JESSE CHAMPION SR.: Jazz Hall of Famer lived life in song
By WILLIAM C. SINGLETON
Jesse Champion Sr.’s life was all about making beautiful music.
Jesse Champion, Sr.
Whether singing with jazz bands or harmonizing with college and church choruses or choirs, Champion was always ready to unleash his baritone.
His was the first black voice to read the news for WERC radio in 1970.
Champion also used his voice to teach students and to encourage adults to read.
”He sang his way through college,” recalls daughter Sharmayn Champion Stoves, 44. ”He went to Alabama A&M with $5 in his pocket. He had been to the thrift store and bought him some nice clothes. But he sang. He had this voice. They called him ‘Swoon.”’
Birmingham lost one of its great voices when Champion died Nov. 2 after a long illness. He was 80.
Champion was born in Dolomite. He attended Catholic schools and then Parker Industrial High, where he graduated in 1945. He attended Alabama A&M University where he pledged the first Omega Psi Phi fraternity line in 1948.
Champion also met his future wife, Wilhelmenia Lenud, at Alabama A&M. They eloped while in college but both finished school.
It was at A&M that his musical talents blossomed in choirs, choruses and local bands in Huntsville.
Champion served a short stint in the Navy and then returned to take a teaching position in the Gadsden school system from 1950 to 1954.
He moved to Birmingham to teach at Councill School from 1954 to 1963.
He also was involved in the turbulent civil rights movement that swept through Birmingham in the 1960s. Champion tried to help a student who was being harassed by police, was arrested and then fired.
He moved to Flint, Mich. and taught there from 1963 to 1970. That’s when he returned to Birmingham’s WERC as news announcer and director of community affairs, a job he held until retirement in 1990.
But his life was mostly about song.
His contribution to the state’s jazz scene was recognized with his induction into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1998.
”He was an outstanding tenor even though his singing voice with combos and groups was baritone,” said Tolton Rosser, a college classmate and director of the Birmingham Heritage Band. ”He was just that versatile. Jesse was singing with all the groups. Fraternity brothers, everybody.”
Champion, Rosser said, was always willing to work as hard as any band member in the groups where he sang.
”When Jesse was able, he came to all rehearsals. He helped load and unload. He would set up the microphones and test them, do all of that by himself. You never called on him to sing a tune that he didn’t put forth the effort on.
”There was something about his voice,” Rosser said.
Even when Champion became ill, he didn’t fall quiet.
”I would say among male singers throughout this city, and I don’t know them all but I know most of them, Jesse would have to rank right in the upper echelon of all the singers of the last 25 or 30 years,” Rosser said.
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(Editor’s note: This article is reprinted from The Birmingham News on Dec. 23, 2007. Jesse Champion Sr., a longtime radio news voice in Birmingham, was a founding member of the Birmingham Association of Black Journalists. William C. Singleton is a Birmingham News reporter and BABJ member.)
I was a student of Jesse Champion, Sr. the last year he taught English, Speech, and Debate at Flint Southwestern High School in Michigan. I arrived a few minutes early each day and my desk was right in front of his desk. We had several meaningful conversations before class in which he basically told me the story of his life very much as it has been told online.
We touched on issues near to his heart, including radio, religion, and race relations. We had discussed why he left Birmingham, and why he was returning.
I had brought in a copy of the World Radio and Television Handbook one day after discussing it with him previously, and we were looking up information on WJLD and WBRC (now WERC)in it.
I may have been one of the first to know he was leaving for what was then Taft Broadcasting. He had just received the letter about getting the job at WBRC (now WERC) and had it in his desk.
Mr. Champion was an excellent and extremely fair teacher. He expected high achievement from all students, regardless of their background. Ironically, he was criticized by some students for this.
To this day I remember writing a short answer on an essay test, after which I quoted Shakespeare, “Brevity is the soul of wit”. But I continued on and on. Mr. Champion wrote on my paper, after the long answer, “What was it you said about brevity?”
My only regret is that I did not make contact with Mr. Champion before he passed. I had tried to get an e mail forwarded to him a few months before he died, but I never heard back.
Comment by Ted Hammond — April 3, 2009 @ 7:05 pm
I just wrote about Jesse in my blog today, including posting a photo of him in the WERC newsroom. We worked together for a decade. Jesse lived life to the fullest, and he is missed.
Comment by Tim Lennox — April 5, 2009 @ 11:52 am