Phil Faini: 'The Chief' knew how to keep the beat

Jun. 13—Hail to the Chief.

If you want to know the unbridled joy Phil Faini had for the wondrous act of making music, just go to his Facebook page.

There, you'll find a prominent photograph of the former WVU Creative Arts dean in action.

He's not in a tuxedo in a concert hall.

Nope.

In this candid, the drummer and academician, grinning like a loon, is leading an impromptu percussion concert, smack in the middle of a Taipei restaurant.

Let it be known that he's wielding chopsticks on a beer bottle—the Faini-fashioned instruments at hand.

Call it an international incident of the best kind, said his legions of students who affectionately referred to him as "The Chief, " during his 40-year tenure at the arts school on the Evansdale campus.

Faini's funeral Mass was Tuesday.

He died peacefully in his sleep last week at the age of 91, and it didn't take long for the tributes to start rattle-snapping in—just like the snare in a Gene Krupa drum solo.

Mr. Krupa, meet Mr. Faini In fact, it was Krupa, the driving percussionist who bridged the hi-hat gap between swing, bebop and rock 'n' roll, who got him into all of this.

As a kid back in Masontown, Pa., Faini was enthralled by the swing music he was hearing on the radio.

The aforementioned Krupa, specifically, who literally propelled Benny Goodman's landmark swing bands of that era.

Krupa didn't so much play the drums, he thrashed them—with precision. He anchored the tune and took it past its boundaries, often in the same chorus. So did the unassuming Goodman with his clarinet.

With his horn-rimmed glasses, Goodman may have looked like a Sunday school teacher, but he was a serious jazz cat—known for his integrated bands.

In a time when Jim Crow still ruled the juke box, it was Goodman who hired Charlie Christian on guitar and later, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton: two Black musicians who set benchmarks on their respective instruments that 21st century musicians are still trying to meet.

As a WVU music professor and dean, it was Faini who brought world music to Morgantown, with his frequent sojourns and teaching fellowships to Africa, China and Latin America.

Whatever he heard, in whatever rhythmic recess of the globe, he turned it into a course of study in Morgantown.

Before all that, though, there was that Crosley radio in his Nonni's living room back home in Masontown.

The glow of the vacuum tubes from the back was also the light of his muse.

Getting the gig He played multiple instruments in his high school's marching band and concert band, sometimes learning and woodshedding on them the night before—if a specific piece called for it and no one knew how to play it.

Trombone.

Tenor sax.

Anything that made a melodic noise.

By the age of 16, he was turning into a seasoned pro, keeping the beat behind the drum kit in area dance bands.

Gigs were plentiful. World War II was fading and couples were ready to hit the dance floor.

The musical prodigy from Masontown could always find a slot to fill, since word was out that he too was a serious jazz cat, with a musical maturity that belied his young age.

He turned down an engineering scholarship at Carnegie Tech to let it ride on music, journeying to Chicago, the big-shouldered city of jazz and blues, to study with Roy Knapp, a preeminent teacher of percussion.

Knapp got Faini on TV in those early kinescope days, which led to work with several touring big bands.

A chance meeting with musicians in the 4th Army Band in San Antonio, Texas, led to an audition—which, in turn, kept a young soldier who just been drafted out of combat in Korea.

After his military hitch and the start of college in Texas, the tune brought him back home to Masontown for family obligations.

Morgantown and WVU were right down the road.

The drummer enrolled—and never left.

On his way to becoming dean, he was a professor of percussion, building that program into the global juggernaut it is today.

Counting it off In the early 1960s, as WVU's creative arts programs were gaining international renown, Faini was making a serious portfolio, without taking himself too seriously.

Jon Crain quickly found that out.

Crain, the Metropolitan Opera star, retired from the stage in 1966.

Not long after, connections led him to the Evansdale campus, where he was hired as a voice professor.

His office and studios were right across the hall from Faini's. Crain still had his name. He was still a star, and thusly, many faculty and students were star-struck.

One day, while the tenor was running scales, he heard a percussive knock on his door.

Faini.

Faini told the story to The Dominion Post years ago.

"I was the drums guy, " he said back then. "So naturally, I had the noisiest room in the building. I said, 'Hey, Jon, buddy. You're gettin' kind of loud. You wanna keep it down a little bit ?'"

Crain glared—or tried to—before bursting into operatic guffaws.

"He had a big laugh, " Faini said. "But he was an opera singer. Of course he was gonna have a big laugh."

"The Chief " was just as warm to the WVU's Class of 2000, when he made remarks at commencement that year.

He was retiring, and by then he was star himself in global music, even if he didn't act like it.

The university asked him to say a few words, and he tapped out a pattern of celebration for each and every graduate.

Faini: "I want to leave you with the reassurance that each of you are endowed with special unique abilities and talent—talent that will allow you to make us see what we haven't seen, hear what we haven't heard, feel what we haven't felt and understand what we haven't understood."

It was a love song with a drum solo, and those in the cap-and-gown band quickly picked up the beat.

The Chief got a standing ovation that afternoon.

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