Jazz pianist Ted Alexander, a fixture at clubs and hotels in Denver for years, died at a care facility Aug. 3. He was 93.
A gathering for friends and family is planned from 7 to 10 p.m. Sept. 8 at Dazzle Restaurant and Lounge, 930 Lincoln St.
Alexander “was the pre-eminent teacher of jazz piano and a pre-eminent player too,” said Larry Washburn of Denver, a former student.
Alexander taught more than 800 students but chose them carefully. They had to already have considerable instruction in music and music theory, and they had to be people who played or wanted to play professionally.
“He was a tough teacher and demanding,” Washburn said. “You couldn’t practice enough to match his expectations.”
Thousands of people knew Alexander from the various venues at which he played: the old Sky Chef restaurant at Stapleton Airport, the Cosmopolitan Hotel, the Senate Lounge, the Diplomat Lounge, and numerous parties and clubs, said his daughter, Jan Brace of Denver.
At the Sky Chef, Alexander always wore a white jacket and bow tie or cravat. The piano was elevated above the bar area.
For many years Alexander was on the road, playing in clubs all over the country, riding on buses and eating irregularly, Washburn said.
Alexander’s wife, Dorothy, told him he had to “choose between being a gypsy or a professor,” Washburn said.
So, Alexander studied at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music and with pianist Spud Murphy in California.
Alexander told someone he would teach until he died, and that was almost true. Bob Schlesinger was still a student.
“He was a remarkable man and a great teacher,” Schlesinger said.
Until a short time before he died, Alexander was still practicing more than two hours a day.
Ted Alexander was born in Abilene, Kan., on Aug. 25, 1917.
He started playing piano when he was 6, said his daughter.
He sold his mother’s homemade muffins door-to-door to pay for his lessons, Brace said.
He went to business school for two years and was a model for some time, modeling shoes, clothes and hats.
“He was a knockout, so handsome and a dapper dresser,” said his daughter.
He loved “pointy alligator shoes and distinctive cravats,” and always drove a Cadillac, friends said.
Though Alexander loved playing, people in the audience sometimes bothered him. More than once, a woman would walk up to the piano, put her room key on top and tell him to come to her room later.
Once he replied to such a woman with, “my wife’s right over there. Go ask her if it’s OK.”
He married Dorothy Diamond on Dec. 29, 1940. She died in 1993.
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his sister, Helen Archer of Caldwell, Idaho; one grandchild and one great-grandchild.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
