WHEN YOU KEEP HEARING THE SAME NAME in others’ stories, it’s time to check out that name! Alma Hightower is one of those names. Listening to and reading interviews of musicians, their parents, and just regular ol’ people who took music lessons as kids, Hightower was THE music teacher for African Americans in mid-20th-century Los Angeles. Mrs. Hightower taught everyone, including the children who would become some of the most famous musicians of the time, like Dexter Gordon, Charles Mingus, and Melba Liston. Robinson Pierson, the father of Dale Lya Pierson who I wrote about last week, happened to be a student of Hightower’s.
“Any great musician in Los Angeles – Black – probably studied with Alma Hightower…”
Clarence McDonald, keyboard player and record producer (Southern California Public Radio
Alma Julia Webster was yet one more Louisiana-to-LA Great Migration participant. She was born in Baton Rouge, in 1888 and moved to Los Angeles in her 30s. The first place Hightower/née Webster lived was with her nephew, musician Alton Redd – the father of Vi Redd who has already been featured in this series. In 1927 Hightower adopted the daughter of a Louisiana friend. Her name was Minnie. Thanks to her mother’s tutelage, Minnie would become a working musician in her own right, at one time playing saxophone in an all-female band alongside Clora Bryant — recently mentioned in my piece on Club Alabam. Los Angeles might be a big city but it often proves to be a very small world.
From 1936 to 1943 Hightower directed students in a “training band” out of Ross Snyder Recreation Center in South Central LA. This ensemble came out of the Works Progress Association (WPA), a federal program created to support artists during the Depression. The band often performed in the recreation center’s adjoining park and included many soon-to-be famous musicians, including her daughter Minnie.
LA Public Library
Her youth bands would also perform in and around the Central Avenue area, the center of Black cultural life at the time. Sometimes playing at churches or YMCAs, they could also be found playing on a Central street corner, especially during the war, Hightower was probably trying to get the kids some recognition, drum up her teaching business, and maybe make a few dollars on the side.
Melba Liston was a part of that group and recalls the male dominance of the situation:
“We’d play on street corners and pass the hat and all that kind of thing. The boys would steal all the money, cause the girls weren’t allowed to pass the hat you know.”
– as qtd. in doctoral essay by Bailey Grogan
In 1939 and 1940 Hightower’s Melodic Dots band was invited to play at the California State Fair, where they were awarded best performance by a youth group — both years!
The school Alma opened in 1943 would be called Hightower Music Studio and Conservatory, located at 466 East Vernon Avenue. This was her married name at the time, and one she kept throughout her career, even as the marriage itself was reportedly short-lived. There were also rental apartments available on property, because Hightower was not only an artist but a businesswoman.
Hightower believed in the centrality of community, especially among young people. All of her classes and bands were about working together, allowing African-American youth to feel both safe and empowered at the same time. While many of her protégés traveled the world performing Hightower preferred to remain in Los Angeles, nurturing the community she had created and focusing on the next group of young musicians coming up.
Hightower’s teaching style, according to some of her past students like Clarence McDonald, was gentle but direct. Because she herself could play drums, saxophone and piano, her approach to music education was also broad. And while she may have taught some of the most famous jazz musicians in the world, she did not believe in genre musicians per se. “If you couldn’t play all of them you couldn’t call yourself a musician” was her approach according to McDonald. Hightower taught her students to play Souza marches and the Stars and Stripes, pieces they might not have ordinarily been practicing as “jazz musicians.” And, of course, she insisted on including Gospel and the Blues.
Alma Hightower died in 1970 in her beloved city of Los Angeles. While her name is mentioned in most every history bookand article on Black Los Angeles’ Great Migration era — as a teacher and sometime musician — there seems to be no comprehensive work centered on her life alone. And maybe that is exactly as she would have wanted it. But maybe, I fear, she is another African-American woman whose rich life has been boiled down to the service of others. As I continue my research I hope to find that I have overlooked an archive or publication located in one place or another.
According to Grokipedia(an AI-generated encyclopedia – argh), on November 30, 2007 Alma Hightower was publicly honored as one of thirty-two entertainers celebrated at an event sponsored by the Community Build Youth Program in Leimert Park. Unfortunately, I can find no confirmation of such an event. This could be because AI got it wrong – as it often does! – or it may simply be that Black history has once again fallen through the cracks. Either way, let’s consider this post a small celebration of Alma Hightower’s life.