy was seven years old. That poor little guy. After we finished one piece, he didn't realize that there was still another little part, and he started applauding, and everybody was looking at him, because you didn't have to applaud at that point. Poor little thing, he thought he had --

PATTERSON

This is your son? He went with you?

MCNEIL

My little boy.

PATTERSON

He went with you to Europe?

MCNEIL

On my first tour in 1968. He was like seven.

PATTERSON

He was excited.

MCNEIL

My wife said, "You're not going to Europe without me and Ricky. So we went, they went. I said I'm not going to make any money, so there it is. But anyway, they stayed about six or seven weeks.

PATTERSON

And your little boy is clapping --

MCNEIL

Yeah, he was so excited. I took him -- he and I and one of my singers, we went behind the Vatican walls to the Vatican radio, they played my tapes. I had met a priest in Genoa, a Monsignor [LeVigne] who was one of the radio executives for the Papal radio station. And I said, "Father, I would love to have an opportunity to go," -- because I told him that I was taught by Franciscan priests, Irish Franciscan Cappucine priests; they have a college there in Rome. So he was so impressed so got there, told the Swiss Guard that Father -- oh, my God -- Monsignor LeVigne I can't remember his name. Anyway, Monsignor So-and-so told me -- "OK, just a moment," he made a phone call, took me to the radio station. I met the radio people, and then Ricky was there, and he was like seven years old, and they began -- "Don't you want this?" -- they gave him candy, and something like that -- they loved children, but it was quite an experience.

PATTERSON

So with your choir with you, you were able to -- having been there before -- I'm sure the leadership that you could give them was deepened, because you weren't new to the environment.

MCNEIL

Oh, yeah, it wasn't foreign to me.

PATTERSON

I'm sure they leaned on that.

MCNEIL

Oh, yeah. It was an amazing experience. I look back on it now, and I think, "Oh, gosh, did I have that chance of a lifetime. And I kept saying, "God, I lived in Watts, and --" I told one audience someplace, I said, "You know, I come from a little town where everybody knew everybody," and I said, "I never thought in all of my life, when I went to Saint Peter's for the first time, that I would walk into that gorgeous Basilica," -- those are the kind of feelings that you get. We've been to 70 countries altogether, and when you think -- and I didn't have to pay to go there. I was paid to go there. That's what I tell everybody. I said, "Can you believe it?" If you'd have taken any of these tours, and taken a tour, a travel agent, how much would this cost? I could never have afforded that.

PATTERSON

Or your singers.

MCNEIL

Or the singers. And I kept telling the singers, "Go to the travel agent and ask how much it would cost to do the same thing you just did, all expenses paid."

PATTERSON

Were they black singers, or did you have a mixed group?

MCNEIL

Oh, no, it was all black. Only in recent years did I integrate the choir. And I had the -- well, actually, out of necessity. I needed a couple of good tenors and I couldn't find anybody that was available to go, and I didn't want to lose the opportunity. And I figured this in myself: most of your outstanding singers, black, have had their opportunities in white choirs. The Robert Shaw Chorale, for example -- he always had a couple of black singers in his choir. [Norman Luboff choir, too]. You name any major professional touring choir, they always had a couple of black singers in there. And I thought, the white singers that I have, I always -- when I interviewed them, I said, "Do you understand the importance of singing this music, and how it's very classic? Your responsibility is to give it emotionally and sensitively exactly the feeling that we want to have here." I have never had any disappointment with that. As a matter of fact, they want to do it; they're so anxious. I said, "If you really want to study African-American music, sing in an African-American choir. Then you can go and teach spirituals; then you can go talk about spirituals, because you've experienced it. Not just from the printed page." Because I've gone to these festivals where I've heard all white choirs, and they've just desecrated performance of spirituals. Tempi's were wrong, mispronouncing of words, lack of the feeling. There's one classic piece called "Ain't Got Time to Die," and the guy out at Long Beach State, he used to be there, his name is Frank Pooler. And Frank had one of my singers, who was fresh out of high school, he came to me and he says, "Al, guess what! I'm going to be a soloist in the Long Beach Choir!" I said, "What spiritual are you going to do?" He said, "How'd you know?" I said, "Well, you know, they stereotype black people. You're in white choir; they think because you're black, you're supposed to know spirituals." And a lot of black kids have not been exposed to the spiritual; they don't know anything about it. Oh, he said, "Aw, I thought I was being chosen because I was a good singer." I said, "Probably that too, but," I said, "basically, because you're black, so black people sing spirituals." That's stereotyping.

PATTERSON

The history of slavery, which was the ground, the fertile soil out of which the spirituals came -- do you teach that along with the music?

MCNEIL

You mean, do I talk about the -- how the spiritual came into being? Yeah, but the big thing is to sing. I want them to have a singing experience first. After they've learned the song, then I can talk more about how and why, and why the text, and why you're singing this kind of thing. Ooh, it's time.

PATTERSON

Is it time? Is it time?

MCNEIL

It's 25 minutes to 9:00.

PATTERSON

All right. Well, we'll stop there.

MCNEIL

Yeah.

PATTERSON

OK. Thank you.

MCNEIL

Well, I feel like I've been on the couch. (laughter)

PATTERSON

Well, you have. (laughter)

MCNEIL

Literally.

PATTERSON

OK.

MCNEIL

No, it sometimes, it really -- to look at many experiences I had, I can't believe it. And some of the countries I've been --

1.3. Session 3 (June 25, 2007)

Patterson

--2007, our final interview with Dr. Albert McNeil. We're so happy to be here. He finally had a couple of moments for us. [laughs] Busy man.

McNeil

I'm going to Spain next month.

Patterson

Oh, my goodness. Speaking of Spanish culture, you'll be right there.

McNeil

I love it. I've been there maybe eighteen or nineteen times over the last twenty-five years. I know Spain like the inside of my hand.

Patterson

To take the Jubilee Singers?

McNeil

Yes, Jubilee Singers.

Patterson

So you do always work the same venues?

McNeil

Yes.

Patterson

You've gotten to really know them then.

McNeil

I have a manager in Spain called Ricardo de Quesada. He comes from a long line of impresarios. As a matter of fact, he has a brother in Puerto Rico and one in Argentina and one in Cuba, and they do all bookings of various sorts.

Patterson

Wow. So they're sort of an international company.

McNeil

Yes, it's a dynasty, I call it, because the old man founded it about--well, the company is over a hundred and twenty-five years old.

Patterson

What's his name again?

McNeil

Ricardo de Quesada, Q-u-e-s-a-d-a. It's called Officina Daniel, because the old man was Daniel de Quesada.

Patterson

Where is that?

McNeil

Madrid is their main office, but they have one in Buenos Aires. They have one in Puerto Rico, San Juan, and they have one in Havana, because, you see, they can go anyplace they want to go. We can't go there, and I want to go to Cuba so badly. I could have gone a couple of years ago with a whole bunch of professors, but for some reason or other I didn't follow through with it, you know.

Patterson

You haven't gone at all?

McNeil

No. I can go illegally, because I can go to Mexico and then go from Mexico to Havana. I have friends who have fantastic choirs. Carolina is a woman who has a Schola Cantorum in Havana. She is a fantastic woman.

Patterson

Escuela de--did you say a school?

McNeil

A Schola Cantorum. That's a Latin word, S-c-h-o-l-a Cantorum, C-a-n-t-o-r-u-m, Cantorum. It means school of singing, but that's in the Latin. But anyway, her name is Carolina. I cannot remember Carolina's last name. I just corresponded with her. E-mail. We always e-mail each other. Now, I met her face to face three years ago when I was in Mexico, and I did the American Cantata, and I had a big choir of a hundred and seventy-five voices of kids from Central America and Colombia and Venezuela and Mexico and Cuba. See, they can go to Mexico, you know. Cubans have access to anyplace but the United States. But her choir was absolutely unbelievable.

McNeil

Of course, they're communists. That's what they do for a living. They rehearse six hours a day, four days a week. So twenty-four hours of rehearsal, then the rest of the time they perform all over the world, see? The same thing with their ballet. That's what they do for a living, seven hours a day for four days, twenty-eight hours. I'm not for the communist system, but I'm saying. So they're paid for by the government. That's their job.

Patterson

So they rehearse. They're paid to rehearse, and then they're also performing and traveling.

McNeil

Oh yes, for the government. Everything is for the government. That's the whole essence of communism.

Patterson

Is their motivation any different?

McNeil

No. Her choir is twenty-ish, thirty-ish, because, you see, you've got people who were raised in the system, so they know no other system. They could speculate on another system. You know, they can say, "Hey, I understand you guys work eight hours a week." But where in the United States can you go and have twenty-eight hours of rehearsal a week and be paid and be able to survive? That's the problem. See, we're so afraid of socialism in this country that it--"Oh, that's socialistic," you know what I mean. Well, the Russians do it. If you're a ballet dancer, the government will subsidize you. Of course, that's fringe socialism, very much close to communism, you know.

McNeil

Some of the big houses in Europe, the opera houses, they subsidize young singers. One of my dearest friends, a Chinese girl, married to one of my former students who is half Chinese and Irish, she was with the San Francisco Ballet for twenty-some-odd years and just recently retired, and now teaches in San Francisco. I just saw them at graduation. Wonderful people. But, I mean, that's the difference between the two systems.

Patterson

I wonder about that. You haven't been yet to Cuba, but it would be interesting to talk to them about how they feel about--in other words, is the passion the same? Here we're so consumed with ambition, having to fight and sacrifice to make a way to be a performer, and yet in a system where you can just get up and go to work and be a performer.

McNeil

Well, I just performed for Chorus America, which is the short title for the Association of Professional Vocal Ensembles, and I've been in it twenty years, and I was the only African American group in the organization for a long time, because I made it my business. The prerequisite for being in that is that you have to pay your singers. Now, even if I gave my singers ten dollars a week, I'm paying them. I never paid them that cheaply, but I mean, I'm saying. Like I said, before their convention at the Biltmore--we gave a concert--they chose four Los Angeles-based professional choirs, the L.A. Children's Choir, which is absolutely fantastic; the Vox Femina, which is an all-women's choir; and the John Alexander Singers, which is a group actually in Orange County, but had a lot to do with activity here in L.A.; and my group.

McNeil

We had about seven hundred people there. The total convention was about eight hundred, so most people came to the concerts. We each gave thirty minutes. And I had a chance to say to these people, "You know, this organization is about paying singers. The pay doesn't mean that you're professional. The pay means you accept the responsibility of helping these people to survive with their art," because we don't provide anything in this country. A young kid graduates from the university. He wants to be a choral conductor. Where does he go? A young kid graduates from the university and wants to be a concert pianist. Where does he go? If you're lucky enough to make some of these contests and win high enough and become recognized where some record producer gets you and some person wants to put you on the road as a concert artist. What about you work real hard and you get a DMA in voice performance? Where do you go with it?

Patterson

Yes, no career development.

McNeil

And you know the thing that bugs me, look at the national symphony orchestras that we have. How many of them have an American conductor, I mean an American-born conductor? Now, Tilson Thomas in San Francisco is a good example. Good. But Esa-Pekka Salonen from Sweden or Norway, wherever, directs the L.A. Philharmonic. I could go on. The New York Philharmonic, for example, has a French person. You know, not that they're not acceptable, but we have a criteria that suggests that if you're European-born or have a European surname or if you're kind of foreign like, even though you may be born here. I have a young man who graduated from Davis who is a fabulous tenor. He made the New York City Opera, but his name is Ciabelli, Carlos Ciabelli. He's an Italian. So Carlos would have no problem. He fits into the so-called psyche of American producers, that if you've got a foreign name, you're going to make it, you know what I mean? You've got to accept that. I think that may be changing. I don't know.

Patterson

Yes, it's as though America still doesn't feel seasoned enough to respect its own traditions.

McNeil

I guess my whole discussion is about providing opportunities for American-trained musicians. Not that we ignore Europe or South America or Central America. They have fantastic people. As a matter of fact, some of them are better trained than some of our people, because they have more opportunities to perform at an elite level rather than a mediocre level.

Patterson

Do you think it's also something to do with the traditions themselves being just more ancient, having more time as a traditional development?

McNeil

No, I think it's more that there is patronage enough to support them so they can survive. The big thing with musicians, how do you pay your way, unless you win a scholarship or unless somebody subsidizes you, unless you have a patron, you know what I mean?

Patterson

There is still this mindset that somehow if it's American, it's mundane, you know. It's not high art.

McNeil

One of the things that bothers me, though, with American students, they don't want to learn another language. They think that English is it. I think this is ridiculous. We're in an environment of Hispanic people, I mean, up to our necks, and the least we can do is learn to speak Spanish. Of course, if you're going to travel more--the official languages of all music are German, Italian, and French. I mean, that's what most treatises and research papers in my field are in those languages.

McNeil

I remember a friend of mind at Davis who wrote a major dissertation in Japanese. You know, he had to fight the graduate school like crazy for that to be accepted, and yet you had linguists on the campus who understood Japanese and said this was a fabulous piece of work. But because it was in Japanese. To me, there's a bias, you see.

Patterson

Something happened along the way that we got sort of stuck in this mindset when we started this country, of still venerating what Europe was doing.

McNeil

You still have to go to Europe if you want to be an opera singer, because where do you go in this country to sing opera, unless there's some real small companies. You've got to go abroad.

Patterson

What about New York?

McNeil

Well, New York is a rat race. Do you realize that good singers are a dime a dozen, and they're all knocking on the doors, and they're [unclear] the same place? So you have to be s_____. You take the Metropolitan Opera auditions, which is held regionally every year, and they find some pretty good young people. But first of all, unless you are extremely good, unusually good, you have to end it in one year, because they have little small opera houses. They don't pay much. But at least you're singing your opera. You're in an opera.

Patterson

Is there an opera company in L.A. that--

McNeil

Oh, L.A., you've got one of the strongest operas in the country, in the world. Placido Domingo is the director. It's now twenty-one years old. They have more money. I've gone to several operas with the L.A. Opera. I'm so proud of them. They're fabulous. They're able to pull internationally famous opera singers.

Patterson

What about pulling L.A. people, though?

McNeil

There's some L.A. people in choruses, yes. In my choir I have some opera chorus people.

Patterson

African American?

McNeil

Yes.

Patterson

Really.

McNeil

I mean, really good ones, good baritones, basses.

Patterson

So that is an outlet for L.A. well-trained--

McNeil

Yes, but you have to be good, you know.

Patterson

Do you find that, being on the university campuses and just in your experience, that the African American students look to that European tradition more than they do their own American traditions in singing?

McNeil

Sad to say, African American students on the campuses that I know, U.C. campuses, isolate themselves, number one. They won't--I hate to use the word "assimilate," but they don't get involved with the majority student body. They're so busy keeping those little cliques.

Patterson

Why do you think that is?

McNeil

I don't know. Is it a sense of inferiority? I don't think so. It might be. Is it a sense of being rejected by some majority communities? Could be. But if you lived at--you know, for example, I understand kids from the ghetto, both the Hispanic ghetto and the African American ghetto. I must say the Hispanic kids are more on the move to infiltrating and getting into everything on those campuses, even though they keep their individual identity. African American kids tend to be clannish, as a little closed society, closed unit.

McNeil

In that big choir I had at Davis, I had only one black kid in that choir. This is ridiculous. When I was on the campus, I'd walk across the campus into a group of black kids, and I'd say, "You guys sing?"

McNeil

"Yeah."

McNeil

I'd say, "Why don't you come and sing with me?"

McNeil

"Oh, I don't understand that kind of music, and that's not my kind of music."

McNeil

I said, "What do you mean, it's not your kind of music? Why are you here on this campus? Do you realize this is your opportunity to learn something about what white people cherish as artistic importance to them? Now, you don't have to like it, but don't you realize that if you became involved in something where there are other whites, do you realize how broad your perspective becomes, and if you find yourself in a workplace, how much more intelligent you're going to be to have a discussion about music? Maybe that's not what you think is important, but as far as we're concerned, who controls the purse strings in this country? White people."

McNeil

There are a lot of blacks. We're moving up rapidly. I just read in the paper the other day that a black woman was just made president of Aerospace Corporation. She has a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering. She has worked for Aerospace Corporation for twenty-five years, from the bottom up. But what is it that makes--even when I was on campus back in the year one, black kids were being seen over in one little corner. I swore up and down I wasn't going to do that.

Patterson

Well, there's still racism going on. There's still some sense of isolation, don't you think?

McNeil

Yes, but sometimes you create your racism. People will understand you better if you become more involved with them. I recognize that I'm unusual because I could be anything racially. So I can infiltrate anyplace, even though the black kids on campus called me "Peola," which meant that I was one of these people that I would give anything to--but I was in a department where you could count the number of black music majors on three fingers.

Patterson

They go into more the social sciences, don't they? I noticed that at the graduation ceremony.

McNeil

Social sciences. They won't go into mathematics. They won't go into science. They are going now into business. You see that better.

Patterson

A lot of political science, I know.

McNeil

And political science. You see them even wanting to become lawyers and maybe--you've got to do history. You've got to--anthropology. You've got to do the cultural things in order to be, I think, a good lawyer. You'd have to have a well-rounded education, you know.

McNeil

There are surprisingly few in the arts. I noticed that as well. I would have thought there would be more.

McNeil

Because it is extremely difficult. People, they go, you know, "I'm a music major."

McNeil

"Oh, yeah?" You've got to take the history of music. You've got to take the philosophy of music. You've got to learn all about the ingredients of how to put the music together. You've got to learn to compose a little bit. You've got to understand the difference between a symphony and a concerto, and all of the various genres of music, and then the great composers, starting from antiquity to contemporary times.

Patterson

But there again we're talking about Western.

McNeil

And the different styles of music that have come to pass over the centuries.

Patterson

So here we go. The different styles, part of that then becomes, what are the American styles?

McNeil

That's right.

Patterson

Because we're talking about the European traditions when we--so-called--talk about high art, but, you know, we also have some very rich American traditions that African Americans have been responsible for.

McNeil

Absolutely. Absolutely. But why do you suppose I did that program? That program represents composers from the turn of the twentieth century until present times. That was what I was displaying to the students that I was working with. And they could do traditional spirituals, but not only spirituals, so-called serious composition. When I say "serious," of course, put on any level with any composer. It's not necessarily identifiable as being black music, per se. And what is black music, anyway?

Patterson

Yes, I was going to ask you, how would you describe the difference?

McNeil

You know, a composer composes, and I don't think a composer necessarily uses his indigenous background to compose. But some do.

Patterson

Well, what are they using then? They're using something that isn't part of their background. But when the Europeans created this, that was their background.

McNeil

What if you think serially, which is another form of writing contemporary music? There's nothing idiomatically black about a piece of serial music. In other words, these are the various components of what I call the mechanisms for composition. You can compose in a romantic style, romantic being free. You can compose in a classic style, being more formal. And some composers, like Nathaniel Dett, utilized his African American background to write. But Margaret Bonds didn't. She wrote a piece called Credo, which is, "I believe in the Negro race." It's a vocal piece with an orchestra and chorus. But that is different. She gave you an idea of what this music is going to sound like.

McNeil

But the piece I did with the students at Davis was, "I shall not pass this way but once." It has nothing to do with being black or white. It's music for music's sake. When I performed her "Ballad of the Brown King," which again is a programmatic piece. It's about the ballad of the brown king, that there was a black king present at the birth of Jesus. Yet she wrote symphonic music that had nothing to do with being black. She wrote and utilized those resources that she had learned, to put together to create the sounds that she wished.

Patterson

What about ownership, though? You think about the European tradition, and these musics were developed out of what truly was the ethnic music of Europe. It was ethnic in the sense that--

McNeil

To some degree, some did. Some was.

Patterson

And the Germans wrote what their traditions were.

McNeil

Yes, but you see, there's two kinds of musics. Actually, if you want to look at it very literally, there is programmatic music, music that tells you exactly what you're supposed to think when you hear it. The title will tell you. "The Ballad of the Brown King." It's going to be about a black king. So obviously, the ingredients are--but if I said, "I'm going to play for you Etude in A-flat," what does that say? It just said music where "etude" is a French word for study. It's a study in A-flat. It doesn't have anything to do with ethnicity.

McNeil

There's a fantastic black composer by the name of--oh, my god. He was at Rutgers University, a professor. He won the Pulitzer Prize in composition just a couple of years ago. George--I can't think of his name--Walker. His name is George Walker. His wife is Helen Walker. Helen Walker is a woman composer, but she happens to be white, married to a black man. But he was professor of composition at Rutgers and wrote the most difficult piano music you ever want to play. Listening to anything George Walker wrote, you couldn't say that's black. There's nothing black about it. Just the composer was black.

McNeil

So what I'm simply saying is because you are a composer and you happen to be black, you don't necessarily always use your indigenous background in writing your music.

Patterson

And is it the other way around as well?

McNeil

And the other way around as well.

Patterson

But doesn't "etude," just using that as an example, doesn't that suggest--it has its own baggage, you know. "Etude" carries something of Europe with it, just to refer to the study as--

McNeil

Oh, of course. Of course. Where do you suppose our Western music came from?

Patterson

That's what it is.

McNeil

That's what it is, and a lot of young composers and arrangers all go through the same course of study in the conservatory and the university. They study Western music and compositional techniques. Then if they want to depart from that--there's a young composer now. His name is Leslie Thomas. Leslie Thomas is another one who has departed and writes in his own style and maybe utilizes African American ideas and maybe not. His music is not easy. It's very difficult.

McNeil

There's another composer by the name of James Furman, F-u-r-m-a-n. James Furman is another one. My Jubilee Singers is doing a piece called Hehlehlooyuh. The only thing that's black about it is the pronunciation of the word. Instead of saying "halleluja," he's got "hehlehlooyuh," and it's repeated over and over and over and over and over again for maybe a hundred and thirty-five, two hundred measures, in various ways, which have nothing to do with his being black.

Patterson

But then we do have black music, and we have so-called serious black music.

McNeil

If you're going to go to the indigenous black music, you've got blues, you've got gospel, you've got jazz, syncopation. You've got all those elements that you could incorporate. If you didn't know George Gershwin was white, and somebody blindfolded you and you didn't know the history of George Gershwin, you would think that he's black. He writes the blues idioms into that music. Look, he wrote Porgy and Bess. What is any more black idiom than that?

Patterson

Well, he used serious black motifs and ingredients to write something else.

McNeil

That's right, but listen. You had to be a trained singer. You have to be a trained singer to sing Porgy and Bess. That's the almost unbelievable [unclear] here, that you cannot sing Porgy and Bess unless you are a trained singer.

Patterson

But wouldn't a white singer need to be so-called--quote, unquote--"trained" to sing in the black idioms--

McNeil

Not necessarily.

Patterson

--and you would have to say that they are trained?

McNeil

Not necessarily.

Patterson

Really.

McNeil

They would have to know the style. If they didn't know the style, they'd have to learn that. Well, look, in the motion picture Porgy and Bess--oh, god, what's the woman's name now [Marilyn Horne]? They used a white singer to dub in Dorothy Dandridge as Bess. They didn't use a black singer.

Patterson

But she had to be trained in the black idiom.

McNeil

Absolutely. That's right, and how to pronounce those vowel sounds and so on and so forth.

Patterson

Yes, sure, and the portamento and all the little stylistic things that need to be--so but this idea of being a trained singer carries with it the idea that we were trained in the European tradition rather than being a trained singer also meaning being trained in an African American tradition.

McNeil

Yes, that's right.

Patterson

So we get these sort of terms that become a little bit elitist.

McNeil

Exactly. That's right. I tell people who do a spiritual, I say, "Listen, if you want to do spirituals correctly, you need to listen to a lot of black choirs sing spirituals. You need to know the style. You need to know how they handle the tempo. You need to know how they handle dynamics, and then you arrive at a way." But you're going to have to deal with that, just like you would learn to play Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, or any of these people. Johannes Brahms, for example, the different style of Brahms than it would be of Palestrina, who is another whole period. But I'm saying yes, and each of those style periods, you don't sing Brahms like you would sing Bach. The Bach is a seventeenth-century music, while Brahms is a nineteenth-century music. I mean, there's a whole different thing here.

Patterson

And then taking that point further, there is this amazingly, I would say, complex music, genre of music called jazz--

McNeil

Oh yes.

Patterson

--that was innovative here

McNeil

And that has its style periods, too, because you can go to early jazz, which would be the teens of the twentieth century, through the Jazz Era, which was the twenties and thirties and forties and fifties, and the introduction of what we call bebop, and all of those various forms are very complex, very complex rhythmically, and at times sounds like chamber music. You can go to Charlie Mingus, and you think, "What am I listening to?" I mean, there's all those abstract songs. Music even--you know, it's am amazing thing. The more abstract jazz became in the Charlie Mingus era and the Arnette Coleman era, it became a classic within itself, because it's very difficult to play, while your so-called jazz musician is an improvisatory musician, an ear musician. He doesn't have to worry about reading notes. He just plays. But you see, as that music went up the ladder of complexity, because, see, Charlie Mingus was well trained. He studied with a bass player in the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra as a kid. Look at that conditioning he had. Then later in life for him to become leader in contemporary jazz, it's fantastic.

Patterson

And there is a very specialized art to the kind of improvisation that a well-honed jazz musician performs. I mean, improvisation, sometimes I think people think that it just means doing whatever comes to your mind. However, you know, you still maintain, wouldn't you say, the consciousness of--

McNeil

Oh, sure.

Patterson

--of movement and knowing where the music is going.

McNeil

And the chord progressions, certain tonal progressions, although the higher up the echelon the jazz thing goes, the more abstract it becomes and does not necessarily even worry about the conditionings of music like time signatures and key signatures. Those become irrelevant. You play.

Patterson

So now we're mixing psychology and music, in a way. It becomes very, very personal.

McNeil

Oh yes. You should hear some of the young musicians today that are in jazz studies. For example, like the Berklee School of Music in Boston, where those kids are experimenting with all kinds of electronic sounds as opposed to acoustic instruments. The whole age has--and you can take it and create. One person can take tape after tape and create a whole panoply of an orchestral thing with only one person, and that tape has been repeated over and over again, using different genres, and then finally put together to create something. We have a sound studio at Davis, and they've been doing that at Davis for years, this electronic music.

Patterson

What about you yourself? Have you ever done any jazz composition?

McNeil

I'm not a jazz musician. None.

Patterson

You like it, though.

McNeil

Oh, I love it, absolutely love it.

Patterson

Who are some of the--I know Charlie Mingus is a personal associate of yours, right?

McNeil

Who is this?

Patterson

Charlie Mingus.

McNeil

Oh yes. We grew up as children, in Watts, by the way. He lived on 108th Street. I lived on 111th.

Patterson

But who else do you like as far as jazz? Who else would you listen to for yourself?

McNeil

Well, let me see. Of course, I love the whole thing. Of course, Ellington is one of my major favorites, because he's more classic than anything else. Ellington, and then, of course, pianists, particularly Art Tatum, for example, I just love. I was listening the other day on 88.1, Ahmad Jamal. He's a fantastic pianist. He was playing "Poinciana." That I haven't heard since the year one. He's just an absolutely fabulous guy, the way he does this.

Patterson

So piano music in jazz, mostly.

McNeil

Yes, yes, definitely. Art Tatum and Ahmad Jamal and, of course, the king of all of them. Oh, my god, what is his name? I sat on the stage with him in Dusseldorf, Germany. God, he was born and raised in Canada. Help me out. I can't think of it.

Patterson

A pianist?

McNeil

Oh yes. He was just absolutely fabulous. I saw him play until his hands were swollen, he had played so hard. I mean, his hand was just swollen. He had a small stroke. He's over it right now. Big man, about six-three or six-four.

Patterson

L.A.?

McNeil

No, no, no.

Patterson

He was born in Canada.

McNeil

In New York, but as everybody--but he was born and raised in Toronto, and then he migrated to Columbia. What is this man's name? I've got to go find out. This is--hold the phone.

Patterson

Okay.

McNeil

Oh, I forgot. [laughs] Let me see if I can find it.

Patterson

What's that book you've got?

McNeil

This is Eileen Southern's book. I use it as a bible. The Music of Black Americans.

Patterson

Yes, it's a different edition than I have.

McNeil

Yes, I've marked mine up so. The edition that I choose is--the most recent one is the better one. Let's see. They probably won't have it in here. I'd have to go back and look in that index again. They talk about ragtime.

Patterson

She doesn't talk too much about contemporary jazz, huh?

McNeil

No. You know, unfortunately, it was 1971, and I think that she missed some of the things, although she's fairly comprehensive, you know. Let me just scale through them up here, but I can't--I don't know why I can't marry--[unclear] is this man, Art?

Patterson

How old a man is he by now?

McNeil

Late seventies, early eighties. Late seventies, I would think, early eighties, yes. Oh, gosh. I probably have passed it.

Patterson

I know that's driving you crazy, huh? It's driving you crazy. Got to find it; got to find it.

McNeil

Well, you know, if you teach school long enough, when you're trying to go over everything, you don't have time to go belabor the point. Speed reading, they call it. [laughter] Let's see. There's Billie Holiday.

Patterson

So he was part of the jazz community in New York mostly then, huh?

McNeil

What did you say?

Patterson

Jazz community in New York mostly?

McNeil

Jazz--

Patterson

The jazz community in New York is where he did most of his playing, like live playing?

McNeil

He was international--

Patterson

Really.

McNeil

--and a lot in Europe, a lot of times in Europe, yes. But he was more everyplace. Why can't I remember this man's name? I'll probably remember it after you leave. Let me see. We're almost running out.

Patterson

You know, I have to remember it.

Unidentified Female

[whispers]

Patterson

Good. That reminds me, I have a book of yours I have to return to you.

McNeil

See, Arnette Coleman is in here. Let me see.

Patterson

I've got a few jazz references. I could look and see. Do you have Gridley's jazz reference?

McNeil

Who?

Patterson

Gridley. It's the last name. It's a jazz reference, Gridley.

McNeil

No.

Patterson

I may be able to find it myself, and then I'll e-mail you and ask you if this is the one.

McNeil

Albert Mons. I've probably passed it, because he's so important. I mean, you know, if anybody is important in jazz piano, it's this man, and I can't find it. Maybe he's in here. Let's see. Of course, this is about musicians--

Patterson

That's L.A.

McNeil

--in California. [unclear] Tom Reed.

Patterson

That has some great photographs in it.

McNeil

He doesn't have--no, he doesn't have a thing.

Patterson

He probably wouldn't have it, huh?

McNeil

No, he wouldn't be in here. Let me just--no, he wouldn't be in here. No.

Patterson

I see you have your guiro over there, your drum. Where did you get that drum from?

McNeil

Oh yes. It's my African collection.

Patterson

Yes, tell us about that.

McNeil

Yes, from Nigeria. When I was in Europe, when I was in Africa, I bought it and shipped it home.

Patterson

Where in Africa? This is Nigeria.

McNeil

I was in Lagos and Unugu and Thaschusinis in Nigeria. These are all authentic. This one, calabash.

Patterson

Shekereh.

McNeil

This is another. Then I have a squeeze drum right there.

Patterson

Oh yes, you've got your talking drum.

McNeil

See? Yes.

Patterson

Is that an East--that looks like Ugandan. Where did you get that one?

McNeil

This one?

Patterson

No, the other one, that one.

McNeil

This one?

Patterson

Is that Ugandan or East African?

McNeil

I got all these in Nigeria, believe it or not. I was working for the Department of State, so they shipped it home for me. I would have never gotten it out, because you have certain antiquity laws, and then you wouldn't have gotten it back. They put it in what they call a diplomatic pouch, you know?

Patterson

It's a special like bag, baggage, luggage.

McNeil

Yes, it's a special packaging, packaging, you know.

Patterson

How did you find Nigeria? What was that like for you? Have you only been once?

McNeil

I've never seen so many black people in all my life. I mean, morning, noon, and night, the black people were out. And, of course, the rain forest there is so thick. It's about what, twenty-five feet thick. They've actually tunneled through some of the rain forest. They have a tunnel through the rain forest. It rains like three hundred and fifty inches a year or something like that, so the road that you're going from Lagos to Unugu was constantly being washed away, and you looked to the right side, and buses have careened off to the bottom, and nobody bothered to go dig them up. So what happened? Vegetation has grown all over everything.

Patterson

All over the buses?

McNeil

Oh yes, all over the ruins of a bus.

Patterson

Did people get out and climb back up to the road?

McNeil

Yes. It was amazing.

Patterson

How do you travel?

McNeil

Bus. [laughter] Well, we were with the Department of State vans. They were nice.

Patterson

So how did it come that you took that, that trip?

McNeil

A cultural exchange program was going on, and my manager in Beverly Hills, Irwin Parnes, applied for it, and we got it, and we got to go. This was late seventies, early eighties. Let me tell you, I saw the world because of the State Department, particularly exotic places. Egypt, Alexandria, Ghana, and Nigeria, Sierra Leone. This was obviously before the revolution in Sierra Leone. They practically destroyed that country. It used to be a very elegant country with a very prestigious government and people. As a matter of fact, those two heads in my curio were given to me.

Patterson

Oh, let's see.

Unidentified Female

Be careful with the microphone.

Patterson

Yes, let's go over here.

McNeil

Okay. This memorabilia is very important. This is from Senegal. You can read that. See what it says?

Patterson

Okay, wait. I've got to get my glasses. I can read it.

McNeil

Can you read it?

Patterson

It says, "Presented to His Excellence, the American Ambassador in Sierra Leone, for the Los Angeles Jubilee Singers, by His Excellency, Dr. Siakah Stevens, the Republic of Sierra Leone."

McNeil

That's it.

Patterson

Cool.

McNeil

It's great, and it's hand-carved. It's just gorgeous stuff, isn't it?

Patterson

Yes.

McNeil

With a man and a woman. See, that's the man there.

Patterson

Can we see it upright?

McNeil

Yes. You see it? This was in the good old days of Sierra Leone, which went down the tubes, you know. The revolution there now has just left the country in ruins.

Patterson

Yes, I know somebody who was just there.

McNeil

It's so sad, so sad to see that. But look how gorgeous that is, and the weight of it, it gets very heavy. Do you want to see it? Let me get both of them here. You see, there's a man and a woman. Oh, come on; it's very temperamental. This had the same inscription on it.

Patterson

So Sierra Leone, when you went there, what was your experience there? What happened?

McNeil

This was 1974.

Patterson

That's when you were there.

McNeil

Yes.

Patterson

So what were you doing there? Tell us about your trip.

McNeil

Performing. We represented the United States government, and when we got to a place, the ambassador had us. We always did two concerts. We did a concert for the VIP--well, all the other ambassadors and their entourages. Then we gave a people-people concert, where we would perform for the people in the community, you know. Like here we performed in the cathedral in Sierra Leone with the black archbishop who was responsible, Anglican cathedral.

McNeil

The British were all over the place there, you know, and they had left their legacy with the religion, which was Anglican, strongly Anglican. The archbishop himself was very elegant, trained in Britain, in London; is the emissary of the archbishop of Canterbury. And then my little boy was with me. He was only nine--eight, maybe seven--but he was playing with the diplomats' kids, you know, and they were going to prep schools in England, see, and the English tradition was so steeped. Their supreme court people all dressed in English costumes with the wigs on and everything. You'd see black people with these white wigs, you know. It was really funny. Not funny, but they were carrying on this tradition.

Patterson

So did they mix the African tradition with the Anglican?

McNeil

Yes. Yes, they did. And what we did at the end of our concert in the cathedral, we sang the "Hallelujah" chorus from the Messiah for the archbishop, a capella, and he was so elated that we'd do that.

McNeil

All these other things are just little [showing objects in curio cabinet]. This is something I'm very proud of. I was at UCLA Alumnus time of year. Yes, I got that.

Patterson

Yes, check that out.

McNeil

And I got this, the medal. See, "UCLA," [unclear]. It's for professional achievement award, alumnae.

Patterson

So did you go back to a special ceremony? They called you and you went down?

McNeil

Oh yes. Yes, yes, went back to campus. It was great.

Patterson

Wow, that's great, all right.

McNeil

It must have been about--

Unidentified Female

[unclear] with this? I need to figure this out. That little light back there was driving me crazy.

McNeil

I should have had this on at an academic procession.

Patterson

Yes. [laughter]

McNeil

But I didn't.

Patterson

Did you participate in the academic--

McNeil

Graduation? Yes. Oh yes.

Patterson

At Davis?

Patterson

Oh yes, that was a lot of fun.

Patterson

And so you had your regalia on.

McNeil

I had my regalia on, yes. That was fun.

Patterson

What is that one back there, that black one?

McNeil

That was--boy, is that heavy. The American Choral Directors Association honored me with a lifetime achievement award.

Patterson

And what is this one? Oh. [reads] "In honor of a lifetime of outstanding service to choral music and musicians. Dr. Albert McNeil, Western Division Convention honoree, February 27, 2004, American Choral Directors Association. It is music's lofty mission to shed light on the depths of the human heart." Yes, it looks heavy.

McNeil

Feel it.

Patterson

Oh, my gosh, I don't want to drop it.

McNeil

It is heavy. I mean--

Patterson

Oh, catch it. [laughs]

McNeil

Okay.

Patterson

That's great.

McNeil

And I'm getting ready to get another life achievement award. The National Association of Church Musicians is meeting in Camarillo in July. This was from the gospel choirs, the L.A. chapter of the Gospel Musicians Union founded by James Cleveland. That's from them, see?

Patterson

Can we hear Dr. McNeil, Adriana? Do we have enough audio on here?

Adriana

Yes. I'm getting it here.

McNeil

Oh, come on. Make me [unclear due to crosstalk].

Patterson

Do you think it's good?

McNeil

Well, no, it's a short. Here it is. Okay. See?

Adriana

I can't read it because of the reflection.

McNeil

Do you want to move that?

Adriana

Could I move it?

McNeil

Sure.

Patterson

Please.

McNeil

Yes, the only thing we have stuck down are the other things, because of the earthquake.

Patterson

Well, you've had experience with the earthquakes.

McNeil

Yes, yes, I'd say so.

Patterson

You don't want that again.

McNeil

Oh, come on.

Adriana

You cannot do that to me. There.

Patterson

Yes, there you go.

Patterson

[reads] "GM, Gospel Music." What is it? Gospel Music W. A.

McNeil

It's called the Gospel Music Workshop Association.

Patterson

Oh, okay.

McNeil

Oh, come on.

Patterson

"Back to the old landmark."

McNeil

Okay. Have you got it?

Adriana

Yes. That crazy light.

McNeil

Of course, we collect the lladro [Spanish porcelain]. Every time I go to Spain, I buy that.

Patterson

What is this?

McNeil

Now, here is something that I like very much. This is an award I got when I worked down in South Korea.

Patterson

That's beautiful, that red.

McNeil

I had many choirs, Korean choirs.

Patterson

Did you. Now, what happened there? I was going to ask you about Korea.

McNeil

Oh, it was fabulous. They have some of the fabulous choirs. I was there for five days.

Patterson

What kind of style were they singing in?

McNeil

They sing Western music and then compositions by their own composers. Yes, and they are very outstanding. The Korean choirs are terrific, well-educated. They come to this country, you know. They bring over conductors. It was a four-day workshop with all levels, children's choirs, junior high choirs, senior high choirs, university choirs, and professional choirs.

Patterson

And so it's in the Western tradition, the European tradition.

McNeil

In the Western tradition, and yet they did compositions by their own composers.

Patterson

But also written in the Western tradition, right?

McNeil

Also written in the Western tradition, but in their language. They gave me these citations, too. See, these things on the wall are special citations from-- [off-tape conversation]

McNeil

[hammers] I don't know how that's going to come through for you.

Patterson

Oh, those are beautiful.

McNeil

See? If it will stay. [hammers]

Patterson

So they gave you these as gifts when you were in there.

McNeil

Yes, and they gave me this citation. See, red is the country of joy. "In deep recognition of and with gratitude for your outstanding lecture for choral leaders [unclear]. The Eleventh Choral Symposium, Tom Wong Yoon, President of the Federation of Choral Music of Korea." See? That was really something.

Patterson

Yes, so it's like inlaid mother-of-pearl or something, or abalone shell.

McNeil

And red is their official color of joy. [hammers] What is this thing? [laughter]

Patterson

Okay, we've got it. Have you ever conducted a Korean or an Asian choir?

McNeil

Oh yes, I did. When I was there, I was conducting a European choir.

Patterson

Oh, so you [unclear due to crosstalk].

McNeil

What they did wrong was, they violated the--what do you call it--they violated the copyright laws, because I sent twenty-five pieces, and they put them all into a book and didn't tell me about it, five hundred copies of this book with American publications, and gave it to all the conductors.

Patterson

Uh-oh.

McNeil

And that's how we sang. I'd work with high school. I'd work with choirs, university choirs. They have about eight or ten major cities in Korea, of which four or five were the biggest, Pusan, for example.

Patterson

This is South Korea.

McNeil

Yes. Oh, definitely South Korea. It was so interesting, because they took those things and they were performing them all over the country. [laughs]

Patterson

Oh, wow.

McNeil

And I told them, I said, "You know what? We don't have a trade agreement that would have protected that." You know, they just did it. It's just like stealing CDs. And see, we don't have trade agreements with some of these people.

Patterson

What is this?

McNeil

I bought that in--it's someplace in Africa. Where was that? Gambia. Isn't it interesting?

Patterson

Yes. So you did all of those West African countries with the Fisk Jubilee Singers?

McNeil

Not Fisk.

Patterson

Oh, with the State Department.

McNeil

Yes, the State Department, but it was with the Jubilee Singers, my McNeil Jubilee Singers.

Patterson

Yes, right, exactly. That's what I said.

McNeil

Because we have two names, L.A. Jubilee Singers and the Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers. It's the same group.

Patterson

Why do you call them two different things?

McNeil

Well, originally when we went to Europe, we were called the Los Angeles Jubilee Singers, and then with Columbia concerts that I used to work for said, "Hey, you change that name to the Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers of Los Angeles." That's how that happened. It's an evolutionary process.

Patterson

Oh, okay.

McNeil

I forgot I had these things over here.

Patterson

Yes, and they're beautiful, too.

McNeil

Different icons. When I was in Russia, you could buy those things, you know. The Russian icons are so nice. Anyway, here. Yes, here, the Russian icons. And this came from Romania, those dishes.

Patterson

Do we need to beat on the--

McNeil

Yes. Let's see. What is this? Oh, the League of Allied Arts gave me this. I was their nineteenth 2004 honoree, the League of Allied Arts in Los Angeles, a black organization. Just beat on it. [hammers]

Patterson

We're real high-tech. [laughs]

McNeil

Isn't that something? We've got to remember how to do this. League of Allied Arts, 2004.

Patterson

What is their function? What do they do?

McNeil

Those are paper mache.

Patterson

This group.

McNeil

I'm sorry?

Patterson

The League of Allied--what do they do?

McNeil

It's an all-black woman's organization. They've been together for fifty years, and they encourage literature, drama, art, and music, and they pick out certain honorees every year. They're very, very well established. I forget [unclear] in 2004.

Patterson

So most of these you collected when you were [unclear] overseas.

McNeil

Yes, right. I got this when I was in Rio. Do you know what this represents? This is the cathedral in downtown Rio. It seats five thousand.

Patterson

Wow.

McNeil

And this is the baptistery. Isn't that something?

Patterson

Look at that shape. It's almost like a pyramid.

McNeil

It is. Isn't that something? I was so impressed with that. Who is this? Oh, this is for Helen [McNeil's wife, now deceased]. Helen has been very active with the Children's Home Society, and they gave her this for her twenty-five years of service. [reads] "Forty years of service and dedication to the Children's Home Society." See, I was adopted from the Children's Home Society. That was my agency, and I encouraged her to be a part of that.

Patterson

A [inaudible]?

McNeil

I don't know what this is. [inaudible], Lake Tahoe.

Patterson

Lake Tahoe is on fire.

McNeil

Something to do with Lake Tahoe. Anyway--

Patterson

Gosh, you have stuff from all over the world in there.

McNeil

Yes. Well, of course, I said the lladros were Spain. This is from Jamaica, which I like very much, and let's see.

Patterson

Is this from--

McNeil

This is from Russia. That's an icon, a religious icon.

Patterson

When did you go there? When did that happen?

McNeil

When was I there? Oh, this was [unclear] 2002. I was in Russia--let me see.

Patterson

Well, you guys want to come back and sit here, because I [unclear due to crosstalk].

McNeil

1992. We performed in--

Patterson

So this was post-communist Russia.

McNeil

--Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow. That was quite a thing. They had just opened a McDonald's.

Patterson

The first McDonald's in Russia?

McNeil

The first McDonald's was there.

Patterson

So how did you find Russia? What was it like? You took the Jubilee Singers, your singers, so you--

McNeil

And my university choir. I had a hundred and seventy-five kids, band, orchestra, and chorus, and the Jubilee Singers.

Patterson

That was a huge trip.

McNeil

We traveled from Tallin [Estonia] in the Balkan states through St. Petersburg to Moscow on a train.

Patterson

With all those kids.

McNeil

With all those kids. Of course, we had the--

Patterson

How did you manage that?

McNeil

We had a couple of faculty members and many college kids, you know. They can take care of themselves. It was really a wonderful experience.

Patterson

Wow.

McNeil

A wonderful experience.

Patterson

So you were singing spirituals and--

McNeil

Spirituals, but we were doing the Haydn's "Creation" with the symphony orchestra. Yes, so that was one of [unclear due to crosstalk].

Unidentified Female

We're going to have to change tapes. [recorder turned off]

Patterson

This is a little off the subject. I didn't know you were looking for him. Rap music. What do you think about rap music?

McNeil

I think it's just a reflection of our social times. I think it's an evolutionary process. It comes from the deep ghetto, and there's this desire to be expressive, and it's an unusual mixture of rhythm and rhyming. It takes a great deal of thought to do that, you know, a great deal of--well, not a great deal, because it's almost a natural outgrowth coming from there.

Patterson

Part of what they do is called freestyle, so it's an improvisatory--

McNeil

So I think it's wonderful. A lot of people may disagree with me. As long as it doesn't be obscene and derogatory at women. I don't like that idea at all. I think that's disgraceful. But, no, I think, believe it or not, I think I'm getting nearer something here.

Patterson

Getting warmer, huh?

McNeil

Yes. It's funny that I don't see his name, unless I'm skipping over it all the time. I've seen Mary Lou Williams several times.

Patterson

Do you remember any concerts that he played that might trigger your image of him?

McNeil

You know, he's so extensively known. If I can just mention him to you--gosh, I don't know why I can't remember this man's name. Hoagie Carmichael, this is the black renaissance. That doesn't help me.

Patterson

You're going to think of it as soon as we walk out the door.

McNeil

I bet. It will happen. I'll call you on the phone and say--

Patterson

There was something I wanted to ask you about working with children. You've worked with the children's choir and the [unclear]. How is it different teaching them music and so-called serious music, and teaching college students? Do you find that they learn a little differently?

McNeil

First of all, the college students are there because they want to be. Elementary school kids will eat out of your hand if you are offering them something that they enjoy doing and if they can feel a sense of accomplishment, but you've got to consider two things. With the elementary school kid, you have two periods. Kindergarten through, say, the third grade, that's one. They can only sing in unison at that level, just little simple melodies, repetitious melody, repetitious words, fun songs. But you can direct them to be concerned about how they sound, to improve the quality of something, and grow up with that in their consciousness. From, say, fourth to sixth grade, you can begin eventually to teach them to singing in parts, particularly fifth graders. They can begin to be independent singers.

McNeil

What I used to do was, I did a lot of rounds. You know, "Row, row, row your boat," and then you hear the contrary parts. Then eventually I would teach, by rote, the lower--the lower part is the hardest one to learn, the alto part. The kids can sing melody, you see. Then, of course, you begin to match up, have half of them singing alto and have the others singing soprano. We'd have these little two-part songs going.

McNeil

Eventually you've got sixth grade, maybe seventh-graders, there's a difference. You're going to approach the problem of vocal change for the boys. Seventh-grade boys and eighth-grade boys, they have vocal changes, and a lot of them don't want to sing, and I always encourage the boys to sing. Yes, because they know that it's a difficult thing for them to do. Their range is maybe only three or four or five notes, you see. Girls mature much faster than boys, so you're going to have the girls perhaps learning to be independent singers much faster than the boys, only because of a physiological reason, that's all. Eventually seventh- and eight-graders, you can have maybe the seventh-graders singing the top melody and maybe the eighth-graders doing the harmony, the alto part.

McNeil

Then you might be able to put together a choir, like at Audubon Junior High School, I had a four-part choir. I had boys singing bass; they had a very limited range. I had boys who were alto tenors, whose voices had not really changed really yet. They had enough alto quality that they could sing a tenor line. Then you had the girls doing the alto and soprano. So I had a four-part choir, and that included seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-graders. And you know, ninth-graders had changed voices, so that's where I had the boys who could--their range was maybe an octave, you know, from C to C. Maybe they could do a B, but C to C. And then you were beginning to develop some boys who could do what we would call a tenor part, but they were still unchanged, still in that alto-tenor quality.

McNeil

When you get to high school, there's an amazing leap from the ninth grade to the tenth grade, physiologically, psychologically, every kind of way. The whole attitude is different. You're out of middle school, you're out of junior high, and now you're approaching maturity, and I had great choirs. When I was at Dorsey High School, I had great. We sang four-, five-, six-, and eight-part music. We did Haydn masses. We did Palestrina masses. I taught them all the literature, because as a music educator, it's my responsibility to introduce them to all kinds of music, not just what they would hear. This is one thing that bothers me about the community in Los Angeles. We have some schools where the kids are only taught gospel music. That's an abhorrent thing. They can go to church and hear that. They don't need to go to school to hear gospel music. They need to come to school to learn the different kinds of music that exist for the voice.

McNeil

Obviously, in a university, you have a different--you have more mature voices. You have developed voices. Developmental stages, you have eighteen-, nineteen-, twenty-one-, twenty-two-, twenty-three-year-old young men and women, and you can make excellent music. But you can do the same thing in high school. At Dorsey I did everything you could think of. I did some of the most difficult stuff, and it worked. Those kids will learn.

Patterson

Some people say that learning music sharpens the mind in ways that--I mean, we don't really honor the musical arts or the arts generally in the K-through-twelve schools. You know, they cut those programs so much of the time.

McNeil

Well, there's such a thing as you develop your esthetic qualities of the brain. There are the calculating sections, the mathematic section, the scientific area of the brain is one thing. But the esthetic section of the brain has to be equally developed, and it is there. It needs to be developed. If it's never developed, then the kids will not develop an esthetic ability to appreciate art, music, or drama even, particularly music.

Patterson

Do you think that learning music and developing some acuity in music affects the other areas of your social living?

McNeil

I'm convinced it does. Absolutely. You're developing the whole person. If you're going to be strictly scientific and mathematically oriented, biological science [unclear], you're developing one aspect of the brain. The esthetic, you know, the use of the imagination. Unfortunately, we've forgotten that that exists, because we're so visually oriented. We turn on the television. It's all fed to us. What do you have to imagine? Do we teach--the big problem, I used to read books and imagine all my characters in my mind, and I've read some books that eventually were made into films, and it was interesting how the personality that I thought would fit the character would be differently portrayed. But at least it was approximately what I thought that character would be like that I'd read about. But the use of the imagination is extremely important, and we don't have those occasions. The imagination comes through with drawings. The imagination comes through with creativity. Sitting at the piano and poking out a little melody, whether you know how to read notes or not, just poking it out and trying to make sense with it is a creative ability, and that's what I'm talking about, developing the creative ability. That's extremely important.

Patterson

What were some of your favorite books?

McNeil

Novels?

Patterson

Just any kind. Yes. Yes, novels.

McNeil

Well, of course, I like Gone with the Wind, but that was back in the year one.

Patterson

It's a great novel.

McNeil

But I didn't necessarily have favorite books. All of my books were favorite books. Any book that I attempted to read that was a novel became--because it had its own unique qualities, you see. But [unclear] going to college, so I didn't have much chance to read novels or books, but I did have a chance to create, to write little compositions and to arrange music, or to play improvisatory. Be at the piano, I mean, just anything that I wanted to play, you know, and that was developing that aspect of my creative ability.

Patterson

But before you went to college, you did read novels. Like I remember when I first read it, I didn't want it to be over. It was a big, thick thing, and I--

McNeil

What was that?

Patterson

Gone with the Wind. When I read it, I didn't want it to be over.

McNeil

Oh. I read it because everybody was talking about it. And you know one thing, my family read, and that helped. My dad didn't. My mother did, and because she read and my sister read, that I became like my wife. You see all the books on the floor? We go crazy in this house. I'm going, "Where are you going to put these books?" You're going down the hall, and there's a big stack of books. You go in the office, books all over the place.

McNeil

She said, "Don't touch my books." She loves books.

McNeil

And I said, "Well, you've read them."

McNeil

"That's okay. Leave those books there."

McNeil

Well, I feel that way about music. That's why my stuff is all over the floor. I have four or five file cabinets back there filled with choral music. Then I have a storage place with three big file cabinets that has all the music of the Jubilee Singers that we've done over the years, and catalogs. I paid somebody to come in and do it, because I thought that I would never do it.

Patterson

Those are all your arrangements, right?

McNeil

Some of my arrangements, but most of them are everything that I could put my hand on. So I have a collection of most all African American composers and arrangers that wrote choral music. I have it all there in that library.

Patterson

Your own compositions of choral music, do you have them perform your own compositions of choral music?

McNeil

Oh yes, I always do that. Look in that program I gave you. I did two of them.

Patterson

So did your children love to read, too? Your children, did they love to read?

McNeil

Oh, my son? Thank God for my wife. She read to him when he was a little kid, the Odyssey and the Iliad, all the classic stuff, so that he knew all about these things, and I was so happy that she did. And for Christmas we'd always get three or four books, and then we bought him the children's encyclopedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica. Then when he was doing his little homework and his papers, he'd go check the encyclopedia. Of course, nowadays you have the computer. He didn't have the computer at that point when he was a little kid.

McNeil

But no, as a result, when he went to Yale, he was thoroughly adept in reading. He had an integrated major, and they only chose twenty-five students to be in the integrated major. After you did your freshman year, then your sophomore and junior and senior year, you had the history of everything you can think of, art, music, philosophy, mathematics, science. You were taught by a senior professor. Now, in that group of twenty-five, only fourteen survived until their senior year, and he was one of them. So it says the "Bachelor of Arts Degree in Integrated Studies with emphasis in the field of history of civilization," actually, is what it's called.

Patterson

What do you think about the transition to computer learning?

McNeil

I think it's wonderful, but I think it takes away the imagination. That's the only one thing that I don't like. Yes, computer learning, I think, is effective. Computer process for learning music is fabulous. It benefits them fabulously. There's a technique to teach people rhythm which is in the computer, and you follow that with a CD and do exactly what it says, and you can learn a lot. Then you can test yourself. I like the idea of test and find out immediately what you didn't know, and you can get that instantaneously in a computer.

Patterson

Did you find your experience teaching up in Davis has changed over the years, maybe based on some of these new learning methods or--

McNeil

No, the technique of teaching choral is a pretty principled affair. You either know how to do it or you don't. You either have the technique that you've developed yourself over the years, and I had my own technique of teaching, you know. If I'm teaching something, if I know that many of the students know how to read, it makes it easier, but then by the same token I can spend more time with interpretation rather than teaching notes, per se, you know. I mean, there's a big difference here.

Patterson

Have they changed at all since you taught there before?

McNeil

No. I think kids have gotten maybe a little sharper.

Patterson

Really.

McNeil

Yes, I think so.

Patterson

Why, do you think? What happened?

McNeil

Well, I think computers helped. I think now instruction courses have improved to the point where you--unfortunately, in a university a person is hired based on his degree and his experience, but many of them don't want to be called music educators. They forget they are educating. "No, I'm a musician. I'm a composer. I'm a theorist. I'm a historian." But how do you teach that information? Is it question and answer? Is it analysis? How do you teach? If you say you're teaching the music of African Americans, how do you go about that? Where do you start? How do you create a way to motivate students to want to know more? So how do you do that?

Patterson

Do you think it lies in ethnic studies and during the training of a potential professor or teacher? Do you think that the training of a potential teacher needs to be more steeped in ethnic studies?

McNeil

Oh yes, I think that many professors need to go take a course on how to teach. I think they also need to go and teach a course on how to make a test. What are you testing? How do you evaluate that information? Is it rote learning that you're testing, or are you giving a student an opportunity to use all the information he has gathered to come up with an answer? What do you want, a rote response or do you want a creative response? There's a big difference here.

Patterson

What do you do?

McNeil

I try to use the creative approach. I give a little bit of this, and I say, "You've studied this and this and this and this and this. Now, how would you summarize this information for me?"

Patterson

Say it's test day in Dr. McNeil's class, and we're sitting down and about to take an exam with you. Do you give exams in your choral department

McNeil

Choral music, no. We do oral examinations.

Patterson

Describe what that would be.

McNeil

What would I do? For example, if you give me a four-part piece, and you've had a whole quarter to learn it, and you've sung it, and you've performed it, can you stand up on your feet in a quartet, one soprano, one alto, one tenor, and bass, and sing it for me? Not being in a situation where you've got people all around you singing the same part, but you, can you carry your responsibility, considering all the nuances, the accents, the pianos, the fortissimos, the phrasing, the breath control, the diction? I mean, when you sing, are you aware of what we call voice consonants, explosive consonants, and so on and so forth? Do you know that kind of--and we teach that. When I teach choral music, I teach it, if you're going to sing the word "Christ," there's a t there. You could sing it without the t and it comes out "Chri" . You know what the explosive t is, where the t and the p and the k, those are all--p, t, k, for example--explosive consonants. Voice consonants would be an m. [sings] "Done," or anything that you have to sing through the consonant. [sings] "N-n-n, nothing, nothing." There's already a [unclear].

McNeil

In other words, I'm saying if you can demonstrate your knowledge of the basic principles of pronunciation and enunciation and diction, plus breath control, then I'm looking at you as an independent singer within the choral responsibility of a soprano, alto, tenor, and bass.

Patterson

So they needed to know the repertoire--

McNeil

They needed to know the repertoire.

Patterson

--and then the technique as well.

McNeil

Exactly. And I did that with Chamber Singers up at Davis. They were surprised. You [unclear phrase] sing. You've sung this piece for eight weeks. Now I want to hear what you've done with it, what your contribution has been to the total.

Patterson

So they've got to be on the spot at exam time.

McNeil

That's it.

Patterson

When you were talking about explosive consonants, it brought me back to thinking about how, when we're standing in front of a microphone, how we have to handle explosive consonants.

McNeil

Yes, you've got to watch the explosives. You can pop that microphone and destroy your whole speech. Back away from it, particularly if you're going to be right up on top, p, p, you know, and that kind of stuff. [demonstrates] It just doesn't work.

Patterson

Do you cover any recording techniques in your classes, or it's basically stepped in just the--

McNeil

No. When you're teaching strictly a class, you're so busy teaching the repertory and then working on interpretation. They've got to learn to watch your movement to the point where you and they become as one. They know your slightest move. You don't have to flail through the air with whatever you're doing to indicate what you want. It just happens.

Patterson

Do you require that your students learn to solo, to do solo work?

McNeil

Not necessarily. If there's a solo to be taught or if a couple of pieces have solo, I would say go prepare yourself with it, and they can come and sing for me, and then we'll determine whether you have the quality that will fit this piece. It will be, you know, that type of thing.

Patterson

Do you require that the students audition for you to be in--

McNeil

Of course. You want to make sure that they can carry a tune, that they can differentiate between what is high and what is low, what is quality, what is nasal, what is strident, what is yelling as opposed to singing. So you have all of these variations to deal with.

Patterson

How does the leadership at the UC campus, how do they view the musical arts there? How do they value--

McNeil

Very high, very high, because what has happened at Davis is a phenomenon. We have now two hundred music majors and something like two hundred and fifty music minors. When I left Davis, we had maybe thirty music majors and maybe fifty minors.

Patterson

Wow.

McNeil

Then we had what we call general ed courses, like a general music history class or a general listening course, where you study and listen to a lot of music and begin to put it into certain frameworks, whether it was classical or manic or contemporary or so-called modern, that type of thing, but a general student, and that was a requirement. But now they're bulging at the seams up there.

Patterson

Why did it grow like that?

McNeil

I think so because of the Mondavi Performing Arts Center. And we have always had a big symphony orchestra, a hundred and fifty players in the symphony orchestra. We've got something like ninety kids in that concert band. They have two hundred and fifty in the marching band. They have a lot of chamber music groups. You have an early music ensemble of vocal music, where they study only music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. We have about $250,000 worth of ancient instruments that the kids learn to play those, and they can synthesize, they can understand the history of music better by playing the clavier and these other instruments, krumhorns and whatever and whatever. But the hall has made a big difference.

McNeil

We have a Ph.D. program there. We've had it for the last almost twenty years now, Ph.D. in musicology and composition and the history of musicology, its history.

Patterson

So there's no ethnomusicology department.

McNeil

Yes. They now have two people in ethno. They just started it last year.

Patterson

Just last year.

McNeil

Yes. Oh yes.

Patterson

What are they teaching?

McNeil

I was the only one that taught ethno, so-called ethnomusicology. I taught music of Mexico and China and India. Those were my three fields, and I had to learn faster than the students, but when they'd come to class, I had been studying myself, so I hit--because they needed that class like that, you know, at that time, and the kids wanted it, and the department wanted it. But yet they didn't have any money to hire an ethnomusicologist, and here I come. I said, "I'm not an ethnomusicologist. That's a vocational interest of mine." I said, "My field is music education in choral music and arranging." I said, "Those are my fields."

McNeil

"Al, please. You can do the music of Africa, and you can do the music of African Americans, and we can start." So I started with the music of Africa, Nkrumah's book. I used this book, fantastic, and I learned a lot myself. You know, you're self-taught information. Nkrumah was at UCLA for years, and he would be between UCLA one year and Harvard the next year. I think I've lost his book. It's called The Music of Africa. You can't miss it. It's very analytical.

Patterson

Kwabena Nketia? The Music of Africa is Kwabena Nketia.

McNeil

What's his name?

Patterson

Nketia.

McNeil

Nketia. Nketia. He called himself Nketia. That's him. Exactly right. That's the book I used, and I got a chance to meet him, and we talked a lot. When I went to talk to him, I said, "What am I going to do with this class?" Then I got a lot of recordings. Unfortunately, they didn't have videos in those days, but I had recordings, and I self-taught myself. I learned all about polyrhythms. Of course, it was extremely important. The drums and instruments, I took out, and we would experiment with that. I said, "It's very interesting. If you can play a twelve-eight rhythm, you're something else. If can play five over four, if you can play seven over six, I mean, all of these things, you know, and how they fit the rhythms to mesh right with that. You're doing one, two, three, four, five, and somebody was doing something else, three, four five, man, and you're going like this, obviously, at different tempi." It's amazing, but we learned to do that, and I spread that with my kids.

McNeil

And I learned the different languages. I learned all about the Yoruba and, because I hadn't been there, the Hausa and the different tribal societies, and we talked about how the map of Africa was hacked apart by the Europeans, the imperialists, the Dutch, the British, the French. Let me see; the Germans. They all came in there, and they hacked up the--and gave political boundaries that didn't coincide with the tribal boundaries. So you would have like--particularly in Nigeria; it's spilling over into Ghana. That's why you're having these wars, because they have their own turf. How do you expect somebody to feel nationalistic about Nigeria when there are Hausa?

Patterson

Sure.

McNeil

Or the Ibo, you know what I mean, where the Ibo maybe embraces several countries. I kept telling them. I'd say, "You know, the allegiance is to the tribal society and the tribal chieftain system." Then you come in and you elect a president, and if it's not an Ibo, and the vice president is a Hausa, how do you expect the people to understand that?

Patterson

I imagine that was just groundbreaking for your students, because we don't get any of that.

McNeil

Oh yes. They thought I was a--and then I would go on these tours. When I'd come back, I'd just be loaded. We'd be so excited to share information with the kids, you know. Then you read. I had to read and study myself so I'd at least be conversant; not necessarily an expert. In a university you don't claim to be. I'd tell my colleagues I was [unclear]. I'd tell them about Al McNeil is an ethnomusicologist; I'm not. I said, "Ethnomusicology is my avocation. I'm terribly interested, because I deal with ethnicity." And I said, "But I have to know--," like I taught a piece at my program called "Zungo." It's a Nigerian folk song, "Zungo," and it's in Swahili. It's arranged by Uzi Brown, who is a composer on the faculty of Morehouse, and he arranged this for the Morehouse Men's Glee Club. It's called "Zungo."

Patterson

Z-u-n-g-o?

McNeil

Z-u-n-g-o, yes. I made my twenty-two little voice group of white kids, predominantly--of course, I don't know how it is at UCLA, but just about every other kid at Davis is Asian. I mean, you've got predominant--47 percent of the Davis population is Asian, 47 percent. Only 32 percent are white. The remaining are other ethnicities, blacks and Native Americans, but that's up with the small number twos.

Patterson

Latinos is pretty substantial?

McNeil

And Arabic. You've got nations that represent the Middle East. Forty-seven percent are Asians.

Patterson

Is there any musical aptitude differences or traditional practices that make the Eastern--so-called Eastern and Western students learn music differently?

McNeil

You see, that's a pretty loaded question. Learning is dependent on so many other factors other than ethnicity. Maybe some people are more inherently rhythmic than others. You'd say that. But if you're going to follow down the line psychologically, a person can be taught to do anything in the right environment and the right teaching technique. They may not do it like, say, a native person from Africa who has an internal sense of rhythm, which may or may not be considered genetic, you see. They say, "Well, black people are so much more rhythmic." I've seen some black people that have a heck of a time walking in time, I mean like marching.

McNeil

When I was in ROTC at UCLA, they couldn't keep step, invariably [unclear]. But then there are others who can. You can watch black kids dance, and they can move so fantastically that you--and you look at another group of white kids, say, for example, who come out of another environment, that have a difficult time. But under the right teaching and careful awareness that they bring to it, they can learn to do it, maybe not as well as the black kids, but almost. I've seen it on these dance shows that are going on here recently. I mean, you see some people have an aptitude for movement, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they're black. They could be white and have this tremendous sensitivity to rhythm.

McNeil

So you have to be very careful how you use generalized expressions, like do black people do this better or do white people do that better. It depends on so many environmental factors that make up the total opportunity to learn, you see. It's been my observation. I started teaching at all Spanish-speaking schools over on the East Side, and I had a little violin class of maybe about fourteen or fifteen kids, and I taught the violin. I found that my Hispanic kids vocally were not as pleasant to hear as my African American kids were. African American kids sing maybe a little more musically. I don't know if it's because of their background or their going to church or whatever it is. But there's something about the Hispanic vocal production that needs to be cultivated and trained. I'm not saying they can't learn to do it, but they have more difficulty doing it.

Patterson

Interesting.

McNeil

But that was my experience. I taught in Spanish, and I taught in English. It was a great experience for me.

Patterson

What schools were these?

McNeil

Hammel Street Elementary School.

Patterson

H-a-m-e-l?

McNeil

Hammel. We had about eighteen hundred little Latino kids. I did Las Posadas there. That's the story of the Christmas, that Joseph and Mary are looking for a place to have the birth of Jesus. I was the first one in the L.A. Unified School District to do it, but I did my own research on it, because there was nothing available. I went out to the Padua Hills Theater out way on the east end out near Alhambra someplace. It was an outdoor theater, and they were doing Las Posadas, and I got ahold of some lead sheets, you know, and I took those lead sheets and I made it into a little thing. We had Las Posadas on my campus, fourteen hundred elementary kids. The school was on several levels. The main buildings were up here. Down lower is another set of buildings, and down lower. It was very hilly out there, so you had three different levels of buildings. And we did Las Posadas, and it was packed. All the Latino parents came with their children. And we had the little processional, the pilgrims looking for--and we chose a mother. We chose a Maria and a Jose, Mary and Joseph, to lead the procession. And I learned about Las Posadas while I taught there. I didn't know it existed. And now they do it on Olvera Street every Christmas.

Patterson

What year was that that you produced that?

McNeil

Let me see.

Patterson

Approximately.

McNeil

Late fifties, early sixties. Late fifties, yes. Late fifties or early sixties, because I came to Audubon in '59. Then I went to Dorsey in '63, and I stayed at Dorsey until '70, and from '70 I went to the university until '92.

Patterson

So are you going to go back to Davis next quarter?

McNeil

I'm involved in some other--if they ask me to come, but I don't know. That two days a week almost killed me, but it was fun.

Patterson

That's a lot of commuting. [laughs]

McNeil

It was flying up and then flying home on Thursday mornings. I didn't mind it. It was very challenging.

Patterson

I'm sure.

McNeil

It was wonderful. I only taught the two classes, but it was four hours a day, from four to six and seven to nine. I had to have a break for dinner. But that four until nine, sometimes nine-thirty, you know, conducting and talking and conducting and talking for four hours.

Patterson

What is the ideal way that you would like to spend your time right now, going forward?

McNeil

Oh, traveling.

Patterson

Traveling.

McNeil

Traveling and performing. I would love that.

Patterson

That's your favorite thing to do.

McNeil

Yes, and I love going to different places. Not so much in the States, foreign countries.

Patterson

Do you have a favorite place to go?

McNeil

Spain.

Patterson

Really.

McNeil

Oh, I love Spain.

Patterson

Why?

McNeil

Well, I do have a Spanish ability. I love Puerto Rico, too. You know, I love the food. I love the feeling of being in a foreign country, and I feel comfortable there.

Patterson

Have you made friends after so many times?

McNeil

Oh yes, I have a lot of friends. I have friends all over. In Burgos I have some very good--it's a most interesting thing. When I played Burgos one season--

Patterson

B-u-r-g-o-s?

McNeil

Burgos is right in the center part of Spain. It's a very ancient city. It has the most magnificent cathedral of any of the cathedrals I've seen. It's a gothic cathedral, so the cathedral was built about the 1300s, and with a lot of detail. But when I came there, I got a telephone call from Ricardo de Quesada, and he said, "Al, Spain is going to celebrate the sailing of Columbus to the new world." Now, that was the bicentennial of the Spanish government.

Patterson

Two hundred and fifty years?

McNeil

What year was that?

Patterson

Two hundred and fifty years was--

McNeil

It was a hundred years or something. Whatever it was, they were celebrating it.

Patterson

It was two-fifty years, and it was--

McNeil

The two hundred years or--

Patterson

'97, 1997.

McNeil

'47--'97. That's right. '97 sounds right. Well, I got this phone call, and Ricardo says, "Al, how would you like to perform in the palace where Ferdinand and Isabella dispatched Columbus to the New World, in Segovia?" That's another city.

McNeil

And I said, "Oh, God, I would love that." And I said, "What are we going to be doing?"

McNeil

He said, "You have to do the music of the Spanish Renaissance, Guerrero, Morales, Victoria." These are the great composers of what they call the golden age of Spanish composition. You're talking music of the seventeenth and eighteenth century.

McNeil

And I said, "What?" I said, "How many selections?"

McNeil

He said, "You can do about eight or nine, and then in the second part of the program you can do spirituals. And we're going to call the program Dos Culturas, Two Cultures, one of Spain and one of the New World," and in this case, represented by the Negro spiritual. How do you like that? Isn't that fantastic?

Patterson

It's great.

McNeil

I was overwhelmed, and I thought, "I've got to call on my friends." I called up Paul Solomonovich. Paul used to be director of music at Loyola Marymount [University] and also the director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Paul and I as kids sang in the St. Joseph's Catholic Men and Boys Choir when we were teenagers. I'm older than he is. I think Paul was like ten. I was like thirteen. And Paul is an authority on the religious music of the Renaissance of Spain, and I said, "Paul, I'm going to choose this piece and this piece and this."

McNeil

"Great."

McNeil

I said, "Paul, I don't want you to come yet, but I want you to come to my rehearsal to make sure." You see, black people have this lovely, rich voice, but in order to create this music, you've got to have a soft, quiet, no-vibrato, no ah-ah-ah. [demonstrates] It's got to be a straight tone, and it's got to be--essentially, it was men and boys. Well, I worked with that choir, and I worked with that choir. I said, "Don't tell me black people cannot sing this music. They can if they're taught."

McNeil

He came to rehearsal, and he looked at me and said, "Al, I don't believe it."

McNeil

I said, "Paul, had I not sung in the Men and Boys Choir with Roger Wagner with you, I would never had a concept of what this music is supposed to sound like."

McNeil

And that's my argument again. If you're going to do spirituals and you're a white conductor, you've got to learn and listen to what black choirs sound like, particularly those who sing concert spirituals. I don't mean whooping and yelling and hollering and screaming. There's a big difference, you see, and you have to separate what is gospel and what is spiritual. You have to know the differences.

McNeil

Anyway, we went to Segovia, and you talk about a challenge. We went across this bridge over the moat into the palace in Segovia, and in the very room where Isabella and Ferdinand gave Columbus the declaration and the money and the finances to go to the New World, we sang that music. I couldn't believe it. It was just like--here I am in this place, singing this music of Guerrero, Morales, and Victoria.

Patterson

That was late fifteenth and early sixteenth.

McNeil

Fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth-century music.

Patterson

Wow.

McNeil

It was a trip.

Patterson

Did you record it?

McNeil

No. I mentioned Burgos. So when I got the phone call in Burgos, I told Ricardo, I said, "Ricardo, I don't know what pieces."

McNeil

So in my audience that night was a group of boys, I mean college students at the University of Burgos. They came up afterward and they were so nice to me. They said, "Come on. We want to take you for a drink," in Spanish.

McNeil

So I said, "Oh, I'd love to go with you guys."

McNeil

Then we went, and they said, "Tomorrow we're going to be singing. We are a choir. That's why we're here." There were about fourteen of them, a male choir. And they said, "We came to hear the spirituals."

McNeil

I said, "Oh, that's why you guys want to talk to me, huh?" But I said, "I have something I want you to do for me. Where do you rehearse?"

McNeil

"We rehearse at the University of Burgos."

McNeil

I said, "Do you have an archive of the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth century Spanish music?"

McNeil

"Oh, of course."

McNeil

I said, "Could you make some of those books available to me?"

McNeil

"Of course. Can you come tomorrow morning at ten o'clock?"

McNeil

I said, "Sure."

McNeil

Now, they sang for me. They were going to sing for a boda. A boda is a wedding. And the wedding was at one o'clock, and here we were fooling around in this rehearsal place at ten o'clock in the morning. I'm trying to hear them out of respect for them and paging through this stuff. So I found some things that I wanted to try, and I said, "Oh, you guys, I know these are archival things. I need copies of it."

McNeil

"Don't worry. We have a photocopy machine." So they photocopied maybe a dozen pieces.

McNeil

And I got on the phone and I said, "Ricardo, I have the following pieces."

McNeil

"How did you get that?"

McNeil

I said, "Don't worry where I got it from. I go it." It came right out of the archives of the University of Burgos. Isn't that something?

Patterson

Wow, you just happened to meet these guys.

McNeil

I just--I don't know, and I told the choir when w got on the bus to go, and I said, "Guess what, you guys? We're going to Segovia to celebrate the dispatching of Columbus to the New World." I mean, do you think that's historically important with a black choir--

Patterson

Yes, absolutely.

McNeil

--singing the music of Spain? Nobody believes that, you know.

Patterson

You know, there's a myth that Columbus saw black people when he arrived in the New World and he wrote it in his journal.

McNeil

I know. I know. He said that there were. Remember, he was looking for India, so he called them all Indians, and they were not Indians. That's a word that--they've had to bear the result of the trip to try to find India. Isn't that something?

Patterson

That's great that those students came and just really opened it all up for you.

McNeil

Oh, I'll tell you. I'll never forget them. I have that program in my archives someplace. That was called Dos Culturas, and in Spanish it explained it, the difference between the two cultures.

Patterson

Wow. So what did the young men say about the spirituals? How did they feel about the spirituals that they heard?

McNeil

Of course, naturally, I gave them what I had. I just gave them my whole book and said, "Take this." I said, "And you guys have to figure out how you can work out first tenor, second tenor, baritone, and bass parts." I said, "You can do it." And I still am in contact with them.

Patterson

Are you.

McNeil

Yes. Oh yes.

Patterson

Have you been back to Burgos, and do you go up--

McNeil

Oh yes, I've been to Burgos several times. Most of them have moved away. One became an apprentice to an organ builder in Barcelona, so when I go to Barcelona, they take me out to the organ building place, because he is an expert in renovating the ancient organs in all those churches in Spain and in Europe, Germany, too. The guy is German, married to a Spanish woman.

McNeil

But then one of my friends, Robert, Roberto, read an ad. He didn't know anything about pipe organs, and he went to Barcelona and told the man, he says, "I'm willing to learn." He's been there now, what, almost twenty years. He's an apprentice to the man. He's now married. He's married and lives in Barcelona. But then he's learned to build organs himself. He learned a tradition.

Patterson

That's wonderful.

McNeil

Isn't that fabulous?

Patterson

A great trade, yes.

McNeil

I just think it's--and they're always sending me literature on what they're doing now with the modern technology, electronic devices and stuff they use. It's really very exciting.

Patterson

Spain. So how long are you going to stay?

McNeil

I'm going to stay an extra week. I'll be gone two weeks. I'm just going to languish. Yes, I tell you, it's just wonderful.

Patterson

How much recording have you done with your group? Do you have a series of--

McNeil

We have four or five CDs. It's very difficult to do it unless you do it yourself. I had one commercial, and then most of them I've done myself. And whenever we do a concert we sell our CDs, and they go like hotcakes. I don't have a distributor or anything like that.

Patterson

Why? You never were interested?

McNeil

Well, it's a big thing, and the market is very narrow in this, and then we now have a web page where you can buy our CDs, and that's helped a lot. Now I'm performing in these different organizations. They pick it up, you see. Unless you're a connoisseur. My most important album is the one I did with the Mormon Tabernacle [Choir]. I showed you that, didn't I?

Patterson

No.

McNeil

Oh, I didn't?

Patterson

No.

McNeil

Well, let me show you the Mormon Tabernacle Choir album.

Patterson

Please.

McNeil

There's the thing over there, that's the way that--see that thing over there?

Patterson

Yes.

McNeil

Yes, that's the way the CD cover looks, and my name is on there with Moses Hogan. I did fourteen pieces with them. I'll show it to you.

Patterson

Yes, okay. Anything else that we can put on our-- [recorder turned off] [In the timed gap from 01:41:40 to 02:27:05, the audio file contained recorded material that was a duplicate of the interview from about 00:56:31 to 01:41:40.]

Patterson

This is beautifully framed. They matted it just right.

McNeil

This was the Jester Harrison memorial that I did. That was a history of memorial concert to Jester's one hundredth birthday. This is he. He had just died a week or two before.

Patterson

Carnegie Hall.

McNeil

And this was the whole thing and the participating choirs.

McNeil

You got that together awfully fast.

McNeil

Now, this is a black composer that I did. These here [unclear] mass--Nunez Garcia. He was a black priest, and then this is the original piece by Larry Farrow. It was a whole conglomerate of stuff.

Patterson

Did you ever know a Tommy Roberts?

McNeil

Of course, I know Tommy. I know Evelyn very well. Yes, of course I know Tommy very well.

Patterson

They used to love to do [unclear due to crosstalk].

McNeil

Now, this is the twentieth anniversary of the Jubilee Singers. This was in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and these were the kids who were in it.

Patterson

Okay, we've got to get that, too.

McNeil

They gave this to me. I was so shocked. They all got together, and they decided that they would inscribe that.

Patterson

[reads] "With great appreciation from all of us who have been touched by your vision on this your thirtieth anniversary from the Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers."

McNeil

To show you how things change, I only have about six people here who are still with me.

Patterson

How long did they stay? Was there an average?

McNeil

Oh, five, six, eight, ten years. We've been going thirty-seven years--

Patterson

Wow, that's great.

McNeil

--so as a result, you know.

Patterson

That's great. And are these the singers?

McNeil

No, that's my chamber group up in Davis when I first went. Can you tell by the hairdos? Look at me. I think that is the most amazing--I mean, my hair was absolutely black.

Patterson

You look like one of the kids.

McNeil

And a black mustache.

Patterson

Yes, you look like one of the kids.

McNeil

Now, this is very historic. This is a picture of Egypt. This is the minister of art and culture. Now, here I am, and here's my son. It was most interesting, because--

Patterson

You look like family. You look like you could all be family.

McNeil

You see what I mean about this thing?

Patterson

Yes, yes.

McNeil

This was one of the informal meetings that the State Department has, where you meet the intelligentsia. He was director of filmmaking, and the minister of art and culture for Egypt, the Republic of Egypt.

Patterson

What year was this?

McNeil

Oh, don't ask me questions like that.

Patterson

Oh, about, about.

McNeil

What was it about?

Patterson

Just approximate. Early--

McNeil

'79, '80, '78. Someplace in there.

Patterson

Late seventies.

McNeil

Yes, late seventies, early eighties. Now, this is my son when he was--

Patterson

Oh, that's so cute.

McNeil

--he was three years old. Two years old, two years old. This is the first time he ever saw a cat. He was two years old.

Patterson

Yes, he was very intent. [laughs]

McNeil

Naturally he was intent. Well, now, these are things that I'm very proud of, too. I see Helen has her damn books all over the place. I'm an honorary member of the Puerto Rican Choral Directors, and they gave me that plaque when we performed there.

Patterson

[reads plaque in Spanish] "Igno exponente de la musica chorale afro-americana--"

McNeil

You see? "International la sociedad Puerto Ricena de todos des choros confiere el titolo de miendro honorario." That was 1984. I can't believe it was that long ago.

Patterson

And that's a coastal building?

McNeil

That is Zamoro. That's the castle right there when you enter it. And this was one thing I'm very proud of, too. I directed for ten days the Coro Nacional of the Dominican Republic, and they gave me this.

Patterson

Wow, so the Dominican Republic.

McNeil

[reads] "Especialmente nuestra permira con clare la clausura les su quatre temporala de conciertos." That was on June 1995.

Patterson

So you directed their choir.

McNeil

Yes, I was there ten days. I taught them an entire repertory there. This is the church I used to work in. They gave me that.

Patterson

Now, these were mostly black students then, right?

McNeil

These are not students. These are all adults. This is a paid choir. These people were just here two weeks ago. I hadn't seen them since then. Senor Bernardino Ortiz and Josefina Gardino. This is when my son graduated from law school. Everybody was so happy. This is one of our closest friends. This, I'm the godfather of Francisco Naves children. She just graduated from Davis. [laughs]

Patterson

Oh, that's what you mentioned earlier, yes.

McNeil

That's Melissa, Melissa. Come on, let's have tea.

Patterson

That's priceless. Okay.

McNeil

Okay.

Patterson

Yes. Oh, I want to get these, too. [pause]

McNeil

Okay. Oh yes, this was in Paris, my concert at Eglise Saint-Germain-des-Pres. That is a very prestigious church.

Patterson

Oh, wow. Yes.

McNeil

It's a fabulous church, what happened. Look how you get it so clear.

Patterson

That church is wonderful.

McNeil

That's Saint-Germain-des-Pres. This was 1993 or ['9]4.

Patterson

And interesting, they say the spirituals from the black Bible.

McNeil

Yes, and spirituals of faith and hope. And the Eglise Saint-Germain is on what they call la rive gauche, on the left bank.

Patterson

Gorgeous.

McNeil

Really fabulous location. You've been to Paris? Then you know. Listen, and Saint-Germain-des-Pres is a very famous church. They use it for concerts. And, of course, this was my first trip to Japan. I've been in Japan five times.

Patterson

Yes. When did you go? When was this?

McNeil

Let's see. What year was this? Let me see. I went in '92, '94, '96, '98, 2000. I've been five times, every other year.

Patterson

Yes, Tokyo. Where did you play?

McNeil

Oh, my god, all over Japan.

Patterson

In Tokyo?

McNeil

Tokyo, of course we played Tokyo.

Patterson

Where? Do you know where?

McNeil

I don't know the theater in Tokyo, but it was a recital hall, and we played in Osa-- [End of recording]