Jim Ketch, Trumpeter/Jazz Educator

Jim Ketch is Professor Emeritus of Music and Director of Jazz Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he taught for 40 years.  He participated as a faculty member at the Aebersold summer jazz workshops for 20 years.

Ketch has appeared with an extensive list of popular and jazz artists including: The Manhattan Transfer; John Pizzarelli; Marcus Roberts Trio; Tom Harrell; Byron Stripling; Slide Hampton;  Herlin Riley; Victor Goines, and Terri Lynne Carrington.

Did you use the Aebersold Play-A-Longs in your teaching? 

Yes, I use the Aebersold Play-A-Longs every day, and not only in my teaching.  I also use the Play-A-Longs for my practice as well. 

For my teaching, I used the Play-A-Longs as a rhythm section assist for jazz improvisation classes where we did not have a full rhythm section.

Whenever I had guest artists visit UNC, I would bring them into my large 300-person Intro to Jazz History Course. If the artists were willing, and almost always they were, I would have them (and me, too) play for the class using the Play-A-Longs.

How do you use the Aebersold Play-A-Longs in your practice?

I own the entire set of Play-A-Longs and keep them handy in my home trumpet studio. I use them to work on language, to learn new tunes, to practice specific tunes that are coming up on gigs, and to explore new repertoire and grooves that I don’t normally practice.

What is most important to understand about the Aebersold Play-A-Longs?

So many things are important and meaningful about the Play-A-Longs. The sheer depth and volume of materials available is staggering.  One could nearly study the entire history of the music through the composite of Jamey’s volumes.

And as great as the CDs are in the Play-A-Longs series, we must not forget the tremendous amount of jazz theory, phrasing, nomenclature, listening ideas, vocal lyrics, and on and on are included in the texts!

As an educator I have always enjoyed digesting the new materials Jamey would include when he put out a new edition of a previously published volume. You could almost see his brain spinning – ‘Okay, the students did not grasp this as well as I had hoped, hmmm, what could I do to make the crooked road a bit straighter?’ Volume 3 comes to mind with the expanded examples.

Are there particular Aebersold Play-A-Long albums you’ve found most useful?  Why?

I wrote an article or did a clinic on playing in all keys. As a result, I began to put more time in on Vols. 3, 21, 24, 42, 47, 67, 68 in particular. As expected, the payoff for doing more of this work was discernible quite quickly--more fluency in my playing, and a sense that my playing what I was hearing was rapidly expanding.

I can remember two patterns that Jamey had over major ii-7 V7 Is in his expanded Volume 3. I could not play those patterns in every key at that time and had to write out the patterns in all 12 keys.  Years later, those same patterns pop into my mind and I can play them quite easily…Jamey often stated ‘Infinite boiling softens the stone.’  Indeed!