Reminiscing In Tempo
Casual Reminiscing in Tempo An interesting book arrived here the other day which, as is often the case, impressed me in ways the publisher hadn't anticipated. Entitled The Show I'll Never Forget:...
...I had learned about the concert by listening to Felix Grant, the Washington jazz deejay, on WMAL-AM—secretly, with earplugs, on my transistor radio, in bed...
...Having heard Duke Ellington, but never before seen him in concert, I was intrigued by his stage manner...
...Still, I was prompted to consider what my entry would have been...
...Entitled The Show I'll Never Forget: 50 Writers Relive Their Most Memorable Concert-Going Experience, it proved to be something of a shock...
...I had to take a bus to and from the concert, of course, and nobody I knew at the time, female or male, would have had the slightest interest in the Duke...
...I have happy recollections of taking my wife, before we were married, to hear Ella Fitzgerald at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C...
...This may seem preposterous in retrospect, but my parents regarded listening to jazz as something akin to self-abuse, and not only frowned on my affection for it but banned it from being played in our household...
...When I arrived at the Sheraton Park that frozen evening, I was dressed in my school uniform— brown tweed jacket and tie, loafers and khaki trousers—and a good thing, too...
...Much of it consisted of a sort of flirtatious patter with the audience ("We love you madly"), delivered in his silky baritone voice, and was designed, I could see, to buy time while the musicians rearranged their scores...
...A kindly musician with a saxophone slung over his shoulder—I think it was Johnny Hodges—directed me to a room where Ellington was sitting, looking tired, surrounded by a circle of female admirers...
...There were other musicians on the bill: Oscar Peterson, the great piano virtuoso, the bal-ladeer Billy Eckstine, trumpeter May-nard Ferguson, and the comedian Nipsey Russell...
...Still, if I had to select a single "memorable" experience, there is no question which concert I would choose: Duke Ellington at the Sheraton Park Hotel, Washington, D.C., March 20, 1966...
...and even 40 years later, every time I pass the old Sheraton Park (now restored to its original name, the Wardman Park), I remember that night...
...but I took a deep breath, walked in, bowed slightly, handed him a pen, raised my importunate eyebrows, and stood mortified while the Duke signed his name...
...Mind you, this was 1966, ten years after Elvis, and two years after the Beatles, appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show...
...As an undergraduate I saw the very young and distinctly malnourished Bruce Springsteen perform, and liked him even less then than I do now...
...In some respects, my rock 'n' roll experiences have been unconventionally memorable: a sodden day at Woodstock, surreal hours among the Deadheads...
...With three or four exceptions for jazz, all the memorable occasions were rock concerts (Queen at the Capital Centre, Landover, Maryland, November 29, 1977...
...1979...
...I believe he grinned as he handed me back the pen...
...His weariness gave me a moment's pause...
...I realize that part of this is a function of age—most of the book's contributors are younger than me—and musical snobbery...
...For awhile the acts I witnessed—Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Canned Heat, even Jim Croce—had a disconcerting habit of dying soon thereafter...
...On a somewhat higher plane, I heard Beethoven's Ninth conducted by Daniel Barenboim in the Staats-oper Haus in Berlin on the tenth anniversary of German reunification...
...I was impressed by his ability to stand up to conduct, and sit down to play piano, back and forth, without missing a beat...
...Writers are not necessarily astute judges of music, and I tend to think of rock as dance music and the noise you listen to while driving a convertible...
...No classical music, no Judy Garland, no Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs...
...There was also, I confess, an element of subversion...
...Bon Jovi at Memorial Coliseum, Portland, ' ¦ Oregon, May 8, 1989...
...Since Ferguson specialized in screaming notes in the higher registers, I took the occasion to slip backstage—or sideways, since this was a hotel ballroom—to see if I could get Duke Ellington to sign my program...
...Part of the appeal is the fact that, as a 15-year-old jazz enthusiast in the Swinging Sixties, I had the impression I was alone in the world...
...As far as my adolescent eye could survey, I was by several decades the youngest in attendance, and the only white person in a huge audience, all dressed to kill...
...So was hearing Arthur Rubinstein at Constitution Hall in Washington (1959) and Pierre Boulez conduct Bartok at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia (1972...
...There was nothing like it for me, before or since...
...Philip Terzian...
...That was a memorable experience...
Vol. 12 • November 2006 • No. 9
