The first day at work was graced with yet another audition. The schoolhouse had certified me as an army pianist, but everyone knows that that doesn't mean a whole lot. The sweat was trickling down my back and beading on my forehead before I even sat at the keyboard. There was really no question what the outcome of this would be. My music training did nothing for my actual jazz abilities, but it certainly was enough for me to know without doubt that I was terrible. To make it even worse, the combo leader pulled up a chart that I had actually played before: "Autumn Leaves". I now know that it doesn't really get any easier or more straight ahead than this tune, but at that moment I felt an increase in anxiety as I couldn't at least say, "Well, I've never played this song before." And sure enough, we weren't even through the head before SSG Cryer stopped everything and the pain really began. "So what did they teach you up there?" No preamble. No pretense. Just utter contempt.
The first gig was a week later. Welcome to the unit, here's your blues, now go play for five-hundred officers what you don't even feel good playing in the practice room. The drummer and I went early to set up, taking the big, white cargo van to carry all our gear. This also went on the growing list of things I was not comfortable with. The biggest thing I had ever driven was my parents' minivan, and here I was driving government property at least twice that size and exponentially more awkward. It was, apparently, the band's habit to drive right up to the back doors of the ballroom we performed in, which required maneuvering through a rather small lane between a pool house and a large flower planter. No little voice visited me and recommend a ground guide; the nerves were jangling way too loud for something so helpful. It wasn't until I heard the scraping and felt the resistance on the passenger's side that I realized that my life was most likely over. You can rest assured that I thought of hiding the van or maybe pushing it off Geronimo's jump down the road, but there were witnesses and the gash could not be hidden. Calling the bandleader to tell him was the second hardest thing I did that night; going on to play my premiere jazz gig as if I had any right to was and perhaps still is the hardest thing by far.
There were mandatory practice hours and endless sessions one-on-one with Cryer, and eventually I think everybody simply decided that all had been done that could be done. They just had to deal with another useless army pianist (dime a dozen), and at least she could bring the unit PT average up. Any other job and I would have been fired within the week. No, any other real jazz gig would have never even considered me. But the army had my name on a contract and I would sit at the keyboard for three years and pluck out whatever nonsense I could manage. I would like to say that I pulled myself up by the bootstraps like a great American should do. I would like to say that I practiced hour after hour until it seemed all hope was lost, and then the miraculous discoveries of talent and virtuosity stunning all that beheld. Of course, you've already gathered that it was more a matter of me accepting what everyone else had: it was useless and I must just do my time. That is, until New York.
The plan was for nine of us to go to the International Association of Jazz Educators conference in New York City, and then the post general denied the travel request and the trip seemed doomed. Three days before the conference, some hair crawled up the general's ass and he called his band to say that he would okay two soldiers to go. How they made the decision to let the hopeless case go instead of the tried and true, I will never know, but I think it had something to do with the American Dream. While, I don't know much about that particular dream, the five days I was in The City will live enshrined in my treasured memories always. Seeing performers on the scale of Lee Nash and Winton Marsalis was to jazz what seeing Shakespeare in the Globe Theater was to the Great Bard for me. Before, it all seemed nonsense and vague, and then I saw in crystal faceted wonder what beauty there was to be had. A drumset used like a whole symphony under the sticks of Nash opened the door to unfettered potential in jazz that I had never seen before. The trumpet player (certainly not in the class of hopeless musicians but rather perhaps the best jazzer we had) and I didn't sleep those five days and fell exhausted and blissful into the seats of our thrice delayed plane back home.
I was disappointed to find that inspiration did not translate instantly to the perfection I sought at the keyboard, and it was unfortunately not too long before I let those around me and the voices in my head convince me that greatness was not in my hands. I did enough to get by until the next year's conference in Toronto. What can I say that would be too effusive? It was more and more and I hungered for the twists of whaling blues and the sarcasm of scatty lines. I let it fill me until I thought I would burst from the beauty of it all, but I no longer imagined I would find the inspiration from myself. The previous two years had taught me that I could finally look from a distance, but I would never know what the magic of a perfectly expressed melody and rhythm would feel like.
I would have been safe and secure in these assumptions if it wasn't for a young, hopelessly idealistic sax player showing up at our band at the beginning of my last year of duty. The first rehearsal with him took the placidity out of all our bones and shook the fire into our eyes and fingers. There was no music that he couldn't get excited about and he even ran around to each of our instruments picking out this or that element from the aether that would be perfect here or there. The first gig demanded his versatility as Cryer, the bass player, had a family emergency and the new kid, Winkler, volunteered to fill in. None of us knew quite what to expect, but there was excitement coursing through the combo that I had never felt in all the months I had played with them. This night would be different. It may be disastrous, but this was also our first chance at something worth doing. I wouldn't have believed it if someone had described the evening complete with the Sergeant Major throwing off his jacket and grinding to the groove we laid down or the near orgasmic coordination of all of our statements and designs. It felt like stepping into the skin of the giants I had worshipped in New York and Toronto and feeling for a few moments what it was like to create the universe. We were gods and the crowd paid homage with the writhing perfection of bodies and music.
Perhaps I should leave out the rest of that year, and let us all stand in awe of one unexpected night of borrowed divinity. Wouldn't it be nice to pretend that a new pianist did not come with a dogmatic enforcement that was more than able to snuff out the fragility of the magic we had so recently discovered? I shouldn't let you know that I used her as an excuse to never play jazz again, except for the horrors of the Christmas stage band concert that we "shared". I probably shouldn't even share the melancholoy of the dreams that haunt me at night with soloes winding like serpents over the earth of harmony and syncopation. But that is the story that I have. A lilting reminescence of something so great it required the faith of a child.
