Memories...

My first of Richard Pryor were his role in "Lady Sings the Blues"; growing up in the "wrong era" of music, I fell in love with Billie Holiday before I ever heard of Janis, or Jimi, or John Lennon. I wore out the soundtrack album stealing Sweets Edison's trumpet licks, along with others of Chet Baker, and Louis Armstrong, Bunny Berigan, et al..

My sister listened to the Beatles, but I was always at a band practice, or practicing my horn, off in my own world, the kid the other kids said was born 50 years too late. The first rock and roll I remember listening to was in high school when riding with a friend and hearing "American Pie". The next year they put a jukebox in the cafeteria and I heard a few more, some Chicago and Paul Revere.

I enlisted in the Navy in '73 when my Dad made me refuse a full paid music scholarship saying 180 miles was too far for me to be from home at 17; he said I could stay home and go to junior college. I told him I wasn't staying under his roof after I graduated, that I was going to college or the service. I had been playing Taps at Navy funerals for a couple of years, and the recruiter and I had it worked out to where I could go to the Navy music school. Only problem was Dad would only sign for a two year hitch, and music school required a 4 year enlistment. I went anyway, figuring I'd re-up at the end of two and go then. By the time the two was up I wanted no more to do with them, and got out and did my weekend warrior time for 3 years.

Christmas of that year found me in the Philippines...I still haven't figured out whether Dad won or I did!

My real introduction to the Beatles came when I was assigned to the ship's laundry on the USS Kittyhawk, on loan from my helo squadron. We worked 12 hour shifts, and the guy that ran the pants press next to the shirt press I was on listened to nothing else the whole time we worked. By then I had started to question a lot of things in my life and the world, and Lennon and McCartney fueled a lot more thought and questions. I'm still grateful to them...

My political memories were of JFK and Camelot, his assassination; my Dad talking about how everone should be voting for George Wallace and his backhanding my teeth through my upper lip when I told him he shouldn't use "the N word" anymore, that no one should. It was fun going to school and explaining why I couldn't play my horn solos with the stage band until that healed! Funny how it was Dad that turned me on to Bunny Berigan, and Berigan said more than once his biggest influence and idol was Armstrong (as did every other trumpet player Dad loved from the big band era), but Dad wouldn't admit Louis existed until a couple of years before his (Dad's) death in '83. In early high school I had a great band director who turned me on to some early Armstrong tracks from when he first went to Chicago in the 20's, and I had told Dad he should check them out some time. 10 years later I went by to see him one day and he was working in the darkroom and had some of the Hot 5's and 7's on the turntable. Neither of us said anything about it; I wish now I'd asked him what he thought...

Back to politics; my next big awakening was Bobby Kennedy. I heard a bit of his speeches somewhere in early '68 and had just bought "To Seek a Newer World" as I went off to a band camp at KU in the early summer of '68. The day I arrived there Bobby was killed and it seems like a light went off that stayed off for a very very long time. I thought I saw it flicker a few times, especially in the mid 90's; I thought perhaps hope and caring and taking care of each other wasn't gone and forgotten, but Newt and his buddies soon extinguished that little glimmer, and I truly wonder if I will see it again in the time I have left on this earth.

Gene McCarthy I don't remember much about; the things I've learned in the days since he ceased to be a force in politics still cause me to say "what if", but then "what if JFK had lived, or Bobby, or Martin Luther King...my heart starts to rend if I play that game, so I just can't. Imagining alternative history is not something I'm good at in my own life, let alone the world!

But for every good heart that still beats in this world, I know we are less without him, and so many others who go unnoticed and unappreciated each and every day.

I once read that the natives in Alaska used to explain the Northern Lights by saying that they were the souls of all those waiting to return to the world, and they were dancing. I'd like to believe there's a heck of a party going on while Lennon and the brothers Kennedy and McCarthy and so many others bide their time to come back and help us straighten this mess out; in the meantime I'll keep giving what I can where I can and trying to do something to turn my red state blue...

alan