Jimâs record collection, my first exposure to the crazy people of rebop. Jim would lie across the bed looking hypnotized, listening to Charlie Parker or Howard McGhee, or he would pick up his trumpet, always there, and play along for a few bars, change the record and sing or play along with the new one. Some afternoons he would just practice, sitting on a turned-around kitchen chair, his sheet music on its rack (stolen from Burbank School) while I would either listen, talk to him or go through his collection of Beauty Parade , Titter , Sunshine & Health , etc., the best collection of magazines I had run into yet, although I had a better collection of funnybooks, which Jim ate up by the yardful.
Once while I was there somebody beat on the front wall of the building and yelled at Jim to shut up the goddamn trumpet noise and Jim leaped off the bed and smashed his hand against the wall and screamed like a maniac that if the bastard didnât like the goddamn music he could blow it out his ass, all at top volume, Jim sounding berserk but grinning, his eyes wild, and the guy outside went away.
And sometimes we would go around the project looking for the cheap girls who supposedly abounded in such places, but very seldom did we score, and once I got into a grappling contest with a girl bigger than me and was knocked over Jimâs bed and cut my eye and damned near bled to death before Jim could stop laughing, and of course the girl got away.
One bad time I came over and Jim was practicing. He nodded and winked at me and I sat on the bed and lit up, but I could see he was having trouble. He would play a few notes, they sounded all right to me, and then play them again, interrupt himself, âShit!â and then try again, playing the notes fast and high, getting more and more frustrated until finally he took the horn from his lips and stared at it with a look of dismay. âgodd amn it!â he said.
âWhatâs the matter?â I said.
âItâs this fucking horn !â
But it wasnât the horn. The horn was beautiful, kept polished and the valves lovingly oiled, everything in its place in the bright green velvet case, the spare mouthpiece, the little silver attachable music rack, the silvered mute and all. What was dismaying Jim was that he could hear the notes so well, could imagine what they should sound like, but could not play them.
But generally, a few bottles of beer, a few Camel cigarettes, sweet girlies in their underpants, and he could play like an angel. I got a real kick out of it, and never had so much fun in high school as over at Jimâs.
WE HUNG around together for the rest of the school year and the summer, but then my family moved to the Pacific Northwest and naturally, I went with them, although the thought of leaving California for the backwoods made me sick. Late in the summer, not long before I left, Jim called me up one afternoon and said there was going to be a jam session in a barn up in the hills between Berkeley and Oakland, a real blowout with nobody trying to dance, just the music, and lots of musicians from all over the East Bay, and did I want to go, because nonplaying guests were going to be counted at the door. I was entering my own cool period at the time, so I probably said something like, âHey, man, sounds like a groove, sounds real hep!â We were already making fun of people who said hep for hip.
To this day, Jim thinks of that night as the greatest evening of his life. Itwasnât mine. I could think of ten thousand evenings where I had more fun, but I have to grant Jim his point, because he was up with the musicians and I was out with the drunks and fistfighters and bottlethrowers, the vomiters and screamers, the girlstealers and facekickers.
There were huge kid gangs in the East Bay at that time, and for all I know, still areâThe Watchtrack Gang from Oakland, Jinio Reles and His Chinese Army (containing no Chinese), the beginnings of
Once while I was there somebody beat on the front wall of the building and yelled at Jim to shut up the goddamn trumpet noise and Jim leaped off the bed and smashed his hand against the wall and screamed like a maniac that if the bastard didnât like the goddamn music he could blow it out his ass, all at top volume, Jim sounding berserk but grinning, his eyes wild, and the guy outside went away.
And sometimes we would go around the project looking for the cheap girls who supposedly abounded in such places, but very seldom did we score, and once I got into a grappling contest with a girl bigger than me and was knocked over Jimâs bed and cut my eye and damned near bled to death before Jim could stop laughing, and of course the girl got away.
One bad time I came over and Jim was practicing. He nodded and winked at me and I sat on the bed and lit up, but I could see he was having trouble. He would play a few notes, they sounded all right to me, and then play them again, interrupt himself, âShit!â and then try again, playing the notes fast and high, getting more and more frustrated until finally he took the horn from his lips and stared at it with a look of dismay. âgodd amn it!â he said.
âWhatâs the matter?â I said.
âItâs this fucking horn !â
But it wasnât the horn. The horn was beautiful, kept polished and the valves lovingly oiled, everything in its place in the bright green velvet case, the spare mouthpiece, the little silver attachable music rack, the silvered mute and all. What was dismaying Jim was that he could hear the notes so well, could imagine what they should sound like, but could not play them.
But generally, a few bottles of beer, a few Camel cigarettes, sweet girlies in their underpants, and he could play like an angel. I got a real kick out of it, and never had so much fun in high school as over at Jimâs.
WE HUNG around together for the rest of the school year and the summer, but then my family moved to the Pacific Northwest and naturally, I went with them, although the thought of leaving California for the backwoods made me sick. Late in the summer, not long before I left, Jim called me up one afternoon and said there was going to be a jam session in a barn up in the hills between Berkeley and Oakland, a real blowout with nobody trying to dance, just the music, and lots of musicians from all over the East Bay, and did I want to go, because nonplaying guests were going to be counted at the door. I was entering my own cool period at the time, so I probably said something like, âHey, man, sounds like a groove, sounds real hep!â We were already making fun of people who said hep for hip.
To this day, Jim thinks of that night as the greatest evening of his life. Itwasnât mine. I could think of ten thousand evenings where I had more fun, but I have to grant Jim his point, because he was up with the musicians and I was out with the drunks and fistfighters and bottlethrowers, the vomiters and screamers, the girlstealers and facekickers.
There were huge kid gangs in the East Bay at that time, and for all I know, still areâThe Watchtrack Gang from Oakland, Jinio Reles and His Chinese Army (containing no Chinese), the beginnings of