OLLI leader revives, shares musical treasure

What inspired the daughter of European immigrants to revive one of America’s musical treasures?

What kind of work could a young wartime bride do for atomic scientists developing the Manhattan Project?

How did a girl raised in a New York tenement during the perilous Great Depression find her way to the secure comfort of La Posada?

These contrasting threads are woven into the tapestry of Millie Goldberg’s life.

Before you enter Goldberg’s art-filled apartment, you encounter a piece of the pattern. Framed Japanese needlework - incorporating a piano keyboard, a top hat, a rose and the title “Friends Know My Frenzy” - reveals her passion, American classical jazz.

She enthusiastically shares her intensity for this fading form of American musical heritage with members of the “Classical Jazz” study groups she conducts for the Green Valley affiliate of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at The University of Arizona.

Goldberg began leading OLLI/GV classes in February 2007 and will continue her overview of American jazz from its beginnings in the mid-1920s through the ‘50s when her fifth study group, “Classical Jazz: Reedin,’ Ridin’ and Rhythmatic,” begins Sept. 30. The group will meet weekly through Nov. 18.

Goldberg was first exposed to jazz as a child in Lower Manhattan.

“I was born after my parents had emigrated from Europe, and they had settled in the first place they could put their feet down, which in those days was a terrible slum. I was aware of the squalor, the ugliness, the lack of amenities,” she recalled. “But by the time I came along, we had a toilet, even though it was in the kitchen.”

She remembers her parents as remarkable people who provided their family with the necessities, structure, love, support . . . and a radio.

“At that time you heard the big bands - Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller - but I listened to more esoteric stuff like Jack Teagarden, Louis Armstrong and Mildred Bailey,” she said. “I think it was because they were creators of music, improvisers, composers. I sensed that these were artists, not just popular musicians.

”My brother was studying the clarinet, so we’d tune into Benny Goodman, who had the greatest tone of any clarinetist we know of,” she said. “I became a Benny Goodman fan at age 12.”

Her father also brought home a typewriter he had retrieved from a junk heap, and Goldberg and her brother taught themselves to type. Years later, as a bride in her 20s, that skill made it possible for her to type critical papers for scientists working on the Manhattan Project.

“It wasn’t called that then, but I knew it was secret because I wasn’t allowed to resign,” she explained.

She saved papers that she had typed for a group of atomic scientists, but eventually sold them. Years later they were discovered, and in 2007 Goldberg was invited to appear on the television program “History Detectives.”

Her interest in jazz lay dormant while she and her husband, Saul, were raising their three young sons.

“I wanted to work, so I went back to college and got my teaching degree in 1963,” she said.

Her husband was a school principal. When she landed a teaching job in the second best school in the city, envious teachers asked her how she achieved such good fortune.

“I told them I slept with the principal,” she quipped, revealing her ever-present sense of humor.

Goldberg taught in New York for 25 years, but by the 1970s and ‘80s the city had deteriorated.

“I told my husband I wanted to live somewhere I didn’t have to worry about going to bed at night,” she recalled.

They moved to an adult community near Princeton University, where both became involved in the university’s cultural offerings.

“I said to Saul, ‘We’ve been spectators all our lives. I’ve seen the best performers of the 20th century. Now I’d like to do something’.”

She had a few old Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington 78 records, so she approached the senior center director about giving a talk on jazz. He agreed, the class took off and Goldberg’s whetted appetite for classical jazz became insatiable. She scoured record stores and collected everything she could find.

“I discovered some remarkable people you’ve never heard of, like a black woman Valaida Snow. And I picked up Steve Washington, long, long out-of-date, but now coming into the mix,” she said.

Her collection now tallies more than 300 jazz and about 150 opera and classical CDs and records.

“I’ve always maintained that anyone who loves music, loves all music,” she said. “But I’ve got to confess, I don’t understand modern jazz or New Age jazz because there’s no melody. Miles Davis does nothing for me, nor does Charlie Parker. But I’m beginning to love Dave Brubeck, so I’m going to incorporate him into my program.”

Although they enjoyed the university community in New Jersey, the Goldbergs were lured to Green Valley by friends Frank and Harriet Ayer. They arrived for a visit in 1996 and on a whim stopped at an open house in Villas West.

“In less time that it takes me to buy a pair of shoes, we bought it,” she said. “Then I found out ironically that the building of these units was funded by the United Federation of Teachers, my union. It took teachers out of medieval circumstances into a dignified profession.”

After enjoying Green Valley as snowbirds for several years, the Goldbergs moved here permanently and bought a home in Continental Vistas in 2001.

“I remembered when I was a child, we’d go to those dirty, smelly old movie houses to watch a Western,” she said. “And now I was living in the West!”

When her husband died in 2004, she was devastated.

“Then I did the smartest thing of my life: I came to La Posada, and I’m ecstatically happy,” she said.

What would make her even happier, she emphasized, would be to have universities begin adding courses in classic jazz to keep this valuable indigenous American music from fading into obscurity.

To enroll in Goldberg’s “Classical Jazz” class or any OLLI/GV study group, pick up a membership/registration packet at the Joyner-Green Valley Library, or contact Penny Schmitt at the OLLI/UA office 626-9039 or ollimail@u.arizona.edu.

Marge Hanley is a member of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.