Reflections on jazz training and marketing education

Introduction: The Jazz Metaphor

In previous work, I have argued strenuously for the proposition that the job of the marketing manager noticeably resembles that of the jazz musician (Holbrook, 2003, 2015). In general, this comparison of marketing managers with jazz musicians stems from a long line of research on organization theory and business strategy in which management- or marketing-oriented writers have devoted considerable attention to the development of a jazz metaphor based on analogies between improvisational music and creativity in general (Holbrook, 1995), the development of marketing theory in particular (Holbrook, 1984), or managerial practice as a special case (Weick 1998). (For reviews and collections, please see Hadida and Tarvainen, 2014; Holbrook, 2007, 2015; Kamoche et al., 2003, 2002; Leybourne et al., 2014; Meyer et al., 1998.)

The case of teaching

The present article emphasizes that the analogy between jazz and marketing applies with special force in the case of teaching. In this connection, Holbrook and Day (1994) applied the jazz metaphor to issues involved in the contrast between pandering to students by pursuing a customer-oriented approach and giving those students-as-consumers what they want, as opposed to preserving one’s intellectual integrity by adopting a more product-oriented approach to education based on a dedication to academic discipline and a faithfulness to scholarly rigor. In other words, the familiar contrast between customer orientation and product orientation for the arts in general and for jazz in particular appears in the case of teaching in ways that suggest the importance of achieving a workable balance or rapprochement between the two. (For a general discussion of this theme, please see Hirschman, 1983.)

Consider, for example, the case of a marketing professor who worries about the potentially negative effects of business practices on the environment but who faces a classroom full of students concerned primarily with pointers on how to pursue a successful career. Here—as in many other comparable cases—intellectual integrity in teaching (like artistic integrity in music) demands an adherence to one’s vision of the truth (like the jazz performer’s reliance on a personal style) and a refusal to pander to the ill-considered preferences of students (like the musician’s rejection of cheap effects that cater to the tastes of uninformed audience members). In short, teachers face an obligation to offer their own insights and to honor a commitment to the protection of divergent thinking, even where such material may run against the grain of popular appeal with students. This ethos should characterize the university’s mindset and should set an academic program in marketing education apart from what one would expect in an executive-training course or a trade school. As participants in the educational process, we would not want it any other way.

The lesson seems fairly clear. Specifically, marketing professors face problems similar to those of the jazz musician—namely, the question of how to balance one’s commitment to pursue one’s intellectual convictions at any cost with the student’s demand for accessible career-advancing knowledge that is more entertaining than challenging (Holbrook and Day, 1994: 142).

Jazz…jazz training…marketing…marketing education

This, then, establishes the conceptual connections between jazz musicianship, jazz training, marketing management in general, and marketing education in particular. Indeed, marketing education is itself embarked on a marketing project in which the challenge involves a process of positioning the educational offering in ways such that certain key ideas, concepts, techniques, and methods (e.g. multivariate statistics, multidimensional scaling, structural equation models, game theory, data-mining techniques, customer value, consumption experiences, the service-dominant logic, social responsibility, and so forth) become appealing or at least acceptable within the intellectual repertoire and work ethic of the target audience of students. Toward this end, the student’s skills require rigorous training. But that training can move forward only if it is offered in a manner that is empathetic, considerate, respectful, and caring.

The cinematic misrepresentation of jazz training

From the preceding discussion, it follows that the successful teaching of skills in jazz improvisation and expertise in marketing management might share much common ground. Indeed, one might imagine that techniques useful in coaching the aspiring jazz musician—that is, implications of the jazz metaphor in music training—might find helpful applications in marketing education. But, unfortunately, such progress is hindered by our widespread shared misunderstanding of what the performance of jazz requires from the committed artist.

Such a misunderstanding has appeared ubiquitously in all sorts of public displays of ignorance on the subject of the requirements for learning to play jazz. One gleaming example showed up in The Benny Goodman Story (1956, directed by Valentine Davies). In this film, young Benny has studied classical clarinet but hankers to try his hand at jazz. With absolutely no prior knowledge of the latter type of music, he joins the great New Orleans trombonist Kid Ory on the bandstand and, within 2 minutes of his initiation, has mastered every nuance of the relevant requirements for playing masterful jazz solos and for executing impossibly intricate musical passages in unison without benefit of previous rehearsal. Clearly, this scene is rather insulting to New Orleans musicians such as Ory who have spent lifetimes mastering this incredibly complex art form. Further, the same sort of ridiculous misrepresentation reappears in the film when Goodman & Co. jam with Lionel Hampton in ways that grotesquely understate the amount of hard work needed to prepare for such a performance. Their on-screen rendition of “Avalon” features an absurdly complicated riff that should have required hours of practice to master, again propounding the rather insulting view of jazz musicians as spontaneous musical naifs who somehow rely on sheer intuition to play together with flawless precision (Holbrook, 2011: 300, 331).

We might imagine that such misconceptions on the part of filmmakers would have gone the way of the dodo bird. But, alas, the misunderstanding of what it takes to play jazz continues to rear its ugly head wherever artistic license gives it a chance to shine. A recent example appears in an episode of the television drama Forever entitled “6 A.M.” (which aired on Tuesday, November 18, 2014, on the ABCTV network). In this series, Dr Henry Morgan (played by Ioan Gruffudd)—who is 200 years old, never ages, and cannot be killed—works as a medical examiner for New York City. His son Abe (played by Judd Hirsch)—who is quite a bit older than Henry looks (because Henry never ages)—runs an antique shop and likes to listen to old recordings by Charlie Parker and similar jazz heroes. Like Abe (a jazz musician), Henry plays the piano (but is more of a classicist).

During the episode in question, in a flashback to 1956, we see how Abe learns to play jazz. Specifically, when Abe is a boy, he devotes many hours to struggling with classical pieces on the piano. His father Henry tries to show him how to play Chopin’s Nocturne in E-Flat Major. Then a hip African American neighbor drops by one day, agrees with Abe that Chopin is boring, and asks the boy if he’s ever tried to play jazz. Abe says that he doesn’t have the sheet music. But the neighbor replies that the beautiful thing about jazz is that you don’t need sheet music. You just take the music by that old fuddy-duddy Chopin and make it your own.

In another flashback to 1956, Henry further recalls Abe’s first attempt to learn to play jazz. In this scene, the same neighbor plays a little boogie-woogie on the ivories and then teaches young Abe how to improvise by saying, “All right, little man, your turn …. Look, forget about the notes. Jazz is about how you feel.” Within moments of his first attempt at improvisation—armed with no jazz-oriented knowledge beyond his untutored feelings—while the neighbor plays a boogie pattern in the bass, little Abe immediately begins to play blues piano that would put Meade Lux Lewis to shame.

A similar scene repeats itself at the end of the program. We find Abe sitting around and listening to Chopin’s nocturne. Henry enters and, in a conciliatory mood, says that he has developed a new appreciation for jazz and that “perhaps it’s not all chaos and dissonance—just most of it.” Abe replies that, hey, it’s more fun to play. And, surprisingly, Henry asks Abe to show him how. In disbelief, Abe inquires, “Are you asking me to teach you jazz?” Henry nods. They sit down at the piano with Abe on the bass notes and Henry on the treble. Abe offers the sum total of his instructive message: “All right, it’s important to remember that playing jazz is about feel.” Abe begins a boogie pattern in the bass, while Henry—relying on nothing but his knowledge-free emotional impulses—proceeds to play inspired blues choruses at a level of excellence that compares favorably with the most accomplished jazz professional. Henry concludes: “Maybe it’s time to learn a new song. Fortunately, I have an excellent teacher.” Professor Longhair and Dr John, beware.

The relevance of jazz training to marketing education

Given the aforementioned affinities between marketing and jazz, it should come as no surprise that aspects of jazz training also show parallels to important considerations involved in marketing education. But, before we can make any progress in relating the exigencies of jazz training to those of marketing education, we must bypass the sorts of misbegotten clichés that appear in The BG Story or Forever and come to terms with the fact that the jazz musician requires a repertoire of skills that exceed even those commonly associated with the classical artist.

True, classical musicians can read and perform the most complex musical compositions on their instruments. But the best-trained jazz musicians have achieved comparable levels of reading and performing written music. Beyond that—in ways seldom tapped by young classical trainees—jazz musicians require an advanced knowledge of chords, scales, modes, harmonic progressions, tunes of every kind, ear training, the ability to improvise under intense time pressure at tempos ranging from the slowest to the most rapid humanly possible, and the skills to do all this on all tunes from an immense repertoire when played in all 12 keys. To put it mildly, such expertise entails countless hours of daily practice, a depth of musical knowledge seldom possessed by even the best-trained classical artists, and—above all—an ability to compose complex music in real time at breakneck speeds.

By analogy, marketing managers also require in-depth training. They must perfect the science of market analysis. They must gain a profound knowledge of complex multivariate statistical techniques, multidimensional scaling, structural equation models, game theory, data-mining procedures, financial models, strategic thinking, consumer behavior, behavioral economics, issues of social responsibility, and much more. In short, the demanding skills needed to equip the marketing manager for the aforementioned tasks parallel in difficulty those required of the jazz artist. Like jazz training, marketing education requires long hard years of dedicated study, diligent effort, and unflagging perseverance.

So all this raises the question of how such expertise might best be taught to the aspiring jazz musician and—by extension—to the fledgling marketing manager. To repeat, this educational project is itself a marketing endeavor that involves a positioning problem in which certain key ideas, concepts, techniques, and methods (whether musical or managerial) are introduced into the student’s repertoire of skills in such a way that they become acceptable or even appealing, while motivating the student to invest the considerable effort and hard work needed to master the relevant skill set. Toward this end, the student’s “chops” require rigorous training that can move forward only if it is offered in a manner that gains the student’s trust and respect. The term “chops” comes from the jazz lexicon and referred originally to the mouth of a horn player or, in other words, to that performer’s embouchure. Brass or reed players with a virtuosic command over their instruments are said to possess good chops. So—by extension—other instrumentalists such as piano, guitar, or bass players with superlative techniques are also said to have great chops. Whether in jazz or in marketing, indoctrination into the relevant skill set—that is, building the student’s chops—becomes the primary objective. The key question concerns how to accomplish this objective in the most effective way.

As potential answers to that question, in the case of jazz, we encounter three motion pictures, each of which has something to say about one or another style of teaching music, with potential relevance to aspects of marketing education. Here, I refer to Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995), Whiplash (2014), and Keep On Keepin’ On (2014). In what follows, I shall argue that these three films pursue a Fichtean–Hegelian dialectic (thesis-antithesis-and-synthesis) in which a thesis (customer orientation in Mr. Holland) is challenged by its antithesis (product orientation in Whiplash) in ways that lead toward a synthesis (marketing orientation in Keepin’ On).

Thesis—Customer orientation: Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995)

I have previously expounded at length on the topic of Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995)—a film directed by Stephen Herek in which Richard Dreyfuss won an Oscar Award for portraying a dedicated music teacher named Glenn Holland who panders to his class of young students by charming them into becoming surprisingly appreciative audience members and amazingly competent musicians (Holbrook, 1998b). Still viewing music instruction in general and jazz training in particular in the simplistic terms found in The BG Story or Forever, the story has a sort of warm gooey niceness about it. The teacher cares deeply about his students, treats them with the utmost kindness, and sacrifices himself for their benefit. In short, he displays an extreme degree of customer orientation.

It is a sweet film. When it appeared, it won enormous audience popularity, was adopted as a rallying call by the community of music teachers, and garnered strong praise from most of the difficult-to-please movie critics. To this day, it enjoys a 6.8/10 rating from critics on Rottentomatoes.Com and a 7.3/10 rating from viewers on IMDB.Com.

With a strong emphasis on Glenn Holland’s love of jazz, while perpetuating the aforementioned inaccurate view of jazz as a sort of naïve folk music, the film attempts to offer insights into the process of education in general and musical instruction in particular. Yet, despite such good intentions, the image of education that emerges strikes me as misguided at best and, at worst, as downright perverse. Specifically, Mr Holland approaches the challenge of musical instruction as a confirmed populist who eschews any sort of elite critical standards in the teaching of music. Rather than encourage distinctions between good and bad music, the essence of music appreciation, he reveals a nondiscriminating tendency to like all music—Bach, Beethoven, the Beatles, the Gershwins, Miles, Trane, John Philip Sousa,…whatever. It’s all the same to Mr Holland—all fine and dandy if it appeals to even the most uneducated popular tastes. This sort of unqualified admiration for everything stifles all critical judgment by pandering to the tastes of even the most ill-informed students. By claiming to love all music, he fails to show artistic selectivity, aesthetic discernment, or discrimination between good and bad—thereby betraying an inherent lack of true respect for any music.

Most lamentably, this populist attitude spills over into Mr Holland’s approach to teaching. Faced with students who show little interest in learning about music, he proceeds to pander to their low-brow tastes. He tells them that they “already like” the music of J. S. Bach because, hey, Bach’s “Minuet in G” is “just like” a tune called “Lover’s Concerto” performed by a pathetic rock group called “The Toys.” This pattern of watering down each teaching moment by shamelessly appealing to the lowest common denominator reappears again and again as Mr Holland shows a tone-deaf wrestler how to beat a bass drum on one and three in the school’s marching band; helps a promising young singer to dumb down “Someone To Watch Over Me” to a simplified set of three or four chord changes; and convinces a woefully inept clarinet player that she already knows the piece she is unsuccessfully trying to play and that all will be well if she forgets about the sheet music, closes her eyes, and tries to “play the sunset.”

In sum, throughout and with implications that subvert the essence of effective teaching, Mr Holland pursues an extreme form of customer orientation by catering to the ill-informed bad taste and ingrained ineptitude of his student-consumers in ways that obliterate any possibility of teaching them anything important about music appreciation or musical performance. He charms them by implying that they already know everything important and that they need only reach deep within themselves to liberate that innate understanding so that facile intuition can take the place of hard work. Moreover, he conveys that all tastes are equally legitimate and that all artistic offerings are equally excellent. Indeed, Mr Holland’s absurd slogan that his lackluster student should just “play the sunset,” in its complete lack of musical validity, matches the aforementioned mantra from Forever that one should just “play what one feels.” In reality, no student instructed in this manner will achieve anything beyond pitiful incompetence.

But where, we might wonder, does Mr Holland’s extreme form of customer orientation find its parallel in marketing education? The simple answer is: Anywhere that the need to inform, challenge, and instruct students in the demanding skill set of marketing concepts and techniques takes a back seat to the desire to please them in return for higher course evaluations or, in other words, better customer-satisfaction scores. One example of this wayward impetus appears in the increasing tendency for marketing instructors to rely on the case method in business education. I fully recognize that Harvard cases and the like win the hearts if not the minds of MBA students, helping to bolster the popularity of teachers who use them to excess. But, essentially, classroom cases represent an inherently dangerous con game. They pose as real-life situations pregnant with implications that inspire penetrating insights from those who study them. Yet they contain highly fictionalized accounts full of doctored data, distorted details, and convenient oversimplifications. Further, students are manipulated into arriving at the conclusions suggested by teaching notes or instruction manuals, whereby professors know exactly what the blackboard should look like at the end of the class meeting and extract all-over-the-map responses from the participants until some of these have finally, if accidentally, provided the answers they seek. No fundamental concepts or techniques tend to emerge from such discussions. Rather, students are flattered into believing that they already know everything needed to solve the case and that their own powers of deduction have somehow led them in the direction of real-world truths about managerial practice more profound than anything available in merely theoretical perspectives. Indeed, for such students, the word “theory” tends to carry negative connotations as something inferior to “practice.” Thus does this whole charade elevate intuitive habits above critical analysis in ways that reward students for their own self-congratulatory intellectual vacuity.

Antithesis—Product orientation: Whiplash (2014)

The inadequacies of Mr. Holland’s Opus as a model for teaching music, marketing, or anything else are so spectacular as to make us wonder how such a film could ever have been imagined, let alone produced. But, more recently, we have confronted another music-education film—one that was honored by five Oscar nominations, that has won a long string of awards (Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics, and many others) for best supporting actor (J. K. Simmons), that has achieved an audience rating of 8.6/10.0 on IMDB.Com and a critics rating of 8.6/10.0 on Rottentomatoes.Com, but that adopts an antithetical yet equally absurd perspective on the requisites of good teaching—namely, extreme product orientation. Specifically, in Whiplash (2014, written and directed by Damien Chazelle), a young drummer named Andrew Neiman (played by Miles Teller) enrolls at the Shaffer Conservatory of Music (described as “the best music school in the country”) where he encounters the pedagogical methods of a technique-driven classroom sadist named Terence Fletcher (J. K. Simmons). The latter instructs his students in ways intended to build their musical chops by terrorizing them in a manner that far exceeds the point of mental cruelty. Indeed—formerly known as a journeyman actor who has played relatively nondemanding parts as Police Chief Will Pope on Kyra Sedgwick’s TNT series entitled The Closer and as the kindly salesman in television commercials for Farmers Insurance—J. K. Simmons (who has a college degree in music and who, in one crucial scene, actually plays some admirably straightforward jazz piano) seems to have found his inner monster just in time to unleash this beast in the form of the world’s nastiest teacher.

Terence Fletcher challenges his students by forcing them to play impossibly difficult charts at outrageously brisk tempos. For example, the title tune “Whiplash” is in 14/8 or 7/4 at a very rapid pace, which involves a complex metric structure that runs counter to anything normally familiar in Western music and imposes huge demands on all concerned—including the drummer. With that as a foundation, in a big-band rehearsal, Fletcher viciously berates his victim Andrew for rushing,…then for dragging,…then for rushing,…and so forth—relying on fine tempo-related distinctions that elude detection by even the most savvy cinematic viewer. Finally, Fletcher throws a chair at Andrew’s head and, working himself up into a high dudgeon, threatens him with words deemed too foul to appear in a linguistically respectable marketing journal.

But all this pedagogic torture only spurs young Andrew to greater heights of masochistic self-punishment, involving self-destructive practice sessions during which his hands bleed profusely and splatter blood all over his drum kit until, after unsuccessfully applying layers of band-aids, he plunges them into a bucket of ice that promptly turns bright red.

Some of Terence Fletcher’s sadistic tirades are so over-the-top that they become almost comical. Consider, for example, the virtuosically gutter-mouthed harangue in which he offers his student big band his own personal brand of “encouragement” before they take the stage at the Overbrook Jazz Competition—beginning with on onslaught of insults to their masculinity, casting aspersions on their musical incompetence, and ending with a masterpiece of irony in which he promises that in the future he will stop being so “polite.”

But Andrew perseveres in his obsessively compulsive way—aiming at musical greatness, no matter what the cost. Indeed, the cost becomes pretty huge as Andrew travels to the Dunellen Competition. En route, a truck crashes into his car. He crawls from the wreckage—covered with blood—runs the rest of the way to the concert stage and, after further cruel treatment by Fletcher, attacks his professor physically. This results in his expulsion from the Shaffer Conservatory. And—when questioned by a member of the school’s administration—he talks about Fletcher’s misbehavior in ways that get the teacher dismissed as well.

Andrew gives up the drums and works behind the counter at a delicatessen. But, pretty soon, he stumbles into a jazz club called Nowells where Terence Fletcher performs with a trio (with J. K. Simmons himself expertly playing the piano part). Fletcher invites Andrew to have a drink and spills his guts on the theme of his dismissal from the school and his philosophy of teaching—which boils down to a quintessentially product-oriented insistence on excellence, no matter what price must be paid in terms of human relationships.

In this scene, apparently voicing the film’s central meaning, Fletcher articulates his pedagogic philosophy—namely, that jazz performance requires superhuman musical skills that can only be learned/taught by driving oneself/others to their ultimate limits. As a justification for this teaching method, Fletcher cites a famous incident in which, to express his disapproval, the Kansas City drummer Jo Jones threw a cymbal at the young Charlie Parker—potentially injuring the young alto player, humiliating him mercilessly, but inspiring him to practice night and day until he became the genius improviser known as “Bird” (Russell, 1973). Specifically, Bird conducted these rigorous practice sessions while gigging at a resort in the Ozark Mountains—figuratively, in a “woodshed,” which may be where the term “woodshedding” comes from. In this connection, note that the term woodshedding and its association with the tendency of jazz musicians to refer to their instruments as their “axes”—which are often involved in “cutting” contests—may also carry some resonance in the jazz lexicon with the word “chops” (as discussed earlier) in the sense that axes are good for “chopping” logs in the woodshed, with all this lumberjack imagery suggestive of a jazz musician’s technical mastery of his or her instrument. Indeed, woodshedding is this film’s central premise—all the more when the Oscar-winning hero of Whiplash behaves like the intellectual equivalent of an axe murderer. In a pivotal speech, Fletcher recounts how Parker was embarrassed by the cymbal-throwing incident, but how it fueled his desire to improve and how—inspired by his determination—he practiced-practiced-practiced until he did indeed become the greatest alto saxophonist who ever lived. Because of his intentions to achieve comparable results with his students, though fired from his teaching position at Schaffer, Fletcher refuses to apologize for his product-oriented teaching style.

If Terence Fletcher represents an extreme level of product orientation—that is, an unapologetically technique- or proficiency-driven approach—we might wonder how such proclivities would manifest themselves in the sphere of marketing education. In all honesty, I must admit that I have never encountered a marketing professor who rose—or sank—to Fletcher’s level of sadism. But the same cannot be said for members of the closely related Discipline Y. In the latter connection, please allow me to describe an academic example that demonstrated the Fletcherian product-oriented tendencies in full flower. (In this illustration—as elsewhere in the present essay—I pursue an approach that I call Subjective Personal Introspection (SPI). Defenses of this method have appeared elsewhere and fall outside the scope of our current concerns. For relevant discussions, please see Holbrook, 1995 or Gould, 1995.)

The teacher in question—let us call him Professor X—ran a required course on Discipline Y for doctoral students during my graduate program in marketing. Clearly, the material he covered and the techniques he wanted to impart represented key aspects of the skill set demanded of an aspiring marketing academic. The only problem was that—with any semblance of human civility appearing to lie far outside his powers of social interaction—his chosen approach to conveying the desired concepts and methods relied primarily on terrorist tactics of the Fletcherian variety. All this came to a head for me personally in conjunction with a term project designed to familiarize the class with various relevant procedures related to Method Z. These Z-related techniques were of undeniable importance to our academic training and included material essential to the chops of a doctoral student in marketing. But, unfortunately for me, the due date for this term project coincided closely with the birth of our son via a medically complicated delivery that put my wife back in the hospital for another 10 days and left me at home at age 25 with a screaming baby to care for and with no pediatric skills to do the job properly. Obviously, this was a moment of crisis for me, and it moved me (for the first time in my life) to request an “incomplete” grade in Professor X’s class with an extension so that I could do a proper job on the Method Z project after my wife returned from her prolonged hospitalization. The response of Professor X was that he would not allow such a postponement because he would then have no way of knowing that I would complete the assignment and, besides, because “everybody has some sort of a problem.” Terence Fletcher could not have said it better himself. Suffice it to say that members of our class felt that they had learned nothing from Professor X. To repeat, it was clear that Method Z was an important research tool. I did learn about Z at a later date and have used it many times in my own work. But I did not learn it from Professor X and have trouble imagining that I could learn anything from that individual.

Beyond the extreme excesses of Terence Fletcher and Professor X, a less sadistic but nonetheless ineffective approach to product-oriented marketing education involves the use of standardized courses that—in their quest for efficiencies and cost reductions—produce one version of a syllabus and class materials intended to be taught by all professors. Sort of like Henry Ford’s Model Ts. True, professors save time and effort by using a common set of teaching notes and/or PowerPoint slides provided by the textbook publisher. But standardization deprives the students of any choice among teaching styles and thereby stifles all semblance of intellectual integrity. A move in this direction at my own school proved disastrous to my ability to teach and precipitated my early retirement.

The teaching dialectic

Presumably, the truth about what makes for great teaching lies somewhere other than the two poles represented by Mr. Holland’s Opus at one extreme (the sweet and loving mentor who is concerned mostly about support or even flattery but who cares very little about skill development, appreciative discrimination, or critical judgment) and Whiplash at the other (the sadistic tormentor who sacrifices all semblance of humanity in pursuit of the most rigorous standards of self-discipline in the service of musical excellence). Considering these two extremes—serenely mimicking the sunset versus sadomasochistically struggling with impossibly fast tempos in 7/4—one might too readily anticipate that surely the optimal approach (the real path to pedagogic success) must lie somewhere in the middle. Yet I am on record as opposing the mollifying comforts of compromise (Holbrook, 2008). Such a Goldilocks solution—not too hot, not too cold, but just right—seems destined to produce nothing better than lukewarm porridge. That is, tepid pabulum fit for a baby or bland gruel suitable for the innocent heroine of a fairy tale. Indeed, in this light, I could not defend the recommendation of a severe-but-laid-back teaching style that emphasizes learning whatever-one-can-manage-without-trying-very-hard. Such a wishy-washy middle-of-the-road approach seems guaranteed to produce a middling result. Or, less politely, it seems sure to achieve nothing better than…mediocrity.

What we need, then is not a compromise between Mr Holland and Terence Fletcher but rather a synthesis of the thesis and antithesis represented by these two opposing forces—that is, an integration that resolves the tension between them in ways that contribute to the advancement of learning. Viewing education as essentially a marketing project, we need a balanced approach that reconciles the customer orientation (sensitive to external opportunities in general and student tastes in particular) with the product orientation (sensitive to internal pressures in general and technical excellence in particular) in a way that achieves a true marketing orientation (involving a balanced rapprochement between the two counterposed tendencies). Such a resolution of the dialectic would involve a teacher who displays the humanity of Mr Holland (generous, loving, concerned for his students’ well-being) with the commitment to excellence of Terence Fletcher (rigorous, demanding, dedicated to the perfection of technical expertise). In other words, such a teacher would motivate with kindness but elevate with disciplined training.

A schematic diagram of the proposed marketing-oriented teaching dialectic appears in Figure 1. Here, the horizontal axis represents the contrast between a kind/generous/loving teaching style at one extreme and a nasty/brutal/sadistic orientation at the other. Meanwhile, the vertical axis captures the contrast between a pandering/uncritical/intuitive approach and a demanding/rigorous/disciplined commitment. As the thesis, Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfuss) occupies the upper right-hand territory—a kind-generous-loving teacher who panders to his students in an uncritical and intuitive manner (extreme customer orientation). By contrast—as the antithesis, found in the lower left-hand corner of the diagram—Terence Fletcher (J. K. Simmons) pursues a demanding-rigorous-disciplined approach in a manner that is nasty, brutal, and sadistic (extreme product orientation). One option—which I reject—would favor a Goldilocks-like middle-of-the-road compromise in which a teacher shows lukewarm concern for the happiness of students while offering them a moderate level of instructional rigor in ways that I believe are guaranteed to produce mediocrity. Rather, I wish to argue for the merits of a synthesis—that is, a resolution or integration—of the two positive poles, as found in the lower right-hand corner of the diagram, which recommends a kind-generous-loving approach to demanding-rigorous-disciplined instruction (marketing orientation).

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Figure 1.

Schematic diagram of the teaching dialectic.

Embryonic arguments on behalf of such a synthesis appear in a recent issue of DownBeat with a section devoted to jazz training. Here, a tribute to the recently deceased Steve Zegree—a professor of Music at Indiana University—makes it clear that this champion of vocal jazz combined the dialectic qualities just described by being both “demanding” (placing high expectations on his students) and “compassionate” (with a disarming sense of humor) (DownBeat 2015: 102). Another article in the same issue honors the contributions of the late Rayburn Wright, a professor at the Eastman School of Music (Garcia and Hunsberger, 2015). An especially telling comment comes from the noted jazz composer–arranger Maria Schneider, who again refers to the same sort of dialectic synthesis or “balance” between “excellence, perfection, strength, organization and artistry” and “calmness, deftness, lightness—even warmth, humor and kindness” (p. 138).

In this connection, I shall add some further examples found in the work of the brilliant jazz trumpeter Clark Terry (CT), the influential buyer-behavior theorist John Howard, and my own revered piano teacher Tommy Sheridan.

Synthesis—Marketing orientation: Keep on keepin’ On (2014)

In the marketing-oriented spirit of synthesis-resolution-and-integration, we encounter a documentary about the great jazz trumpeter Clark Terry entitled Keep On Keepin’ On (2014). In true art-film fashion, this motion picture received little acclaim, no Oscar nominations, and no conspicuous success at the box office, though it did win a number of awards for its director Alan Hicks and did achieve a Rottentomatoes.Com critics rating of 7.4/10.0 plus an IMDB.Com audience rating of 7.5/10.0. Yet—for our present purposes—Keepin’ On embodies some sense of how music training and, by extension, marketing education might most wisely proceed in a productively marketing-oriented manner.

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Clark Terry in New York City – 1978 (Photo by the Author)

Specifically, before his recent death, Clark Terry himself was the shining embodiment of virtuosity on his chosen instruments (trumpet and flugelhorn). He played with both the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands before embarking on a distinguished career as a studio-session man (e.g. The Tonight Show), leader of his own groups (e.g. the Bob Brookmeyer—Clark Terry Quintet), master of trumpet-related technical wizardry (e.g. circular breathing via which he could sustain a constant flow of notes without pausing for air), leader or featured artist on over 370 jazz recordings, and acclaimed instructor (University of New Hampshire, William Patterson College in New Jersey, University of Arkansas, and many other schools). Clearly, with chops to spare, he drew on a vast accumulation of jazz-related knowledge (harmony, melodic improvisation, tunes in the repertoire, trumpet technique, and so forth). The documentary shows Clark Terry—at an advanced age, ranging from 89 to 93, having lost his eyesight and much of his ability to play—imparting this knowledge to a blind pianist Justin Kauflin, whom he has taken under his pedagogic wing.

Here, I use the term “wing” advisedly because Clark Terry’s treatment of his young student puts one in mind of something that T. S. Eliot might have dreamed up—that is, a nurturing protectiveness within the scope of a spiritual center. Fundamentally, Clark Terry has a wealth of expertise and chops-building know-how to impart, and the documentary shows how he does this in a way that is as supportive as it is demanding of excellence.

Many details of Clark Terry’s life, career, and passion for teaching appear in his autobiography entitled Clark: The Autobiography of Clark Terry (Terry with Terry, 2011). In an “Introduction,” David Demsey of William Patterson University refers to Clark Terry as “one of the original creators of jazz education” (p. xv). Indeed, Clark Terry mentored thousands of young musicians—many of whom went on to become first-rank jazz artists (Byron Stripling, Conrad Herwig, Branford Marsalis, Ryan Kisor, and many others)—teaching at numerous universities, receiving countless honorary degrees, winning innumerable awards, and sharing his knowledge of jazz with anyone and everyone who cared to ask. For example, the Autobiography reports how—in Seattle, after late nights of playing at a gig—Clark Terry arises at 6:00 am to give lessons to a young Quincy Jones (who never forgets Clark Terry’s generosity) (p. 121).

Clark Terry makes it clear that, in his teaching, he endeavors to combine discipline with kindness. He describes an early teaching experience in these terms: “And I said, ‘You’ve got to practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t happen overnight’…. I told them ‘You’ve got to do it over and over and over until you perfect it’” (pp. 196, 213).

In the documentary, Justin Kauflin meets Clark Terry when the latter is teaching at William Paterson University in New Jersey. Partly because of their mutual eyesight problems, the two hit it off famously, and Clark Terry proceeds to offer Justin dedicated instruction. We see them practicing finger exercises together, conducting ear-training lessons, learning new and unfamiliar tunes from the repertoire, and discussing the merits of songs like Duke’s “Sophisticated Lady.” Throughout, Clark Terry emphasizes the seriousness of the jazz-training process while simultaneously conveying a joyful exuberance—even while blind, breathing oxygen, and ultimately bed-ridden—that inspires the young pianist to greater heights.

When Justin asks Clark Terry what is the difference between an amateur and a master, Clark Terry—in the gentlest possible way, while affectionately patting Justin’s seeing-eye dog Candy—replies: “One thing is desire…to excel. You gotta want to play better than everybody …. You have to know yourself,…know what your shortcomings are, know what you need to work on, and work on it.” Thus, does Clark Terry extoll the chops-building virtues of rigorous training, constant effort, steady practicing, and a solid work ethic. He appreciates Justin because Justin displays these qualities, and he voices these demands as a task master with a loving generosity that supports Justin every step of the way.

So, when Justin experiences extreme stage fright before performing at the Thelonious Monk competition, Clark Terry comforts him with the most supportive message imaginable: “Challenges are a part of life, as you know. I understand that you might feel…‘stage fright.’ I believe in your talent, and I believe in you …. just…reach way down deep in your soul and say, ‘I can do my best, and I will do my best.’ That’s all I’m asking.” Justin does not win the Monk contest, nor even rank among the top three contestants, but—with determination—he vows, “When I’m at your place, we’ll put in some extra hours if you feel like it.” To which Clark Terry adds, “Yes, definitely.”

Meanwhile, Clark Terry’s health continues to fail. But, even while acknowledging that he is in terrible pain, he has uplifting advice to offer Justin: “You can’t do it the easy way. You gotta do it the right way. You gotta work hard at it.” These are, of course, the words that Clark Terry himself has lived by, to the everlasting glory of his own fabulous musical performances. Justin follows this advice. And, pretty soon, he finds himself on a world tour with Quincy Jones. While appearing at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Justin receives another message from Clark Terry: “Your mind is a wonderful asset. Use it for positive thoughts, and you’ll learn what I’ve learned. I call it ‘getting on the plateau of positivity.’…I love you, and God bless you. Clark Terry.”

This emphasis on positivity shines throughout the playing and teaching of Clark Terry. In one powerful scene, we find him lying in the hospital—in obvious physical discomfort, with an oxygen tube in his nose, IVs connected to various limbs, and monitors blinking-and-beeping in the background—happily singing a tune he likes called “Breeze” in an effort to teach it to Justin and smiling as if this music has transported him beyond all worldly cares in ways suggesting that the effort and sacrifice are worth every moment. A person who exudes this sort of joy in the making and teaching of music will inevitably exert a strong impact on those privileged to learn from his wisdom. This ability to inspire receives fitting tributes from two star witnesses—speaking on-camera—the great jazz singer Diane Reeves (“You wanted to live up to what this man knows that you have”) and the legendary composer/arranger/bandleader Quincy Jones (“It was his love and mentoring that encouraged me to keep on”).

So Clark Terry’s success as a teacher stems from the rejection of compromise. Rather, it reflects a dialectic reconciliation of rigorous demands on one hand and supportive love on the other. Via this resolution of the thesis (Mr Holland’s customer-oriented humanity) with the antithesis (Terence Fletcher’s product-oriented discipline), Clark Terry achieves pedagogic success that transcends anything possible without the sort of dialectic (marketing-oriented) synthesis that he embodies.

Tommy Sheridan (music) and John Howard (marketing)

I believe that the example of Clark Terry and Justin Kauflin argues powerfully in favor of the proposed marketing-oriented synthesis of student-friendly pandering (Glenn Holland’s customer orientation) and strict discipline (Terence Fletcher’s product orientation).

Thus, sympathetic to the strict-but-loving approach of Clark Terry, I have celebrated the miraculous powers of my own piano teacher Tommy Sheridan, a wonderful jazz pianist in Milwaukee, who resembled Clark Terry far more than either Mr Holland or Terence Fletcher. In short, Tommy conveyed an appreciation of the music and a love for his students that inspired his protégés in general and yours truly in particular to strive for greater musical insight and knowledge of jazz. The work was difficult, but the rewards were enormous—all the more because they received Tommy’s loving support.

Along similar lines, John Howard at Columbia University did something comparable in the case of marketing education in general and buyer-behavior theory in particular. He maintained the highest standards of academic integrity and scholarly discipline—pushing himself as hard as he pushed his students and junior colleagues. He very seldom talked or thought about anything other than buyer-behavior theory—of which, arguably, he was the father and which he approached with a reverential, nearly religious attention to the perfection of his conceptual scheme. He expected and won the same level of devotion from his students and younger colleagues. But—combined with this—he mentored, guided, and watched over us at every step of the way with the greatest kindness and generosity. Those of us who showed a dedication to building our mastery of marketing and buyer-behavior concepts and methods received his unqualified support. My own career, for example, would have gone absolutely nowhere without John Howard as a mentor. As with Clark Terry’s emphasis on his students’ needs to be true to themselves, John Howard’s support extended to an encouragement of the student’s need to take risks, to endure the uncertainty of challenging conventional thought, and to construct new theoretical paradigms and methodological approaches that pushed the conceptual and technical boundaries beyond their previous comfort zones (cf. Holbrook, 1997). And this was true, by the way, even when I was busy with iconoclastic efforts to subvert the theoretical edifice—the decision-oriented information-based rational economic model—that he himself had so patiently built. In this, Howard’s range of tolerance encouraged what Earl and Potts (2013) call “edgy” approaches—that is, those that pushed the envelope beyond the “mainstream” (the conventional wisdom represented by his own work) without becoming overly “experimental” (overshooting the market by creating an over-the-top offering in the avant-garde realm of ideas-for-ideas’-sake) (p. 165).

I was blessed to encounter these two great teachers—neither of whom had a pandering or sadomasochistic bone in his body—at critical formative moments of my own development. In the area of marketing education, I have been privileged to acknowledge the nurturing influence of my beneficent teacher John Howard on various occasions (Holbrook, 1989,1998a, 2001) and dedicated my most important book to this great man: “For John A. Howard—Teacher, Mentor, Colleague, Friend—An Inspiration in Every Way” (Holbrook, 1995). Indeed, I have suggested that—as a marketing theorist—John Howard was to our academic discipline what Charlie Parker was to jazz (Holbrook, 1984). And that is the biggest tribute I know how to offer.

So—to elaborate a bit further on the characteristics of a great teacher—I might end this essay on the connection between jazz training and marketing education by quoting a letter that I wrote to my jazz-piano instructor Tommy Sheridan near the end of his teaching career.

Dear Tom,

Last spring, a friend of mine at NYU (Beth Hirschman) and I organized a conference on what I like to call “Consumer Esthetics” [Hirschman and Holbrook, 1981]. When the time came to collect the conference papers into a book, we decided to dedicate the volume to the teacher(s) that each of us felt had done the most for us. In my case, it was very easy to decide who that person is: You! (See page iv.)

I have attended some pretty fancy schools. But, of all the professors I studied with in my 14 years at Country Day and 4 years at Harvard and 10 years at Columbia, none ever taught me half as much as you did in the years that you worked with me. You gave me a gift that I shall cherish always. You taught me the joy of music and showed me that, if it sounds right, it is right. From you, I learned things about creativity and artistic sensitivity that cannot be found in any book. And I shall always be profoundly grateful.

You are a magic person and have brought happiness to everyone who has ever known you. I don’t know if you realize how many people you have filled with delight through your abounding talent and how many you have touched with your generous humanity. If you do, you must be very proud. I hope you are—because you deserve it.

Thank you so much.

With Love and Appreciation

From Morris

There is a moral here. Dear Reader, if you have ever been blessed by having a great teacher who – like Clark Terry or John Howard or Tommy Sheridan—combined strict discipline with loving support in ways that elevated your own powers to a level otherwise impossible to attain, don’t wait around to express your gratitude. Thank your teacher now! Today! This minute! You may be surprised to discover how much it means to him or her to know that you took the time to acknowledge that his or her efforts have been truly appreciated. And you’ll be glad you did.