The late "Doc" DeHaven (right) with his daughter, Kelly DeHaven.
When trumpet ace Doster “Doc” DeHaven Jr. passed away Aug. 12 at age 85, the Madison jazz scene lost a towering presence. It’s hard to overstate his contributions to local music as a performer and educator over the past half-century.
DeHaven’s trumpet style was lyrical and melodic, with a rich tone perfectly suited to the kinds of traditional jazz he played the most. He blew clean but sassy. A lot of longtime Madisonians remember DeHaven best from his stint at the Pirate Ship, the long-gone downtown club where his combo held court three or four nights a week for 14 years in the 1960s and 1970s. To others, it was his role as an educator — he taught music at Monona Grove High School for 32 years — that left the most lasting mark on Madtown’s musical landscape.
By all accounts, the one thing that was more important to DeHaven than music was family. Often the two overlapped. DeHaven’s father, Doster Sr., was a pro reed player who jammed with the likes of Bunny Berigan. Doc’s daughter, Kelly DeHaven, remembers a household where jazz was always playing. “I grew up with a lot of earlier and standard jazz,” she says. “I don’t think most families had that regularly playing in their homes.” Visits to her grandfather’s house provided an opportunity to dig into even more of that great body of music.
In the 1970s, DeHaven put together a group called the Third Generation that included Kelly and her brothers Brad and Burt. In the 1980s he wrote arrangements for daughter Nina’s band, A Touch of Class. Kelly, a talented vocalist, is the only one of his children who pursued music professionally, though she has been on hiatus for the last few years. But the music gene has filtered down to the next generation; grandson John is an accomplished trumpet player, and he and another grandson, Jake, performed at DeHaven’s memorial service.
According to Kelly, her father was actually somewhat shy, a “man of few words,” in spite of his cantankerous public persona. “He liked playing at the Pirate Ship because he was up in a loft and didn’t have to be seen,” she says. It wasn’t until later in his career that DeHaven began sharing his excellent singing voice with his audiences.
DeHaven gave up playing in public a decade or so ago, after the effects of aging on his chops, perhaps accelerated by a minor stroke, started hampering his ability to play up to the high standards he set for himself. But even after he stopped performing, he continued to teach private lessons, and his impact on younger musicians in Madison will be felt — and heard — for years to come.
