Jam: A Novel

one

Frank, Honey. Why don’t you go downstairs and practice for a while?

I was sitting Indian-style on the living room floor. To my right, a soon-to-be-opened bag of nacho cheese Doritos. To my left, an enormous, icy-cold glass of Hawaiian Punch. Directly in front of me, the tube was tuned to WGN. The Houston Astros (whom I had a certain grudging respect for, thanks mainly to their nausea-inducing Technicolor uniforms) were in town taking on my beloved Cubbies.

It was the bottom of the first and the Flubs were already down 4-0, but I wasn’t worried because there were men on first and third and Dave King Kong Kingman was on deck. I had just gotten comfy and was about to bust open my bag of chips, so I had very little urge to hop behind the drum kit. C’mon, Mom, I whined. I’m watching the Cubs game.

My mother (a staunch White Sox supporter) came up from the basement and looked jadedly at the television. What’s the score?

They’re down four-zip, but there’re two guys on and Kingman’s coming up.

Mom sniffed derisively. "Ohhh, Kingman’s up. Why didn’t you tell me? You know how much I enjoy seeing a Cub strike out."

"No way he’ll strike out. The wind’s blowing out to left, and he’s due." I went on to explain that Kingman hadn’t hit a homer in a week, had recently made some adjustments to his batting stance, and was ready to go on a tear. Mom just rolled her eyes.

Before he’d inked with Chicago in 1977, Dave Kingman feasted on Cub pitching, knocking balls out of the bandbox known as Wrigley Field at a truly alarming rate. Naturally, I despised him. When he became a free agent, the Cubs’ front office said, If we can’t beat him, let’s have him join us, and they signed him up. The minute he pulled those Cubs pinstripes over his long torso, I immediately forgot about those innumerable games during which he’d squished my heart like a rotten tomato.

Kingman appealed to me for a variety of reasons: he was big (6’6", 210—I looked it up); his 400-plus foot dingers were awe inspiring; and he had a cool name. (Kingman. King Man. What could possibly be better than being the King of Man?) He was as close to being a cartoon superhero as a ballplayer could get, and was thus the ideal player for me and my fellow ten-year-olds to idolize.

But King Kong had one big, fat, hairy fatal flaw—strikeouts. His tornado-ing strikeouts outnumbered his monolithic home run blasts by a pathetic margin of three-to-one. A typical Kingman line read 1 for 4, 1 HR, and 3 K’s. Children may have loved him, but grown-up baseball connoisseurs (e.g., my mother) found him infuriating.

Born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, my mother had followed the White Sox her entire life, and had nothing but disdain for her team’s North Side brethren. Naturally, she enjoyed yanking my Cub-worshipping chain. (My Bulls-loving father, on the other hand, hated baseball, so he generally took a powder when Mom and I started to baseballistically snipe at each other.)

I smell strikeout, I smell strikeout, Mom chanted in a sing-songy, taunting tone.

I told you, Mom, the wind’s blowing out. He’s gonna hit one over the fence. No question. I was totally confident.

All right, slugger, let’s make a little bet. If Kingman hits a homer, you don’t have to practice and you can watch the rest of the game. If he strikes out, you have to practice for two full hours.

Just like that, I wasn’t totally confident. Would I have to practice now, or could I do it after the game?

Now, because we have a session at seven. The drum set was housed in my parents’ basement recording studio. A 7:00 recording session meant that dad would have to start setting up no later than 4:00.

It was 2:15, which meant that if Kingman K’ed, the game would almost certainly be over by the time I finished practicing. I pondered the wager. What if I don’t want to take the bet? Can I still watch the game?

Mom smiled. "Excellent question, my friend. Let me think for a second … ummmm … no. If you don’t take the bet, you’ll still have to practice for one hour." So if I skipped the bet altogether, I’d at least get to catch the end of the game.

Mom wore an evil grin as Kingman stepped into the batter’s box. So what do you say, slugger? You gonna put your money where your mouth is?

During the previous afternoon’s doubleheader, Dave had struck out a total of six times. My confidence in King Kong suddenly hit an all-time low. I don’t want to bet.

She nodded. Probably a wise idea. Let’s see what your hero does. Kingman worked the count to 3-and-2, fouled off four pitches, then whiffed on an ankle-high change-up. Three outs. Good call, Frank. If music doesn’t work out, you have a bright future as a gambler.

I clicked off the TV. Ha, ha, ha. I’m going down, but only for an hour. I grabbed my Doritos and trudged toward the stairs.

Mom said, Franklin Craft, where do you think you’re going with those chips?

Um, downstairs. To practice.

I don’t think so, young man. Last night, we found half of an Oreo stuck in between the hi-hat cymbals. With the creamy half facing down.

Oops. "I promise I won’t get any food anywhere. I promise."

She deliberated. "All right, but if I find one crumb down there, just one crumb, you will not be allowed even one bite of food for an entire month. No bread, no water, no nothing."

Ha, ha, ha, I reiterated, and went downstairs to practice.

I’m a damn good drummer, but I’m not exactly what you’d call a natural.

When I play—be it a live gig or a solo woodshedding session—I can’t slide into mental cruise control for even a second. If I lose just one increment of focus, melding my arms, my legs, and my drum set into a single music-making unit becomes an onerous chore.

I’ve always hypothesized that one of the main reasons I’ve had to labor in my musical development is that neither of my parents possessed that theoretical music gene. Edward and Amanda Craft were warm, loving, caring parents, but musically speaking, they were all but talentless.

By the time he turned seventeen, Eddie Craft had already elicited a bevy of godawful sounds from an alto saxophone, a tenor saxophone, an upright bass, an electric bass, and a piano. His parents mercifully stopped imposing music lessons on the not-so-budding instrumentalist after he frustratedly tossed a trumpet, a Harmon mute, and a vinyl copy of Miles Davis’ My Funny Valentine out of his bedroom window.

As for Amanda Mason, well, my future mother had a rich voice and could sing like Sarah Vaughan when she was crooning all by herself. But when she vocalized with any kind of accompaniment, an incurable case of tone deafness reared its ugly head. Stick a band behind her and the inchoate diva sounded like Carol Channing’s asthmatic sister.

They met at a jazz show, of course. (For the record, it was an Oscar Peterson gig at the London House in Chicago.) Though she couldn’t sing a lick, Mom made good use of her rich speaking voice, working as a traffic reporter at a local radio station. Dad had managed to land an ideal job for any jazz lover—bartender at, you guessed it, the London House.

According to Craft family legend, Peterson was in rare form on that serendipitous evening, filling the club with a variety of cheery block chords and doleful melodies. Halfway through the first set, Amanda waltzed over to the bar. She ordered a club soda and batted her eyes at the short, beret-wearing, ultra-thin-mustache-having hipster behind the bar. Eddie—who at the time was sans girlfriend—was bewitched. He puffed out his chest, stuck a little pink umbrella in her glass, stood on his tiptoes, and served the dark-haired gamine her drink with a dramatic flourish and an ironically cocked eyebrow. It was like—if not love—at first sight.

After O.P.’s final number, Eddie and Amanda chatted each other up. Their initial common bond, aside from a mutual passion for jazz, was a shared despondency over their respective lack of musical prowess.

Though Amanda’s younger sister Betty was getting antsy to take her leave of the London House, Eddie convinced the Mason girls to hang around for the second set—a set that neither of the soon-to-be paramours paid one iota of attention to. At the tail end of that evening’s conversation (a discussion that persisted long after Peterson, Ray Brown, and Ed Thigpen had left the stage), Eddie was so enamored with Amanda that he revealed to her his ultimate dream, a dream he’d never shared with anyone: it was his burning desire to launch his own jazz record label.

He’d observed during his six-month stint as the London House’s resident mixologist that the world-class musicians who came through town all complained incessantly about their respective record labels. We don’t have the freedom to fully express ourselves, they’d moan. Those fat cats who run the labels are just in it for the money; they don’t get the music.

My dad envisioned his label as a place where gifted jazzers could have the freedom to make the kind of records they desired without having to deal with the paradigmatic pressure exerted by big-time record labels and hard-nosed producers. As long as his artists had proven themselves as quality jazzers, Eddie figured it would be safe to let the musicians run the show. If a certain artisan—say, Oscar Peterson—wanted to make an album that had one twenty-minute blues jam per side, fine. If somebody like Steve Lacy wanted to lay down something with a combo comprised of soprano sax, drums, and a string quartet, that would be swell. If J.J. Johnson suddenly felt the urge to cut a solo trombone record, he could go right ahead.

And Eddie already had an appellative picked out for his incipient label. The name, he told Amanda, had to speak to musicians, let them know right off the bat that Eddie was simpatico, that he had more than a rudimentary knowledge of the music, that he was one of the cats. So he decided to name it after the flatted fifth, the magical part of a diminished scale that separated his beloved bebop from every other style of music known to mankind. It would be a totally in name that musicians could relate to. Eddie Craft would be the President, C.E.O., and Director of A&R for Flat Five Records Incorporated.

Amanda was enthusiastic, but even at that young age, my mother was quite practical. She queried Dad about how he intended to procure the cash for his project.

Eddie had it all figured out. I’ll find some jazz-headed banker and get a small-business loan to make my first record, he said. Then, I’ll find some well-known musician who’s unhappy with his label situation and give him the chance to do whatever he wants, however he wants. He’ll tell his friends, and eventually somebody else’ll want to do a date for Flat Five, and it’ll just keep snowballing. I’ll keep expenses low and set up a mail order service out of my apartment. I’ll pay the musicians partly in cash and partly in records, then I’ll let them keep the bread from the albums that they sell off the bandstand. It’ll be a win-win situation; they’ll have incentive to push the product, and the label’ll get visibility in all the right places. And it looks like I already have a verbal commitment for that first record.

Who? begged Amanda. WHO?

Eddie paused for dramatic effect. The first Flat Five release, he said, clacking a drumroll on the bar, will be a session led by none other than Thad Jones.

Mom shot Eddie an impressed smile. Jones, at that time, was lead trumpeter for the Count Basie Orchestra, and Amanda was a huge Basie fan. The Count played the London House regularly, and Eddie had developed a nice rapport with the modest hornman. Thad told dad to give him a buzz when Flat Five was ready to roll.

Sure enough, Eddie got his loan. But the meager advance wouldn’t cover the cost of an engineer, so Dad pored over a bunch of how-to books on recording and brazenly deduced that engineering might not be all that tough. Not only would Eddie Craft act as Flat Five’s ruling body, he’d also be its principal knob-turner.

Next time the Basie band rolled through town, Dad brought Thad and a local rhythm trio over to a small studio on Chicago’s North Side. Eddie figured it would be in everybody’s best interest to keep the session simple, equipment-wise; so in lieu of an elaborate set up with multiple microphones and drum baffles, Eddie stuck Thad and the trio smack in the middle of the recording room, threw up four mics, pressed the record button, and told the trumpeter to go nuts. Thad was a consummate professional and wasn’t fazed by the Spartan surroundings; he laid down twelve tunes in six hours, never needing more than two takes.

The ensuing record—an unpretentious affair that included a handful of not-so-standard standards and a couple of slick, Thad-penned blues heads—crackled with a natural energy absent from many of the era’s more ornately-produced sessions. It received enthusiastic reviews and the initial press run of two-thousand quickly sold out. Eddie soon printed up another five thousand discs, took out a few small ads in a few international jazz magazines, and soon jazzbos throughout Europe and Japan were clamoring for the next Flat Five release.

It happened just like Eddie had predicted. Thad told his brother about the satisfying experience with Flat Five, so the label’s second release was an elegant trio set by pianist Hank Jones.

Within a couple of years, it got to the point where Dad had to turn musicians away. He learned about engineering as he went along, and eventually the ever-increasing Flat Five revenue helped finance a house on Sheridan Road in Evanston—a house that included a big bedroom for the Craft’s soon-to-be-arriving bouncing baby boy (me), and an airy basement large enough to quarter a recording studio.

Dubbed The Bodega, the basement studio was my father’s pride, joy, and lifeblood. He’d designed the place so it would feel more like a living room than a work place, so it had a, shall we say, uniqueness that few modern studios could boast.

The spacious control room was built for comfort rather than practicality. Dad loaded it up with enough brightly colored beanbag chairs to seat a tentet. There was, however, one problem with Eddie’s decorating scheme: beanbags absorb low range frequencies, so during playbacks, nobody was ever able to get a true sense of the bass—which once angered Ron Carter to the point that he vowed never again to set foot in The Bodega, a promise he kept until Dad offered him the chance to make a solo cello record.

But Dad never worried about such trivialities; by the time The Bodega was up and running, Eddie had the Flat Five sonority down; he could simply set up, plug in, roll tape, and boom—the sound was there.

Musicians adored making the trek out to Evanston and waxing for Flat Five. They loved The Bodega, they loved the beanbags, they loved the lasagna that Amanda whipped up for every session, they loved the chance to record away from the bustle of the city. But most of all, they loved Eddie. My father revered instrumental talent and treated the musicians with a good-natured, respectful deference that kick-started their egos.

I luxuriated in everything about Eddie and Amanda’s non-nine-to-five lifestyle: the constant glut of good music and good vibes wafting through that studio; the camaraderie; the cryptic hipster jazz-guy lingo; the non-verbal instrumental interaction—it was totally entrancing.

I decided very early on that it was my destiny—nay, my birthright—to become a jazz musician.

In order to save valuable pennies, Eddie ran the basement air conditioner only during sessions, or when it was deemed absolutely, one hundred percent too damn hot to breathe. (Most jazz entrepreneurs are diehard cheapskates, and my eternally thrifty father was no exception.) So when I went downstairs to bash some skins after being forcibly removed from the Cubs game, The Bodega was stuffy, stifling, and in desperate need of airing out. Which didn’t bode well for the armpit sector of my t-shirt because, as previously noted, I have the tendency to perspire like Dick Nixon, circa 1960.

I stood on my drum stool, deposited my Doritos on the windowsill, and nudged open the ground-level window behind the drum set. After plugging in the weather-beaten fan beside the kit, I roved into the control room, fired up the playback system, and dropped a needle onto Clifford Brown and Max Roach’s Study In Brown. The blustery head of Clifford’s pulsing Daahoud filled the studio, and I ran back into the recording room and plopped myself behind the battery of drums. (Even today, my practice ritual is generally launched by thirty minutes of noodling along with a record, and nine times out of ten, it’ll be something featuring Max.)

I gallantly attempted to keep up with Roach’s high-speed hard-bopisms, but the lack of pied coordination that plagued my not-yet-fully-developed legs prevented me from achieving any notable level of swing.

I’d never taken a drum lesson in my life, and I constantly had to fight my way through the inevitable series of percussionistic roadblocks. (When I told my father that I wanted to learn how to play the drums, Dad—who, during his aborted attempts at musicality, suffered through flocks of allegedly unimpressive teachers—said, You’ll get more out of an Art Blakey record than you will from some hack who teaches at the local music store.) Even though my battalion of methodologists—if only via record—consisted of such drum geniuses as Philly Joe Jones, Billy Higgins, and Elvin Jones, the struggle to master licks, patterns, concepts, et cetera, was constant. But once I learned something, it stuck.

And I was progressing; I’d been told by several of the trapmeisters who’d passed through The Bodega that both my ride cymbal and hi-hat were crisp, tight, and exceptionally swinging for somebody of my tender age. I knew without being told that my snare drum work was germinating—by this time, I was syncopating increasingly complex accents without dropping the beat. But my kick drum was another story.

Despite many hours of toil, I could never manage to get my feet to simultaneously do their specific jobs; inevitably, when my left foot (the hi-hat foot) clacked away on two and four, my right foot (the bass drum foot) would try to join in, rather than punch out the requisite off-center accentuations. Instead of sounding like Max Roach, I sounded like a confused polka band.

My feet were in major stumblebum mode that day, and I became increasingly frustrated as I clumsily oompahed my way through side one of Study In Brown. Neither the cracked window nor the fan had cooled down the room at all and I was sweating up a storm. Plus, my omnipresent desire to check on the Cubbies kept me from focusing solely on the traps.

I glanced at the clock—forty more minutes left in my allotted practice hour. My parents hadn’t pushed me towards music, but once I decided to play, they made certain that I put in sufficient study time—which generally wasn’t a problem, but I wasn’t feeling it that day and would have been more than happy to drop the sticks, grab my chips, and park my sweaty butt in front of the tube. Unfortunately, I knew this was one of those days that Mom wouldn’t consider letting me call it quits early.

I took a deep breath, and prepared to tough it out for the duration. I dislodged myself from behind the drums and went to flip over the record when somebody said, Hey, kid—you play really good. I flinched and looked around for the source of the compliment. The voice called, Over here.

He was hunkered down on the lawn beside our house. He poked his head through the open window, grinned, and said, Can I have some chips? I nodded mutely, too confused to refuse or respond.

The Dorito-eater was a tall boy with thin features and a shock of wavy black hair. He wore a clean white tank top, blue denim cut-offs, and a pair of white canvas Keds. Despite his lankiness (he was probably about 5’6), I concluded from his fresh face and alto-pitched voice that he was no more than a year or two older than me. Through a mouthful of munchies, he said, Hi. I’m James. My family moved in across the street last week. What’s your name?"

Always shy around other kids, I quietly mumbled, Frank.

Hi, Frank. I heard you playing yesterday too, so I thought I’d come by with this. He gestured at the rectangular case propped between his legs.

What’s that? I asked. A sax?

Yeah, it’s an alto. I’ve also got a tenor and a trumpet at home. But this is my favorite. James grabbed some more Doritos. So you like jazz, huh?

Yeah.

Me too. D’you like Charlie Parker?

Oh, yes.

Me too. My dad has, like, a million Charlie Parker records. He picked up his sax case. Would it be all right if I came down and played with you for a little while?

Um, I dunno, I replied nervously. I guess it’d be okay. I’d played accompanist to scads of records, but I’d never actually played alongside a living, breathing individual. This impromptu tête-à-tête with my new across-the-street neighbor would be either a revelation or a disaster. I said, Go around the house and I’ll meet you at the front door.

Nah, that’s okay; I’ll just slide in through here. Take this, said James, handing me his saxophone case. As I stood on the drum stool and grabbed his alto, James stuck one leg through the window and proceeded to knock the Doritos off the sill, scattering salty orange triangles all over the drum riser. He looked thunderstruck. Omigod, Frank, he moaned, "I’m soooo sorry."

I started to pick up the chips, but he said, No, no, no. I spilled ’em, so I’ll pick ’em up. It’s only fair. He wiggled through the window frame, fell feet-first onto the riser, and promptly embarked on a lengthy snack reconnaissance mission.

How old are you? asked James.

I mumbled, Ten.

Oh, yeah? I’m eleven. My birthday was last week.

Mine’s in October.

Cool.

After cleaning up and throwing out the remaining Doritos, he asked, So what do you want to play?

I dunno. I looked down and admitted, I’ve never played with anybody before.

James opened his case and confidently assembled his alto. "If you can play along with that Clifford Brown record, you can play with anybody. He moistened his mouthpiece, blew a series of blurry-fast scales, smiled, and said, How about ‘Now’s The Time’?"

Now’s The Time is a simple, standard Charlie Parker blues ditty that had appeared on at least three Flat Five recordings. I sat on my drum stool and said, Okay. You start, and I’ll come in after.

Nunh unh, protested James. "The drummer’s always supposed to count it off."

Oh. Okay. I closed my eyes and said, Uh-one. Uh-two. Uh-one, two, three, four …

It wasn’t a revelation, nor was it a disaster—but it was, for me, pretty darn incredible. James’ sax tone, even at this young age, was gritty, and to my relatively virginal ears, sounded somewhat harsher than most of the men who had paraded through The Bodega. His chops weren’t up to the mercurial level of, say, Gary Bartz’s, but if you closed your eyes when you listened (as I nervously did), you’d have no idea that the breezy lines emanating from that horn came from a set of eleven-year-old lips.

James effortlessly flowed his way through Bird’s blues tune, but I was holding on for dear life. I practiced constantly with a metronome, so my time was passable, but far from perfect. Whenever I faltered (which inevitably happened once every few choruses), James—rather than bluster ahead like nothing had happened—followed me and went with my beat. So when the tempo got screwed up, at least we were screwed up together.

After we finished the song, James grinned and said, That was fun. I haven’t played with very many people, either. Wanna play some more?

Exhilarated by the musical contact, I said, Yeah, yeah. D’you know ‘Jordu’?

You bet. Count it off. I counted off a slightly faster tempo and we hammered our way through Duke Jordan’s perky blues.

After five minutes of instrumental rambling, we began to meld, if only incrementally. James would play a repetitive rhythmic figure, which I would echo on the snare drum, and as he increased and decreased his volume, I was right there crescendo-ing and decrescendo-ing with him. I was paying such close attention to James, that my feet didn’t trip over themselves while they hihatted and kicked. We managed to hold everything together, and even ended the tune with a semi-flourish.

The applause began before our final note died out. We jerked our heads around and there was Amanda, standing on the stairs, beaming from ear to ear, and clapping furiously. That was wonderful, gentlemen! Just wonderful. Frank, who’s this talented young man you’ve snuck into the studio?

James walked over to Mom, stuck his hand out, and said, Hello, ma’am. My name is James Justus. My family just moved in across the street. I’m sorry I didn’t have the chance to introduce myself before I came into your house. (Even at eleven, the guy was a complete smoothie around women of any age.)

Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, James. My name is Amanda Craft. Welcome to the neighborhood. And, I must say, you play wonderfully.

James blushed and looked at his Keds. Thanks, Mrs. Craft. Frank plays real good, too.

Mom nodded her assent. You know, James, I’ve never heard Frank play as well as he did with you just now. She turned to me. Honey, you sounded just like Max Roach.

It was my turn to blush. Aw, c’mon Mom.

I mean it. You played beautifully. James, would you like to stay for dinner?

Sure. But I gotta call my parents first to ask if it’s okay.

Mom pointed toward the control room and said, Go ahead and use the phone in there. While James spoke to his mother, Amanda turned to me and said, Your practice hour is up, Frank. You can go and watch the end of the game, if you want.

James hung up the phone and called from the control room, You mean the Cubs-Astros game?

I called back, Yeah. They were losing. You wanna go watch it?

You bet. But let’s play one more song, first.

I immediately forgot about baseball. How ’bout ‘Blues Walk’?

"I love that song. Count it off."

Uh-one, uh-two, uh-one, two, three, four …

It went on pretty much like that for the next four years.

James would come over to our house at least three times a week. Sometimes we’d just do kid stuff—knock around a whiffle ball, play Intellivision, make phony phone calls. Sometimes we’d watch a sporting event (the Cubs were our faves, but once Michael Jordan hit town in 1984, the Bulls became our primary obsession). But no matter what, at some point we’d commandeer The Bodega and jam for a couple of hours.

I never found it upsetting or frustrating that music was almost ridiculously simple for James. On the contrary, the fact that one of my peers had such an innate facility with instruments of all shapes and sizes stimulated my desire to hone my own musical skills in a way that was invaluable. And it never became competitive, because I understood early on that attempting to keep up with James would be pointless—I mean, how could you expect to compete with a guy who, by the age of thirteen, could proficiently manipulate two-thirds of the entire woodwind family?

As our musical rapport and repertoire expanded, so did my percussive growing pains. My lack of formal training had hampered my capacity to absorb the drum rudiments that would have made the complex combinations I’d been experimenting with about ten times easier. James knew I often struggled, but he was always encouraging and empathetic. He never grew impatient when my multitude of gaffes forced us to run down a certain tune or a specific lick ad infinitum. Strictly for my benefit, he would calmly play the same song over and over and over again, gradually increasing the tempos until I had it comfortably under my hands. (One of the most memorable demonstrations of James’ patience took place during an afternoon we decided not to call it quits until we’d made our way through Cherokee at 200 b.p.m.’s, without stopping, for seven minutes. Naturally, he was fine the entire time; I, on the other hand, would inevitably biff the tempo after about two minutes. But James stood there and wailed over Cherokee changes for the next hour and a half until I was finally able to nail the damn thing. After that day, I felt like there wasn’t a tempo I couldn’t handle.)

At least once a week, I’d go across the street to hang out at his house where, in lieu of jamming, we’d listen to records. And sweet fancy Coltrane, we had a gluteus-load of records to choose from; the sprawling Justus basement was devoted entirely to Mr. Justus’ constantly-growing, wall-to-wall-to-ceiling phalanx of vinyl.

Gerald Justus was a compulsive record collector, but he was also a well-paid corporate attorney, and thus was able to feed his fathomless music jones. His job took him all over the world, and he would invariably spend his on-the-road downtime scouring new and used record stores, thrift shops, garage sales—anyplace where he thought he might be able to score a copy of something obscure, interesting, or tradable.

His problem—at least in terms of curbing his record purchases—was that he was fluent in the languages of jazz, soul, rock, and country, and could never focus solely on one style of music. The only genre he didn’t seriously delve into was classical. (I once asked him why he didn’t dig the classics and he explained, "It’s not that I don’t dig them, Frank; I enjoy a bit of Shostokovich or Rachmaninoff every now and then. But if I started buying classical records, we’d need to build an addition onto the house. And Catherine would probably make me sleep there with the records.")

Like my mother, Catherine Justus was preternaturally patient with her husband’s immersion into the music world. Whenever anybody asked her how she felt about the wall of sound that engulfed the basement, she replied, As long as he pays the damn bills, I honestly don’t give a fuck. (I always found Mrs. Justus’ foul mouth hilarious. But not James; he tended to visibly cringe