Free School Is Music to the Ears of Parents

Hal Weatherwax and Courtney Sheehan are hunched over the keyboard in deep concentration as she tentatively taps out a simple melody called “Hot Cross Buns.”

He’s 75 and she’s 9.

He savors memories of the finer Hollywood clubs, of life on the road with vibraphonist Red Norvo, of playing in the house bands on the early TV shows, of backing up the world’s greatest jazz vocalists--even, for one night, the legendary Billie Holiday.

Courtney wouldn’t know Billie Holiday from Billy Goat Gruff. But she tries hard to please the old jazzman, because he’s nice and it’s fun to learn piano--plus, her parents think it’s great that the lesson--in fact, this whole school--is absolutely free.

Weatherwax points to a dotted half note in Erma Mae Burnam’s “Piano Course, Volume One” and asks: “What’s this mean? How many beats?”

“Three?”

“Good girl!”

Weatherwax is one of nine volunteers and Courtney one of 21 students in a fledgling storefront school called We the Music just down the street from San Buenaventura Mission in Ventura.

The school’s organizing principle is simple, according to its founder, a hyperkinetic, red-haired woman named Bette-Lou Tracy:

The public schools have bailed out on music instruction. Kids who want it should be able to get it. And, oh yes, because even in this gilded age so many families are just getting by, it should be absolutely, 100% free.

So far, Tracy said, a friend of hers--a well-known jazz guitarist who wants to remain anonymous--has bankrolled start-up costs of $50,000. She said he’s 50ish, carries the virus for hepatitis C, has no kids and wants to do a good musical deed--quietly.

“He calls all the time to find out how many kids we have taking lessons,” said Tracy, who used to book entertainment for corporate shows in San Diego. “I don’t know anyone quite as generous.”

As word has spread, others have done their part. The Channel Cities Jazz Society, a Dixieland appreciation group, has donated a slew of ancient record albums the school sells in its little shop up front. Small sums of cash come in staccato bursts when Tracy pitches the school to service clubs.

And strangers appear bearing gifts.

There was the elderly man who hobbled in with the violin he had been playing most of his life.

“I’m getting old, I’m losing my hearing, I’m losing my sight,” he told Tracy. “If you can use this, I want you to have it.”

The next day, he showed up with an armload of sheet music.

Most of the teachers--all unpaid--have flirted with careers in music. Now they’re stone masons, newspaper copy editors, forklift operators--all the things that musicians wistfully grow up to become.

Students range from 7 to 17 and study piano, flute, violin and drums. One teenager who never received instruction before had been playing classical pieces for some time--by ear.

Some arrive in unlikely ways.

A few months ago, Tracy was arguing with men unloading a truck for the Assn. of Retarded Citizens thrift shop next door. You’re not supposed to park here, she insisted; you’re blocking our door four hours a day!

One of the men, Ephrain Gonzalez, ended up not only settling the dispute but signing up his 10-year-old daughter, Karla, for piano lessons that the family couldn’t afford elsewhere.

“Every day, she’s so excited,” he said. “‘Daddy, daddy, listen to this one . . . .”

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Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or by e-mail at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.