John Williams and the Teacher Who Should Have Been Famous
Hello and welcome again to my monthly weekend blog! Before I get started, I just want to thank all of my AWESOME friends who have been supporting me in this crazy freelancing project. Honestly, it’s sometimes hard to be alone in my room with just my computer as I try to figure out how to best edit my videos. When the technology isn’t working the way I want it to, I easily get upset with myself and wish that I was more tech savvy. I’ve been feeling that way with my past couple of videos, and I was uploading my videos with doubt that any of them were good. I definitely felt that way with the video that just came out last month. Yet, people were texting me back and even telling me in person that they enjoyed it! Some even mentioned that they like this website I’ve created!
Hearing this feedback was so comforting to me, and it made me happy to know that the work I’ve been putting into my videos, blogs, and my shop is being noticed. However, when I looked at my website after getting these supportive comments, I saw that hardly any activity has happened in my shop. Please, if there isn’t anything in my shop that you are interested in buying, at least donate to my cause and make my work efforts mean something! You can even comment down below and tell me what you’d be interested in buying! But for now, let’s talk about Star Wars!
Last Thursday, May 4th, was Star Wars Day! Then on Friday, May 5th, was the Commencement Ceremony of the University I graduated from last year. Seeing some of my friends get their degrees has reminded me of some school memories, including one that involves the Film Score music of Star Wars.
In the Spring of 2021, I was taking Music History 3 where we studied music from the 20th and 21st century. There were lots of projects that I needed to complete for this class, and I decided that I needed to find things that I enjoy about this kind of music. For my Research Paper, I decided to go to the school library to look for books either about Jazz music or film scores. However, I ended up spending A LOT of time trying to find enough resources for these topics.
Eventually, I found some textbooks specifically focused on John Williams. I then narrowed it down to the Star Wars film score since each textbook included information about it. My teacher thought I was just doing it because I was a fan of John Williams, but I’m actually a fan of film scores overall. I even took an Orchestration class the semester before that. It wasn’t until this Research Paper that I started learning about how big an impact John Williams has made by composing film scores. It was also a great excuse for me to stay up late binge watching all the Star Wars movies, pausing every once and a while to take notes on the music!
Along with learning more about John Williams, doing this Research Paper taught me something new about one of my music teachers. One day at the end of choir practice, I was telling my Choir teacher, Dr. Roger Hale, about my Research Paper idea. He told me that Dr. Bryant Smith, the Band teacher at our university, was once involved in a music group called Moosebutter and had helped write a music parody about Star Wars. It’s on YouTube now, so Dr. Hale shared it with me. I realized as I listened to it that I’d heard of this parody before! It’s “Star Wars (John Williams Is the Man)”!! I couldn’t believe that one of my own college teachers helped put this song together! The next time that I saw Dr. Smith in the hallway, I ran up to him with excitement like any fan would do.
“Can I get your autograph?” I said, interrupting the casual conversation he was having with another teacher.
“Why?” he asked me with a confused look on his face.
I replied back with the first thing that came into my head, “Kiss a Wookie.”
He laughed and gave me his own quick response, “Only if you kick a droid!”
I later asked him for more information about his involvement in Moosebutter, and he was happy to inform me.
“I can tell you that it was written by Tim Y Jones, Joshua Slagowski, and myself. We were original members of Moosebutter, a comedy acapella group. We needed a new song for an upcoming show. One day we were at Josh and my apartment and we started creating this song. Josh was at the computer writing music, I was sitting in the doorway, and Tim was in a chair in the room. The song we created ended up being the Star Wars Medley, a collection of songs written by John Williams with words connected to the Star Wars Films. It was pretty cool, well received, and recorded on our first album. Years later, after I had left the group, it became a Youtube sensation, was rerecorded, and was a nominee for a people's choice award. It's been performed all over the world. I'm glad I could be a part of it.”
There you have it, the Band teacher at my university is a super star! I wish that he got a bit more recognition for this YouTube sensation since he and his friends were the ones that actually came up with the idea!!! But at least I got the privilege of seeing a could-have-been-famous guy almost every day at school. Every time that I’ve seen him since then, I’d smile and wave saying, “Hey Super Star!” It’s at the same level of awesome as meeting Nathan Pacheco- twice! So for all of you musicians still in the music building I left last year, say hello to Dr. Smith for me and remind him that he’s an awesome super star!
