...And On The 7th Day...

(part II)

I lifted the lid slowly and, as the light hit the golden lacquer on the tubes, I imagined how an absent husband must feel when about to explain his absence. I lifted the flugel horn from the case and was delighted to find the valves unfrozen. I attached the mouth piece and let the horn have its revenge on me.

The chops weren't there. Like an athlete who hasn't trained in a long time, the muscles we horn players call our chops were not ready to take the field. A whiny, thin tone, lacking in overtones, dribbled out when I blew in. The range I was able to navigate was narrow and my fingers seemed to say, "Really, Dick? After all this time?"

I lasted only several minutes before my lips tingled and I had to put the horn back to bed. 

Jump ahead several days....

********

I had stuck with it and had finally built up the nerve to take out my true ax: the trumpet my parents had purchased for me about 60 years ago and which had survived 3 refinishes, a few dent repairs and travels with me to SE Asia. The horn I had used when I sat in with some of Jackie Gleason's musicians and other groups. Memories started to flood back into mind. By now the chops were amazingly agile. Muscle memory  and brain-muscle connections so often used in the past proved to be hard wired.  

My range increased as I worked through my collection of first smaller and then larger mouth pieces. Soon, I was using my Bach mouthpiece with the deep bowl that gives those rich overtones. Soon, my fingers did their job without thought. I had, as we say in kayaking, gone from conscious stumbling, to conscious capabilities and...finally...to that level of unconscious capability that allows one's thoughts to magically come out of an instrument as jazz.

The sound filled the house as I thought the thoughts that came out as scat out on the water. Now, as in the days of old, they emerged as sounds racing through unnamed chord changes. Thoughts became sound and, before very long, I was actually hearing the sidemen running along beside me in a satisfying catharsis of jazz. And I remembered. I remembered how some of us once had decided what the bible should have read. For we, the lovers of jazz, knew that...

ON THE 7TH DAY,..

HE CREATED PIANO, BASE AND DRUMS...

AND IT WAS GOOD. 

IT WAS VERY GOOD.

(will be continued if I can find somewhere to jam or sit in).

Paddle safe...

DS