Back to the Trad Jazz band. I was introduced to one of the loves of my life – the bass guitar and soon I was inventing all kinds of weird stuff to go under all these tunes that I had never heard of. Satin doll, one note samba and many more which I have now forgotten.
The thing about jazz music is that it is very inventive music and it’s great fun for the player but it’s an acquired taste for the listener. There’s a great joke that sums it all up. How do you make a jazz band? Throw a blues band down the stairs. At this point I was just a little sponge, taking it all in and not judging anything.
Sax man was amazing however, he had about 700 songs in his head. While we were all eyes glued to chord charts, he was just peeling tunes off the top of his head like ripe bananas.
I was in my own special world. By day I would go to school, do my sums and stand in assembly, enduring all the boring stuff and by night I would hang out in a dilapidated old mansion with these funky grown ups, laying down riffs and being “like” a hippie muso.
Sax man had an interesting hobby. I didn’t find this out till much later, but he would play war games with these tiny metal soldiers. He had thousands of them. Over the years, he had hand painted them one by one with various regimental colors. He and his mates would get together for the weekend and move them around and recreate famous battles. I don’t know how. Did they roll a dice?? Anyway, they were tucked away in the other wing of the house, the one with no power and the layers of dust on everything.
I loved this old place, during rehersals, when I had a minute I would rifle though the bulging book shelves in the old wing to find first edition hard cover books dating back to the 1800’s. Every kid should have a place like this to hang out at. © 2009 Riley Jordan
