INTERESTING

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking in the freezer for some nosh, and what I found was a pint of Haagen-Dazs called something like Pistachio Pomegranate Nut Purple Fuck Doodoo Crunch. I asked Pam why she got this grossness instead of chocolate, and I reminded her that, like other such explorations, it would stay untouched in the freezer for about six months, and then we'd dump it. She said, "Well, it looked interesting." I'm sure it did, but I asked her to promise me that she'd never again buy any food because it looked interesting. Interesting is not the same as delicious.
Last Saturday night I saw Bob Samborski, who had recently given me three CDs of 1930s jazz. I said, "Bobby, what does it say about me that these are the first records in about forty years that I listen to over and over again?" He said, "Maybe it doesn't say anything about you. Maybe it says that all those guys were doing something right that very few people are doing right any more." A profound response. That music from seventy-plus years ago remains physically and emotionally exciting, joyful, creative, artistic, beautiful, sad, touching, simple, complex, disturbing, invigorating, uplifting, spiritual. Its feelings and phrasings demand our total participation. Talk about "Interactive Entertainment!" Listen sometime to Billie Holliday's "Strange Fruit" or Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo" or "Solitude" or a Bix or Bunny trumpet solo or a Johnny Hodges alto solo. It is, if you try just a little, very easy to get past the old-fashioned vibratos and funny rhythm section feels, and go right to the heart of the music, right where you want to be. Those people were saying something to all of us through their art. They were communicating with every ounce of their energy and their souls. And that's the way we listened, too.
We've lost something precious. Bebop and post-bebop, post-rock 'n' roll, post-R&B pop, post-romantic classical -- what is our response to them? "Challenging." "Fascinating." Does this music embrace us? Grab us and not let go? Well, it doesn't do that for ME, anyway. No, it's "daring." "Virtuosic." "Intellectually stimulating though rather inaccessible." It's -- interesting.
But interesting is not delicious. And that ice cream is still sitting in my freezer.

70s

I thought about doing this autobiography thing chronologically, starting when I was about three years old and remembering the first records I listened to, but I decided to give up that idea and begin instead with an overview of my life in the 1970s. That was an incredible decade for me though it was by no means my most profitable time in purely financial terms. It covered virtually my entire recording career, my closest brushes with the fame I had pursued since the age of about seven, my near-PhD in English Education, and the beginning of the Jack Kramer Orchestra, which was to become my primary source of income from the late '70's through the first decade of the 2000s.

I had decided in mid-1968 that the '68-'69 school year would be my last as an English teacher at Evanston Township High School (more about that experience in later entries). I decided that it was time to pursue my childhood dream of becoming a world-famous trumpet player, the Harry James of the second half of the twentieth century. Besides, since I was about to turn twenty-six, the threat of the draft and Viet Nam would conveniently go away, so I wouldn't have to teach anymore to avoid that whole disgusting mess. Luckily for me, Blood Sweat and Tears appeared on the scene right about then, and the idea of a trumpet player in a rock/pop band suddenly looked like a realistic possibility. So I made my stardom plans, all the while figuring out ways to achieve my goals even though I was, by that time, well aware of my very significant weaknesses as a trumpet player. And there were many. I could never play high notes. I had lousy endurance. I was a terrible improviser. In general, I was not a very creative writer or musician. But there were ways, I insisted to myself, to get around all those roadblocks. And I almost did it in the 1970s.