From Sports to Music: For the Love of Jazz
As a late baby boomer born in 1963, I came of age in the 1970s. But even before then, at the age of six, my inchoate passions centered on sports. My paternal grandaddy Horace and I would watch Black & White reel-to-reel films of boxing greats such as the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis, and the pound-for-pound grandmaster whose welter- to middle-weight style laid the foundation for Muhammed Ali’s: Sugar Ray Robinson.
One Christmas I got Everlast boxing gloves and tried to dance like Ali . . . float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Speaking of dancing, I, like so many of my Black-and-Proud peers, did our best to emulate James Brown’s smooth grit and soul power on the dance floor. But basketball was my real, real devotion, the 1969-70 Knicks taking me to b-ball heaven in game 7 of the NBA Championships, with captain Willis Reed, grimacing in pain with a leg injury in game 6, heroically facing Wilt Chamberlain and the Los Angeles Lakers in Madison Square Garden, coming out for the tip, and, in short order, sinking his first two shots. Walt “Clyde” Frazier, my idol back then, Dick Barnett, Dave DeBusschere, and Bill Bradley took over from there, as the momentum and destiny took over for the win.
By the late ‘70s, music replaced sports as the object of my fire and desire. Below is an account originally penned for the Calm app as an audio story that captures this transition. That story, titled “For the Love of Jazz,” was released B.C.—Before Covid—in February of this most momentous and pivotal year.
This is a story of a love affair, of my heart and soul being captured as a teen by an exotically beautiful, tantalizing, earthy force field from the bosom of the culture. Her name was jazz.
I’d listen to her on the radio early in the morning before school. She’d swing me to sleep at night, quiet storm ballads touching me all up inside. I didn’t really know much about romance, but something about the way she moved me, grooved me, tugged my heartstrings, made me feel she understood, and could teach me.
Although my mom and dad both had jazz records in their collections—I recall Wes Montgomery, Stanley Turrentine, and Cannonball Adderley—back in the 70s, in junior high, I listened to the popular music of the day, especially R&B. Al Green and Aretha Franklin were favorites of my folks. Motown and the Philly Sound too.
My favorite uncle, Curtis, was an audiophile with the latest speakers and sound system, as you can see below. Uncle Curtis, a pharmacist by profession, was a worldly man who gravitated to the finer things in life, like haute cuisine, and elegant threads.
I’d visit his Harlem apartment on 153rd and St. Nicholas Avenue and lose myself in his vast record collection: everything from classical to jazz, R&B and pop, choir music and gospel, and even Broadway show albums. Through Uncle Curt, my budding taste in music and art was grounded in variety and quality.
But it was an experience of live music in high school that was an epiphany . . .
Tottenville High School Stage Band
The school was huge, one of the biggest in New York City, with almost 4000 students. The auditorium, where the show happened, was big too, seating 1,000. The air was full of excitement that June evening, as parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters streamed in.
Some of the older folk wore suits and fancy skirts and blouses; they were used to dressing up, especially to see their grandkids perform. Some parents dressed up too, with dads wearing cotton dress shirts and trousers with cuffs, and the ladies with stylish hairstyles like the bouffant or the Farah Fawcett flip.
But the rest of us dressed casually—some wearing jeans and t-shirts with images of their favorite rock groups like KISS or Black Sabbath. Others wore the disco-style of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever . . . shiny gabardine pants, silk shirts, slicked-back hair and a cool air, like the Fonz on the TV show Happy Days.
My high school buddy Mason Ashe and I proudly sported our neat, round afros, a way of showing we were in style while being down with the cause. It was just ten years from the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and the movement’s afterglow still remained. Neither of us was a rocker or a disco fever cat, though we dug some of that music too.
The song “We Are the Champions” by Queen was a special favorite, declaring our generation’s desire to win despite the odds. But Mase and I were more fans of Soul and R&B music. I especially liked artists who made us move our bodies on the dance floor and had lyrics and album cover art that made us think and imagine.
Some songs were perfect for that special moment at house parties where we teens had the okay to get close, to dance the dance called the slow drag, locked in each other’s arms, a sweet embrace. There was a perfect song for such moments: “Reasons” by Earth, Wind & Fire.
But on that special night, it was the Tottenville High school stage band that changed my life. I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears: teenagers my own age groovin’ together on stage, taking solos, expressing themselves, playing their hearts’ desire full out, touching me and Mase from head to toe. It was mesmerizing.
They were striving for that rhythmic buoyancy of joy in jazz called swing, an action verb and state of being and becoming, all in one, when the drums and the bass slow drag and high step, ridin’ and glidin’ the beat, like surfing atop a wave.
The band played songs by groups of the day, like Steely Dan, a sophisticated ensemble that fused elements of rock, blues, pop, and jazz, and Spyro Gyra, a forerunner of the instrumental R&B style that came to be called Smooth Jazz. They also played hits like “Watermelon Man” by Herbie Hancock, and oldies but goodies by the Count Basie Orchestra like “Lil’ Darlin’.”
Mase said: “I’ve got to pick up my guitar again!”
I said: “I’ve got to learn to play . . . something!” But what?
I decided to pick up the alto sax. I went to work, mastering the basics of the sax. After one year in the concert band and wind ensemble, my fingers began to find their way easier on the keys, and my mouth began to feel at home along the reed. I’m happy to say that in my senior year I joined the stage band that first inspired me.
These two gents were the tenor saxophonists in the Tottenville High Stage band when I held second-alto sax chair
But It was a close call. I almost didn’t get chosen; I was so new to playing. But my enthusiasm was clear and influenced them to eventually let me in. What carried the day most was my young friend Reggie Washington, who, as fate would have it, was the bass player in the Stage Band we heard that fateful night.
Reggie Washington
I first met Reggie on the basketball court in the Stapleton Houses, one neighborhood away. I lived in Clifton, in one of the six-story Park Hill apartment buildings there. On the court Regg was quicksilver fast and had a vertical leap that allowed him to grab the ten-foot rim, even though he was shorter than me. We were rivals on the court, but fellow travelers in the love of music.
Me driving to the hoop as a member of the Tottenville H.S. varsity basketball team.
A few years after we met on the b-ball court, I ran into Regg on the Staten Island Ferry. It was my junior year in high school. As the Blanding family jazz trio played songs by Thelonious Monk, Regg and I rapped. The bebop backdrop steered our conversation into jazz.
As young and old milled about the decks of the bellied orange boat with dark blue lettering, we passed by the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, glancing at the Verrazano Bridge in the distance, summer sky illuminating the gentle waves. Pigeons, pecking and picking up scraps of food, did their quick, flat-footed walk all over the terminals and ships, bobbing their tiny heads, their eyes flitting.
My memory is a bit hazy about the details of the chat, but I remember Reggie staring at me intently as I spoke about the music, and what I had learned by listening deeply to jazz radio. Before that conversation Reggie had no idea how head-over-heels in love I was with her, with my muse, with jazz.
Regg’s older brother Kenny was already making waves in the 1970s by playing with jazz legends Betty Carter, Lee Konitz, and Johnny Griffin while just in his early 20s. Now he holds the drum chair in the Bill Charlap Trio. Reggie himself was a precocious acoustic and electric bassist with perfect pitch. If a bird chirped a note while flying by, Reggie could say: that was an “A,” or that was a “G.”
Reggie Washington
I must’ve made a good impression on Regg that day, riding the Staten Island Ferry, the belly of the ship traversing from South Ferry to the St. George Terminal. When the Stage Band members debated about letting this relative newcomer into the band, Reggie finally spoke up. He told them: “Listen. I’ve talked with Greg about jazz. And I’ll tell you this: He knows more about the music than all y’all.”
I was accepted into the stage band.
Playing in that band was bliss in motion. When you’re in the audience listening to music it’s great but playing it with others well is truly incredible. Playing in a great band, the sounds sweep you along like rainbow waves of color, swirling, an aura, a mystic chord of memory. . .
I was featured on “Morning Dance” by Spyro Gyra, a song as popular back then as Chuck Mangione’s “Feel So Good.” I loved the steel pan opening, sonically transporting us to the Caribbean, blue ocean waters, the gentle breeze, claps, twanging guitar and electric bass softly supporting behind, light drumbeat, which set the stage for my entry. I was proud of my spotlight moment. One of my music teachers, a fine trumpet player named Mike Morreale, even said that my playing on that song was the most musical thing of the night.
But for me, the pleasure of playing with my peers in the sax section, and those playing their instruments in the trombone, trumpet and rhythm sections, was better than any individual credit.
Fast forward twenty years, and I’m living at 870 St. Nicholas Avenue, having inherited my uncle’s apartment after he died. He willed to me everything in it. Reggie Washington, who by then had played and toured with Steve Coleman, Branford Marsalis, and Roy Hargrove, and I were roommates there for a few years. We enjoyed that great sound system and record collection of Uncle Curt’s, which we supplemented with our own sounds.
This piece is dedicated to the memory of my beloved ancestor, Curtis Lewis Thomas.
