by Christopher Bacas
My first paid gig: volunteer fire hall, Saturday night. The leader picked me up at my house and drove to a small township outside the city. Barry was related to a woman who worked with my mother. In the orphanage where he spent some years, a teacher drilled hymns and choral music into his charges. Sam Cooke, in his Soul Stirrer days, visited the school and heard the boy sing. Sam embraced and encouraged him. That moment, Sam's music changed his life. He still played guitar and sang in a fetching tenor. With a day job now, weekend gigs were all he could manage. In the car, he talked to me like a musician, not a kid, explaining what we'd play (not surprisingly, I knew a few) and where I'd be contributing.
I was in tenth grade and a bit under a hundred pounds. So far, I'd played football games, Pancake Jamborees, and school assemblies. The high school fielded a juggernaut band of 250, drawing eager youth from three middle schools. A local wind band, filled with parents and teachers, performed park concerts all summer and included a jazz unit. At the fall agricultural fair, its stalwarts backed touring acts. Music as vocation wasn't in the air, though. Sulfurous paper plants, tar and asphalt makers, and a feed mill all smoked constantly. Guys started a second or third shift job the summer after graduation. Their father or uncle would vouch them in. If they did well, better hours and money, a car and house could follow. My trajectory was different. The day I came home with a tenor, my dad played "Soultrane" for me. On the LP jacket, a saxophonist with onyx skin and a gold mouthpiece; an African God pouring molten ore from his mouth. His playing, on "Russian Lullaby" (written by a real Russian), confirmed that mythic gift. Later, at a Woody Herman concert, Gregory Herbert, unimpressed I listened to Weather Report and Mahavishnu, pointed me back to Stitt, 50's Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. Of course, my father had their records,too. Later on, I saw Herbert burn up the bandstand with Thad and Mel. A year later, he was dead at 30. I knew about Bird and Fats Navarro, of course. Punctures came soon for the rest of my innocence.