Ray Skjelbred: Living a Jazz Life, Chicago Style

Pianist Ray Skjelbred is now in his 60th year as a professional jazzman. In this first of a two-part interview, he discusses his formative years, his discovery of jazz, and the early development of his piano style. John Ochs: For most of your years as a musician you’ve lived in Seattle, WA or the Bay Area in northern California, but the city you seem to associate yourself with most closely is Chicago. Why is that? Ray Skjelbred: Well, I’m from Chicago, and I grew up on the North Side in the 1940s and ’50s. I don’t think of myself as being particularly connected to music when I lived in Chicago. I remember playing family records of the Victor Military Band, Norwegian dance music, Roy Rogers, Bing Crosby, and things like that ‒ but there wasn’t any jazz connection. That connection came about by listening to music after I left Chicago. My mother played a little piano by ear, although I never heard it much because we didn’t have a piano in our apartment. It was something I heard her play later on when I had a piano. So, I never played piano or knew anything about jazz then. I’m Norwegian, and I played accordion. A guy was handing out leaflets advertising accordion lessons one day after school when I was eight years old. I took a leaflet home and started to take lessons. I’m not entirely sure why. I just did it because it happened to be in front of me. I had two differ