HOT SPRINGS MUSIC MAN INSPIRED CLINTON TO PLAY SAX

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 31, 1993                   TAG: 9301290078
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BETTY WEBB COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
HOT SPRINGS MUSIC MAN INSPIRED CLINTON TO PLAY SAX
If you don't like the idea of a president who wears cheap sunglasses and plays the saxophone, blame George Gray. It's all his fault.
Gray, a professional musician who taught music to elementary schoolchildren in Hot Springs, Ark., is the man who coaxed 10-year-old Billy Clinton into picking up the sax.
"Billy was a big boy and I told him he had just the right physique for the saxophone," explains the 80-year-old Gray, in a recent telephone interview. "He liked the idea but didn't have a sax of his own, so I lent him mine. Can you imagine? That boy went on to play sax on TV!" Clinton's gig on the Arsenio Hall show continues to surprise Gray. The young student practiced the required hours and even went on to be a saxophone star in high school under the direction of Gray's close friend, Virgil Spurlin. But it was obvious Clinton's heart wasn't in a music career.
"Billy had excellent pitch and rhythm, his memory was excellent and he worked hard, but you could always tell he had his mind on other things," Gray explains. "He enjoyed playing music, but he enjoyed the debating team even more. Come to think of it, I told him to try out for the debating team, too."
In 1957, Gray used his musical connections at the elegant Hot Springs Majestic Hotel to snag a gig there for Clinton and the other children in the school's band. They spent the afternoon playing hits - such as "Love Me Tender" - and patriotic tunes.
"Billy wasn't nervous," Gray says. "He really enjoyed the whole thing. But then again, I think a lot of his enjoyment was just being up there on the stage. He'd always had a real outgoing personality. And he could be a bit of a joker, too."
Gray tells of the time when the children were playing a concert at the local television station and all of the other band members were lining up dutifully outside.
"My wife, Peggy, was with me that day, and she saw this one boy, bigger than the rest, with a big, happy smile, like he owned the whole world, part and parcel," Gray says. "Finally, he came prancing up to her, and she asked him who he was. `Frankenstein!' Billy told her."
Few people realize it, but according to Gray, the future president did actually perform professionally once.
"When he was graduating from high school, Clinton sat in with my band at the Old South Club during the performances of the famous fan dancer, Sally Rand," says Gray. "But as much as he enjoyed that, he apparently decided he liked politics better."
Unlike Clinton, Gray never found anything he liked better than music. Gray began playing tenor sax in 1928 and went on to conduct and play big band music at the Majestic Hotel until he retired a few weeks ago. An energetic man, Gray continues gigging at Hot Springs nightclubs and has established a new music company, George Gray Entertainment Productions, which carries the motto "Society's Favorite Music." When asked if he, like his famous student, wears dark sunglasses when he plays the clubs, Gray just laughs.
"I'm too old for those fads," he says. "Although most people tell me I don't look a day over 50, at my age you're just glad you can still get up there on stage and blow your horn. Who cares about the accessories?" While Gray wasn't necessarily the strictest taskmaster around, one thing he was always able to do was instill the love of music into his young students. They never forgot it and passed his name on to their own children.
So last year, when Clinton's brother, Roger, wanted to learn how to play the saxophone, he came looking for his brother's former teacher. "I gave him one lesson and lent him my mouthpiece," says Gray. "And that stinker still has it. Hmmm. I'd better make a note to round him up and get it back."
Two of Gray's most precious possessions are the cover of Time magazine, which shows Clinton playing his saxophone, and a program from the 1933 World's Fair, where the great band leader Wayne King played one of Gray's own compositions.
But Gray is quick to downplay that triumph.
"My girlfriend, a beautiful chick, asked King to play it," he says, laughing. "And what man can say no to a beautiful chick?"
Gray then hums several bars of that song.
Still, he believes that personal triumph pales beside something else. "When you get to be 80, people sometimes ask you if you ever did anything really important," he says. "And my answer is always, `Yes. I taught kids how to play music.' "

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB