Bill Westcott completed his undergraduate studies in music at the University of Illinois, obtained a master’s degree in piano performance at the University of Southern Illinois and returned to University of Illinois to work on a doctorate on the role of piano players in the origins of blues, jazz and ragtime.Courtesy of family
Early in Bill Westcott’s career as a music professor at Toronto’s York University, he arranged a master’s class for students with American jazz, boogie-woogie and blues pianist and singer Little Brother Montgomery.
In front of a rapt class, Mr. Westcott interviewed Mr. Montgomery, who demonstrated his astounding approach to tunes like Vicksburg Blues at the piano. The two met in the Chicago area, where Mr. Westcott lived before moving to Toronto and where Mr. Montgomery became a teacher and a friend.
Rob van der Bliek, now a retired York University music librarian, was among the transfixed students. He recalls admiring Mr. Westcott’s dedication to teaching and his emphasis on musicianship rather than purely academics.
“He knew it, he could play it, he could sing it,” said Mr. Van der Bliek. “He didn’t pursue scholarship. He just wanted to play.”
Mr. Westcott, an accomplished and versatile pianist and composer who was a master of ragtime and stride who taught for more than three decades at York, died on July 20 in a palliative care unit in Toronto due to a combination of illnesses. He was 76.
Mr. Westcott was born in Altona, Ill., on June 17, 1948. He grew up nearby in Edwardsville, where his father worked for Shell Oil.
He was born with cataracts and retinal damage, was legally blind and only able to read by keeping text or music close to his face. He completed his undergraduate studies in music at the University of Illinois, obtained a master’s degree in piano performance at the University of Southern Illinois and returned to University of Illinois to work on a doctorate on the role of piano players in the origins of blues, jazz and ragtime. He came to York University in 1979 and retired from full time teaching in 2010, but maintained an office and relationships with students and faculty after that.
Little Brother Montgomery, originally from Louisiana, was one of the piano players who informed Mr. Westcott’s doctoral study.
David Lidov, a former faculty colleague of Mr. Westcott’s at York, said that formative relationship was not purely scholarly.
“It was more like an apprenticeship,” said Mr. Lidov. “He [Mr. Westcott] wanted to play the music.”
At the time that Mr. Westcott approached Mr. Montgomery, many musicologists and musicians who were fascinated with the blues and American roots music concentrated on the guitar. Players like Robert Johnson, Skip James and Charley Patton gained almost mythic status among guitar enthusiasts and scholars.
Mr. Lidov, a composer and author, said he thinks Mr. Westcott made a lasting impact both as a musicologist and player through his deliberate focus on the piano. In his incomplete doctoral dissertation, Mr. Westcott wrote that there was evidence that blues music was played on the piano from 1912 into the early 1920s as musicians quickly developed “a tradition of playing and singing the blues on piano co-equal to that of the blues singer-guitarists.”
Rob Bowman, a Grammy Award winning professor of ethnomusicology at York University, was among Mr. Westcott’s early students. He said Mr. Westcott helped him understand that early jazz by the likes of King Oliver was not purely improvisational, but had “a system and a grammar” that could be unpacked.
“He was instrumental in my life,” said Mr. Bowman. ”He went the extra mile for students. He spent hours with me.”
Mary Henderson, another early student of Mr. Westcott, said she was mesmerized by her idiosyncratic professor who would tilt his head sideways to read sheet music up close with his compromised eyesight as he played a grand piano for students.
“As an 18 year old from Newfoundland, I was fascinated by him,” said Ms. Henderson, who is now a realtor.
She joined a student choir led by Mr. Westcott, and said she was challenged and impressed by the range of music that Mr. Westcott selected
“We did Mozart, Gregorian chant, gospel music,” she said. “It was incredible.”
Ms. Henderson’s husband bassist and York music faculty member Al Henderson was also a student of Mr. Westcott’s. He recalled social events at York’s Bethune College, where music students and faculty would hang out.
“For some reason, even though his eyesight was horrible, he could play ping pong. I asked him, ‘Bill, you’re pretty much blind, how can you see the ball?’ He said, ‘I don’t know. I just can.’”
Mike Cadó, who teaches in York’s music department and came to know his older colleague towards the end of Mr. Westcott’s full-time teaching career, still uses some of the teaching materials left behind by Mr. Westcott in spiral notebooks.
Mr. Cadó said he was inspired by Mr. Westcott’s dedicated pedagogy and unique method of demonstrating at the piano while teaching, as well as his methodology of bringing musical traditions together.
Mr. Cadó was also was gobsmacked by Mr. Westcott’s piano playing.
“It was thrilling to see him play. He really drew you into the performance,” he said. “It was like seeing a world class European classical pianist. There was the same level of intensity.” As a friendship between them developed, they would play ukulele duets on standard tunes like Sunnyside Of The Street and After You’re Gone and have long chats about the American Civil War, a particular interest of Mr. Westcott’s.
In retirement, before his health started to fail, Mr. Westcott and his wife Linda Perkins often visited the Westcott family farm in south-central Pennsylvania. Ancestors of Mr. Westcott bought the farm during the Civil War.
Ms. Perkins met her future husband when she was a mature student at York in the early 1980s, on leave from her job as a school librarian to study cello. “He was a very lively piano player,” she said. “I loved the way he played ragtime, boogie-woogie and blues.”
They married in 1983. In the 1990s, they formed a trio with a violinist and Ms. Perkins on cello to play European classical music for friends.
Mr. Westcott’s capacity as a crossover artist and composer was underscored when classical pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico performed selections of his music for her 2008 release Ings.
Mr. Westcott’s love of the ukulele was also “the cross fertilizing factor” in another musical partnership late in his life. Brenna MacCrimmon, a specialist in Turkish and Balkan music, remembers meeting “a sweet, retired professor type” at the Corktown Ukulele Jam in Toronto.
As they got to know each other, Ms. MacCrimmon told her new musical acquaintance that she had long aspired to sing Bessie Smith songs. Mr Westcott invited her to his home and they began working together and developed a friendship. She loved hearing him play piano.
“Although he was a trained musician who could read music, it was not from the page, but from his body and soul. It was a great pleasure to be in the room with that.”
The artistic result of their partnership was Ragtime Orioles, a 2019 album by Mr. Westcott featuring several vocal performances from Ms. MacCrimmon. The band, which also featured clarinet, bass and banjo, debuted the album in a performance at Toronto’s Monarch Tavern. Many of Mr. Westcott’s former faculty colleagues and students attended.
Ms. MacCrimmon said some former students told her, “He gave me a crappy mark, but he was my favourite prof,” which she said fits with her understanding of her friend and mentor. “When he saw potential and ability in someone, he wasn’t going to coddle them.” said Ms. MacCrimmon.
Among her fond memories was a visit to to Mr. Westcott and Ms. Perkins’ home, where they savoured a shrimp dish Mr. Westcott had learned from Little Brother Montgomery.
Bill Wescott leaves his wife Linda Perkins and cousin, Jane Graham.
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