Rock ’n’ roll all night, teacher every day

By Maritza Rodriguez

Chico State jazz instructor Rocky Winslow not only teaches the music, but lives it. Winslow, who usually tours during breaks in the school year, toured this fall with Paul Anka and played with trumpet great Roger Ingram.

      Ø   Touring with Paul Anka

      Ø   Practicing with Ingram

      Ø   The family influence

An unshaven Rocky Winslow walks into Room 132 of Chico State’s Performing Arts Center as if he had just come off tour.

His business-in-the-front-party- in-the-back haircut is a little tousled and slightly out of place. The dark sunglasses he is wearing disguise the small bags under his eyes, as if he had been up till the late hours of the night playing a gig in some dark smoky jazz club.

Winslow, a professional jazz musician and director of jazz studies at Chico State, did just recently come off tour – with prolific songwriter and musician Paul Anka.

Touring with Paul Anka

To balance his professional and teaching careers Winslow generally opts to tour during winter, summer and spring break. This year he made an exception for Anka, who needed him to tour in September but the semester had all ready started.

Although the timing wasn’t ideal, Winslow said James Bankhead, chair of the music department, told him he had to do the tour.

This show of institutional support was astonishing to Winslow. At the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he encountered other faculty members who looked down upon performing professionally when teaching. So Winslow went.

On tour he played with Roger Ingram, one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of this day, said Winslow. They soon became great friends and Winslow invited him to come to Chico. Winslow knew his students would get a kick out of it.

“They flipped out,” Winslow said of the students’ reaction to hearing they were going to practice with the “great Roger Ingram.”

Winslow then invited the trumpet section to practice at home with Ingram.

Practicing with Ingram

“It was so cool,” said Josh Jerge, a recording arts major and a student of Winslow’s. “It was like having the person you admire the most just hanging out with you giving you tips on how to improve.”

Winslow occasionally likes to bring jazz band practices to his house. He thinks staying in the classroom can limit creativity.

Though now an accomplished musician and a popular professor at Chico State Winslow’s love of music was practically given to him at birth.

Growing up, Winslow’s father was a band director in Texas. He was even inducted to the Texas Band Directors Hall of Fame. Winslow was surrounded by music and teaching. Both his brothers and brothers’ wives are also band directors.

The family influence

Music is a dominant force in Winslow’s life, but his daughter, Roxanne, 11, is his reason for living.

“She is so amazing,” said Winslow. “She had a poem published, it’s on my wall in my office.”

Roxanne is one of the biggest reasons Winslow came to teach at Chico State. He wanted her to have a better life, Winslow said. Another reason Winslow decided it was time for a change was a devastating car crash that left him in a hospital for five days. Winslow has had two hip replacement surgeries since the crash.

But coming to Chico State has been nothing but good, said Winslow. Director of bands Royce Tevis agrees. He has known Winslow for the past four years and thinks Winslow’s teaching style is fantastic.

“He is very intense,” said Tevis. “He uses humor to break the stress.”

During practices Winslow is stern but in such a joking way that students do not feel like he is scolding them. They just laugh and do whatever he says.

“They love him because he holds them to a professional standard,” said Tevis. “It happens with every piece, he is very professional.”

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