If you didn’t know it, I’m a jazz nut. In the sixth grade, when band became an option for snot-nosed Clinton Elementary School students, I wanted in. I didn’t come from a family of athletes. My mom was in band, and I was convinced I had no hand-eye coordination (that turned out not to be true), so I wanted to follow in her footsteps.
My mom rattled off the list of available instruments we could play from a paper the school sent us. Saxophone wasn’t on the list. I knew nothing about saxophones other than they were the only cool instrument. My mom informed me that I had to suffer through the clarinet before the band director would let me play saxophone, so I did, ear-splitting squeaks and all.
Fast forward to middle school. I didn’t know anything about jazz other than it was cool. See a pattern here? I joined the middle school jazz band because I wanted to play the cool music. At one point that year, the middle school and high school held a joint jazz band concert. The middle school band played stuff like the Pink Panther theme, the theme from Peter Gunn, and just about anything else written by Henry Mancini.
Then the high school band took the stage.
They played “In the Mood”. I was entranced. The place was jumpin’. My appendages twitched involuntarily to the rhythm. I’m sure I had a stupid smile from ear to ear on my pudgy middle school face. From then on, I was hopelessly in love with jazz.
The drummer holds nothing back. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Thursday night, I was hanging out with some friends in the Wedgewood Houston neighborhood in Nashville. We were out shooting photos to celebrate my friend Jonathan’s recent acquisition of a new Sony camera. As we finished up our photo shoot, we walked past a place called Americano Lounge, a coffee shop / cocktail lounge dressed up like an old-school speak easy inside. Jazz leaked through the door. I saw a saxophone. We went inside Americano.
Come to find out, the first Thursday of every month is jazz night with a five-piece band. Delicious. I watched the band play “Strasbourg St. Denis” with the same stupid look I had at that concert in middle school. After the song, I walked up and asked if they knew “Stardust,” one of my favorite jazz standards that everybody-and-their-brother has covered since Hoagy Carmichael wrote it in the 1920s.
The piano player, a laid-back guy named Alexander Murphy (a terribly appropriate name for a jazz musician) said, “Yeah, I think we know that one. Chase, you know ‘Stardust.’ Cool. What key? G? Yeah, man, we know ‘Stardust.’ We’ll play it after this next song.”
I stood in a café full of sitting people like a dork. I stood near a column watching the band play, with an intensity like unto a swooning fanboy. I crouched down with my camera to snap a few photos, hoping they wouldn’t mind (not that they could argue with me while they played). Murphy’s fingers danced across the keys. The bass player’s head bobbed to the beat. The drummer wore every feeling on his face as he played. It was wonderful.
When they got done with ‘Stardust’, I walked up and thanked them. Murphy pivoted on the piano bench to face me. “Hey man, can you send me those photos when you’re done?”
I laughed. “Sure! I was afraid you guys wouldn’t even want your picture taken.”
The drummer smiled. “Nah,” he said. “Musicians eat that stuff up.”
Alexander Murphy on piano, ladies and gentlemen. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.