AprilCadence2013

Jazz Stories Lewis Porter
jazz interactions. i’m not sure if those had a minimum or if you had to buy anything.
The waitress came over and said “what’ll you have?” and i said “nothing,” because
i didn’t have practically any money with me. she looked a little shocked, but pete is
so nice, he’s just a gentleman, he said “he’ll have a coke, and i’ll pay for it,” which
was awfully nice of him. at the end of the night, the other three people were finding
their way home, i was still too shy to have said anything to that girl, i think i’d said
something like “so you like jazz?” They were finding their way back to riverdale,
which of course is not where i lived, and pete said “i can take you home, i can drive
you,” which again was very nice, though it was not exactly on his way; i’m pretty
sure he still lived in manhattan. By that time we’d moved to the Kingsbridge section
in the north Bronx by the reservoir. i might’ve walked there that night. so we got out
to his car and it was a cab. i said “how come you’re driving a cab?” and he said “i’ll
tell you all about it.” as we drove back he told me, i see that you play piano and
you’re interested in being a pro but you know, i’m not gonna kid you. i’ve played with
coltrane and recorded with sonny rollins and everything, but it’s a very hard life, and
it’s not for everyone, and it’s very unstable. it’s possible, too, that by ‘66 already...i
remember at the end of the 60’s when jazz was really having a hard time. i went and
saw mccoy Tyner, and i was one of six people in the audience. i don’t think he’s had
six people in an audience anywhere for the past twentysome years. it’s possible that
by ‘66, audiences were declining, but i’m not sure, because i was going to tons of
things, and things seemed fine as far as i could tell. and he said “i’m actually going
to go to nYu and become a lawyer,” which you may know he ended up doing, he’s
been a lawyer in new York for many years now. finally he dropped me off, and said
listen, feel free to call me anytime. such a nice person. ...(recording ends, part one)
it’s lewis porter again, jazz pianist and jazz professor at rutger’s campus in
newark. here’s another vanguard story for you. my first trip to the vanguard was
with pete la roca, which i’ve told in another story, and i got in the habit of going to
the vanguard. i was only 15, but who was going to stop me? They didn’t question
me. They probably should’ve, i don’t think you were supposed to be in a joint that
serves liquor at 15. in ‘68, i’m pretty sure it was, i can’t remember what time of year.
i was either 16 or 17. (i say this was 68--but i looked up hawkins’s dates at the
vanguard, and it seems he was there for several weeks in 66 but maybe not 68)
coleman hawkins was there. i was into hawkins before i ever knew anything about
lester Young. i had bought the lp on rca vintage series. lpv 501 was the first
of the series, and it was hawkins recordings from about 1923 all the way to sonny
meets hawk in 1963. The track “just friends,” that last track, i must have listened to
over and over. rollins and paul Bley’s playing on that tracks had a huge impact on
me, i think it reall almost set the direction of my playing, to some extent until today,
polytonality, and so forth and so on. so i had to see hawk. i went to the vanguard.
i’d been there before, and when they’d ask you what you wanted to drink, i always
got a coke. so the waiter came up this time and said “what’ll you have to drink?” and
here am i, i think pretty clearly underage, but they never bothered me. i always sat
72 | CadenCe Magazine | april May June 2013