Practice Makes Perfect

And he was willing to teach by example. If Pancoast didn't have his own gig on a given night, he could go to whichever "high-class restaurant or club" Alexander was playing and listen to that minor ninth in the field. He could study Alexander's laid-back demeanor, his always nice-looking coat and tie, his utter lack of flamboyance.

"He had the deepest respect for the music, no matter what," Pancoast recalls. "Almost like a professor that played piano. What I would call it is kind of a thoughtful jazz."

In his current studio, where he's taught for almost forty years, Ted Alexander displays a wall of former students, most semi-famous either now or at some time in the past. Ron Cope, leader of the Hot Tomatoes Dance Orchestra, is given prominent placement. So is Effie, "who they called the Blond Tigress. She used to have a diamond in her tooth and a big, blonde mane back when she played here," Alexander remembers. "Right now, she is the rave of New York."

Right now, Alexander is the rave of one as he sits playing Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You" in an intricate, iconoclastic arrangement. His pointy alligator shoes beat the rhythm.

"Oh, well," he says modestly. "I wasn't equipped to do anything but music, and teaching was what I was meant to do. Give some of these people three months, and they will get hooked on this music, which is what I love to see. I will always teach. Always, until I die.