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LETTERS
To the Editor:
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In my "Talegate" memoir (OHQ 108:1, Spring 2007), which noted my jazz career from high school to the present time, I mentioned my involvement in the 1965–1966 Portland State College Jazz Festival. |
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However, I neglected to mention the name of the person whose hard work in inaugurating the first jazz festival in Oregon was more important than mine. While I produced the musical side of this major jazz event for its two-year history, it would have never happened without the initial and ongoing support of Timme Helzer. |
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Helzer was student body president of Portland State College in 1965, and it was his relentless meetings with the college and the student activities board on the concept of producing a jazz festival under the PSC name that made it a reality. |
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We first discussed it on a casual basis but it was Helzer who took the idea up the ladder of authority and gained the necessary commitments that allowed me to then contact booking agents and subsequently hire Dave Brubeck in 1965 and Miles Davis and Vince Guaraldi in 1966. |
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Helzer's love of jazz did not end with that festival. He continues to be one of Portland's most vociferous and loyal jazz fans and supporter of the many highly talented jazz artists in the city and region. And over the last 40 years he has been my closest advisor in the jazz events produced since the PSC Jazz Festival. |
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Also, the reference on the Jazz Clubs page to the Café Espresso on Southwest Second Avenue is wrong. There was a basement-situated jazz venue on Southwest Columbia Street at Second but the name was "Studio A." The Café Espresso was a Portland coffeehouse in 1958–1959 at 1834 Southwest Sixth Avenue. In the early 1960s, a coffeehouse upstairs from the Studio A jazz venue was called Café Espresso. |
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| John Wendeborn
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| Portland, Oregon |
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