11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
The jazz legend who wrote ‘The Publix Song' returns to UM stage for a 100-year honor
At 15, Pat Metheny, a prodigious guitarist, spent more time on Kansas City stages in his hometown than inside his high school classrooms.
So when the University of Miami's former music dean, the late Bill Lee, approached the teenager at a Kansas club with a scholarship offer to attend the Coral Gables campus in 1972, Metheny was gobsmacked.
Within a week at UM, Metheny told Lee that music had left him little time for academic study. Classes at the U? Too tough. So Lee made Metheny an instructor for a new electric guitar course at UM's School of Music.
That's what Metheny did for a year before heading off to teach at Berklee College of Music and embarking on an unparalleled career in contemporary jazz.
Now at age 70, with a record string of Grammy awards and whose song 'Last Train Home' served as the warm and fuzzy soundtrack for a beloved Publix supermarket holiday commercial from 1987 to 1996, Metheny returned to UM to finally nab that elusive college degree Lee had envisioned.
Although Metheny didn't play 'Last Train Home' at UM, when he did perform the tune on tours he teasingly introduced it as 'The Publix Song.'
Metheny's U 100 honor
Metheny was among the UMiami alums invited to headline the musical concert portion of the U 100 Centennial Celebration on Lakeside Patio Tuesday night. Call it a family reunion. Lee's 72-year-old son, Will Lee, was the evening's bassist. He has a raft of music credits in pop and jazz and a record-setting 33-year run on late night TV in the 'Late Show with David Letterman' house band.
After Metheny performed a medley of 'Have You Heard' and 'Are You Going With Me?' the University of Miami's seventh president, Joe Echevarria, strolled out and surprised the grinning and noticeably shy superstar, who said nary a word, with an honorary degree in music.
UM Frost School of Music Dean Shelly Berg, the night's dynamo musical conductor, along with interim provost Guillermo Prado, helped place the pink and black doctorate garb around Metheny, as the president told a sea of students, faculty members, parents and alumni gathered for U 100 Centennial of Metheny's stats.
'Did you know this man has won 20 Grammy Awards? He's No. 14 on the all-time list. You know who he's tied with? Bruce Springsteen and Henry Mancini. He's won in 10 categories. He's tied with nobody. He's No. 1 in the most categories won, all alone in the history of the Grammys. The second place person has eight — Quincy Jones. That's the company he's in,' Echevarria gushed.
In addition to Metheny and Lee and current students from the Frost Symphony Orchestra, the U Centennial's other UM alum performers included Miami-raised Jon Secada, Bruce Hornsby, Ben Folds, Joshua Henry, Dawnn Lewis and pop newcomer Carter Vail.
