‘Let’s go see Jack!’

Some may know 81-year-old Jack Eggert from when he played with the Tarnished Six band in the early 1980s—or from later on, when he founded the Dixieland Jazz Band that played local venues for 14 years. Others may know him as having been a producer/director of instructional television at Penn State until 2006, when a disability expedited his retirement.

But to area schoolchildren and their families, he’s the man who brings kids and instruments together. Eggert repairs saxophones, clarinets, and flutes, the instruments he used to play. He also sells refurbished instruments at prices that make them available to everyone.

 “For more than 30 years, 50 to 75 families have been coming in for a repair or a purchase each year,” Eggert says. “Last summer, a woman brought in a flute she wanted restored for her grade-school daughter. Turns out, as a fifth-grader, this woman and her own mother had purchased that same flute here. I said. ‘Thank you very much for making me feel so old!’” 

Rick Hirsch, local arts leader, saxophonist, and saxophone teacher, says, “Every year Jack visits my Fraser Street Saxophone Camp with his ‘saxophone petting zoo’ and every year, the kids tell me it’s the highlight of the week. He brings in his favorite horns, shares amazing stories, and then lets the kids give ’em all a toot!”

 “I’ve heard recordings of Jack playing,” says David Stambler, professor of saxophone at Penn State. “He was fantastic! A real player in his day. That’s essential when you’re repairing and selling instruments to high-level musicians. Jack always knows which players would enjoy what vintage horns. And that means he has to be a historian as well as a real musician. But the most remarkable thing about him is his big heart. Jack’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever known.”

Eggert had been a professional musician since the age of 18. Following Army service, he earned a degree in dramatic arts and broadcast communications from the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO). “My horns helped put me through school,” Eggert says. “In addition to having my own quartet, I played with a fairly large dance band. We did gigs throughout the Omaha area, where a lot of multinational corporations were headquartered.

 “After graduation, I tried commercial broadcasting, but didn’t like the dollar orientation. So I went back to my roots as a producer/director for the public broadcasting station at UNO. In 1980, I moved to Penn State’s public broadcasting station, then known as WPSX.

 “In my free time, I often visited Chip Ward’s Music Mart. One day he handed me a clarinet and said, ‘Why don’t you do something productive?’ We started working side by side fixing clarinets, flutes, and saxophones. I was good at it and began working part-time for Chip while working full-time at WPSX. Later Chip sent me to an intensive two-week instrument repair program in Wisconsin.”      

Also in the ’80s, Eggert got to know Joseph Allesandro of Penn State’s College of Education. Allesandro was a “reed man,” says Eggert. “Saxophone and clarinet, but he also played trumpet and trombone, a multi-talented guy. He’s almost solely responsible for my working with families.”

Allesandro was at that time helping Julia Glover establish the music program at Our Lady of Victory Catholic School. He bought instruments out of his own pocket, and Eggert started to repair them. (“I can’t say enough about Jack Eggert,” says Sandra Muller, current instrumental music teacher at OLV. “He’s done so much to make our program what it is today.”)

Soon after the OLV music program began, the State College Area School District Band Boosters was established, around 1986. “Joe asked me to check out the used instruments for the initial Band Boosters sale,” says Eggert. “There have been 36 or 37 of these sales since, and I’ve only missed four of them.

 “State College impresses me because students here often have access to tutelage from local musicians as well as support from families and teachers. They’re able to fully develop their skills. Greg Johnson is a good example. He’s an outrageous saxophone talent and well-known nationally. I worked with Greg from fifth grade on, and we’re friends to this day, like many of the children I’ve helped over the years.”

During the late ’90s, when WPSX restructured and Eggert lost his job (last in, first out), he worked primarily as a musician. But when Turkey’s Anadolu University came looking for someone to teach a broadcasting course, former WPSX colleagues recommended Eggert. After that six-month experience, he was re-hired at WPSX and later spent his last three years before retirement as a producer/director in Penn State’s College of Agriculture.

 “Having grown up as a farm boy in Nebraska, I felt comfortable in that college,” says Eggert, “and am so proud of the work I did there with James Van Horn, professor emeritus of rural sociology. We did an ag extension course that served child care providers in more than 40 states, and in Canada and Latin America.”

His passions remain repairing saxophones, clarinets, and flutes for families; making sure quality instruments are available and affordable to them; and restoring vintage horns. But Eggert also assembles and sells lamps with clarinet bodies and collects saxophone-playing clown figurines. “My theory of why that became a thing,” he says, “is that some club owner, negative about musicians, pointed to one and said, ‘Who’s that idiot clown on the saxophone?’”

 “I know my days are semi-numbered, but I feel so fortunate and blessed,” says Eggert. “Going back a bit, I thank Chip Ward for giving me this outlet of fixing and restoring musical instruments to keep my mind and hands busy. Without this, I suspect I’d be just another old man with a bad attitude. Instead, I’m happy, because when a horn needs work, the kids say, ‘Oh good, let’s go see Jack.’ I like that.” T&G

Diane Johnston Leos is a State College freelance writer.