Where Ikea now stands next to the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN, there used to reside the proper home of the MN North Stars hockey team — back when ice hockey was king and decidedly not found in Dallas. The team’s move was blasphemous.
I was an usher at the Met Center for three years, working concerts for Neil Diamond, INXS, AC/DC, Judas Priest, John Cougar Mellencamp, and lesser-known upstarts like New Kids on the Block and Bruce Springsteen. I have stories, but not today. My experience there led me into an ushering job in college, which I also held for 3 years.
I have seen some concerts!
One of the most memorable was the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra tour in 1991. This went down 34 years ago, but here’s who I remember being on this tour — Obviously there were saxes and trombones and keys, and also obviously, being a young trumpet player, I wasn’t paying much attention to them:
Wynton Marsalis, Music Director and Trumpet
Herlin Riley, Drums
Joe Temperley, Bari
Possibly Milt Grayson(?!!!), Vox, an Ellington alum
Jon Faddis, Lead Trumpet (fly-in sub for Lew Soloff, who had a religious holiday to attend that day)
Marcus Belgrave, Trumpet
Joe Wilder, Trumpet
David Berger, arranger and I think conductor? Maybe he and Wynton duked it out on every other tune?
I was one of 3 people on campus to have completed the driver certification test that allowed me to drive the band around for 2 days, which means I first had to drive the UWEC facilities manager around for 10 minutes in the campus passenger van, and he checked that I knew how to stop at a stop sign and that I possessed a low-enough liability risk for the university. There was no written test. He must have figured I’d had enough of those. He did point out that the speed limit was 20 MPH, after catching me bouncing off student pedestrians at a 32 MPH clip. They were young and resilient and this was not a deal breaker, as we were each in a hurry to go our ways — he to manage facilities, and I needed to get to Ed Psych 304.
I drove many VIPs to and fro when they came to perform at our school. I once nervously drove Judy Collins around in a $50,000 Town Car. At one point right after her concert, she needed to talk to her manager before he walked away, and said to me briskly, “Driver! Stop!” And I said, “Yes, Sir!” and stopped with equal briskness, lurching both of us dangerously toward the dash, followed by a long moment where we each heard what we heard, each debating internally whether or not one of us was going to acknowledge her femininity. After what felt like 6 years, I let out a breath, and she let it go.
On this Lincoln Center Band Day, I was to pick up the band from the airport, bring them to the hotel, the sound check, maybe dinner, back to the hotel, to the concert, a late night Perkins run, and several to the airport the next day. It was a really, really cool 2 days for me.
For this story, you’ll need to know that Herlin and Wynton had a rental car. We’ll come back to that.
There was a particularly brutal passage in one of David Berger’s Ellington transcriptions. The trumpets were split doing 2 things at once, and the truly oppositional rhythms in the trombones weren’t helping, sliding in and out of rhythmic unison, as they were, between the saxes and trumpets at a very bright tempo — an Ellingtonian impossibility, really. Mr. Faddis, sight reading, kinda mostly biffed it. He wasn’t even close. They ran it again, and he biffed it again. There were low-voiced consultations within the section, and a pencil burned.
Then Jon gave Wynton a look … and Wynton gave Jon a nod … and they went on to rehearse other things (more on this in a minute).
I brought the band back to the hotel, and being inspired, I went down to the music building to nerd out with my trumpet. At 6 O’Clock, I drove back to get the band for the concert. Joe Wilder and I had a short conversation — what a nice cat! — we loaded up and left. One problem: The guys in the rental car thought Wynton was in my van, and the guys in my van thought he was in the car. We got to the concert, and the band leader was nowhere to be found.
This was before cell phones, kids.
To call the hotel, someone had to walk 2 miles one way, uphill both ways, kill a bear, find a phone book, a quarter, and a pay phone. Things were getting dicey. Moments later, Mr. Berger walked in and said, “Hey, Wynton’s still at the hotel. Go get him, kid.”
My whole life had led up to this moment.
I was clearly going to save the concert, and — bonus! — spend one-on-one time with one of the icons of my instrument. So I attached my cape, jumped into the van, and wondered if everyone knew how much of a hero I was at this critical moment in music history.
I jogged urgently into the hotel lobby.
Wynton, ever the coolest cat, was slouching in a brown leather lounge chair by the elevator. Like, he was slouching so low he was vertical. He was looking up, and asked, “You my ride?” I polished my knuckles on my shirt, pointed my two index fingers like Leather Tuscadero (look her up, kids), and said, “I sure am!”
I was super impressed with myself. For Wynton, this was Thursday.
We got into the van, he in no particular hurry. There was some idle chit chat about the day and the band and the tour and the trumpet I helped him load. As I parked the van behind the hall, I thought I’d say the dumbest thing anyone has ever said: “So, do you think Jon is gonna get that passage?”
Wynton didn’t hesitate, and smiled: “Hey man, that’s Jon Faddis,” stated with serene confidence as he floated Christ-like into Zorn Arena, a thousand times cooler than I. 45 minutes later, the band had 3,000 people screaming during Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue, just like the famous 1956 Newport recording. And of course, there were no errors on the part of Mr. Faddis, one of the greatest lead trumpet players in history. That nod earlier in the day was an acknowledgment of That Pure Fact, and I was too green at the time to understand.
I later took the trumpet section to Perkins, minus Wynton. Joe Wilder explained to me that on the road, they sometimes have to wash their clothes in the sink, since most hotels don’t have a laundry room. Earlier that day, before the sound check, he had laid out several pairs of underwear and socks to dry on the balcony rail. But on his return before the concert, he discovered that they had flown away on a Wisconsin breeze, into the pine forest behind the hotel, up, up, and away. We all laughed — loudly — at his secret barebottomedness. He knew it was funny, and it came up several times in the 2 hours we were at Perkins.
He was such a nice man, and his stature and dress reminded me of my grandpa. He held doors open for people, gave me his card, had nice things to say about the campus and the roaring crowd. “We weren’t expecting that in this small town.” I explained a bit about the oddly strong jazz history of Eau Claire, and how a tiny dive bar on the college-kid bar strip had hosted the Duke Ellington Band, the Basie Band, John Lee Hooker, Coltrane, and a hundred others in the 80s. They were like, “WHAT?” “Yeah, it’s a tiny bar called The Joynt, the size of this Perkins kitchen, and the Ellington Band played there. And up the road is the Shell Lake Jazz Camp that Byron Stripling, Geoff Keezer, and Lyle Mays attended, and most of the music faculty here are IU grads,” I bragged. We had a nice chat about All The Things.
Many years later, I heard Joe on our local jazz radio station, KBEM, playing Body and Soul. I wasn’t sure he was still alive, but I wrote a little note and sent it to the address on the modest business card he gave me back in 1991. I mentioned that it was nice to hear him play, that he sounded great, and I reminded him of his Breeze-Absconded Underwear.
He wrote me back! Now that’s Old School.
He included a signed photo of himself, and wrote to me how he had forgotten about his de-boxered performance, and that my reminder certainly made him laugh.
A few years after that, at an ITG convention hosted by Jon Faddis at Purchase College, I was sitting in a restaurant with Byron Stripling. He pointed out a table full of some old guard trumpet heroes, Joe included. We went over, I re-introduced myself, and we reviewed the story one last time, an inside joke I shared with a humble legend.
Be good to yourselves, people.
Remember that we play music to connect with folks across generations and cultures. Remember that Jon Faddis is a pro, Wynton missed his ride but remains cooler than I will ever be, and that Joe Wilder was a great man who once played a concert Free Willy-style in Wisconsin.
Sincerely,
Steve Kriesel