As a young boy, tapping his foot to the music played by a nearby Kansas City 24-hour jazz radio station, Professor James W. McCalla didn't know what he was listening to, but he knew that he liked it.
Raised in a house that valued music, Professor McCalla began classical piano lessons at the age of eight, and, by the ninth grade, he knew that he wanted to dedicate his life to music.
Although McCalla originally intended to become a professional pianist, a brief period spent in graduate school at the New England Conservatory in Boston quickly convinced him otherwise. Leaving the conservatory, McCalla got a job as a jazz clerk at the Harvard Coop in Harvard Square (Cambridge, Massachusetts). He soon returned to the New England Conservatory as a self-described "guinea pig" for the school's new Master's Degree program in Musicology, and he went on to receive a doctorate from the University of Berkley, California.
In 1978, Professor McCalla was hired by State University of New York (SUNY), Long Island to teach a course on the history of jazz music. McCalla, who had never taken a formal course on jazz music (or even a jazz piano lesson), had to build the course from scratch using his real-world knowledge of jazz to construct a syllabus.
The seats of Gibson Hall are filled with students eager to take Professor McCalla's course on the history of jazz?this 27 years after his experimental class at SUNY.
Although much of the material McCalla uses for the course is unchanged, the class is now taught in two parts (The History of Jazz 1 and II), and it has a greater focus on the social and historical context of jazz music than the original course, which focused purely on the music.
Drawing from original handouts McCalla wrote for his students at SUNY, McCalla has published the textbook, "Jazz, A Listener's Guide" (now in its third edition), which his students still use today.
McCalla recently spent a year on sabbatical. Staying in Brunswick, McCalla split his time between writing his next book?a study of the influence of literature on the piano composer Claude Debussy's work?and cataloguing his extensive collection of jazz LPs and CDs.
After spending more than a quarter of a century sharing his knowledge and love of jazz music with college students, McCalla is enthused to be teaching "The History of Jazz" once again this year.
Many of McCalla's students enter his class knowing little about jazz music beyond their general affection for the genre. McCalla's goal is that by the end of the semester, his students will be able to attend a concert or buy a jazz record with a deeper understanding and appreciation for the music.