Memories by Sound

In moments when all there is is the silence and the mind has its’ way the memories and visions of long ago times often find their way back into view. Mostly they’re the memories of times that were good or at the very least not so very bad when viewed from the perspective of time and distance. Even the memory of lying on my back on the football field and Dale Dalke’s knee landing in a spot on my anatomy that caused me to lose all sense of place and purpose doesn’t seem even remotely as bad today as it did on that afternoon when as a freshman I did my very best to keep from going into that kaleidoscope of color that was bursting out inside my head while distant voices asked if I was alright. I wasn’t alright and they wouldn’t have been either had it happened to them but as with so many things in life that moment lives within my memories today not as either a bad or a good thing but simply as a remembrance of a time and a place.
There are, however, memories that hold even more significance within my personal history; memories that do bring a sense of pain, a brush with sadness or a brief flash of ecstasy or almost unbearable joy. The pallet is filled with the emotions of living a life sometimes poorly spent and others rather well lived, a life perhaps not lived to its’ fullest but lived none the less. And with those memories often times come sounds…

I seem to remember hearing once that the tenor saxophone is the closest instrument of all to the human voice. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not but I do know that there was a time when if you were going to record a song you could almost bet that one of the prominent sounds in that band backing you up was going to be a tenor sax. The sound was everywhere and especially in the popular music of the day. Today I doubt anyone would think of putting out an instrumental song with the hopes of cracking the charts but in another time instrumentals weren’t uncommon and more than a few of them went way up the charts.
Thinking about those songs there’s still one or two that always seem to demand my attention. In 1961 Percy Faith’s “The Theme From A Summer Place” had been a big hit. Al Hirt and his trumpet cracked the top 10 in 1964 with a song titled “Java” and actually ended up number four on Billboard that year. “A Walk in the Black Forest” by Horst Jankowski hit number one in 1965 on the popular charts and twelve on Billboards Top One Hundred. But in 1963 a single was released by Boots Randolph that to this day I hear as well as any, a song titled “Yakety Sax”.
Today I don’t remember how it all came to be but I suspect that it all went something along the lines of I wanted to play an instrument, well something other than the accordion in those days that is, and maybe someone decided I should play sax. In fact I can’t honestly say I never understood how any of us ended up playing whatever it was we played in high school. Why was it that Jim played a tuba, Ed percussion, Bob a trombone and Wanda a trumpet? I don’t think I ever gave it much thought back then; it was just how it was suppose to be I guess. And I don’t recall if at some point I might have played an alto sax or not but I do know that there was an instant bond between that beautiful golden Conn tenor sax with its’ white mouthpiece inside that grey case with the brilliant royal blue lining and me. It became a part of me and who I was. In fact for a while it seemed to almost be me.
I’m sure there were those that merely tolerated the instrument they played. Their folks had put out hard earned money for that clarinet or maybe a French horn and now they were expected to be in the band and play the thing. And of course it was always obvious that some worked at least a bit more at learning the art of playing their instrument than others did. But for me practice was never a problem. In thinking back on all of it I have the older brother of one of my best friends to thank for that. Bob Yarroch and I were good friends and Bob had an older brother by the name of Bill who played first chair tenor sax. There were times when Bob and I would be goofing around at his place and Bill would be sitting there practicing. One day it struck me that I wanted to be that good or maybe even better. And so I practiced. Looking back on everything it didn’t hurt that in my freshman year of band Roxanne Hutchinson sat on one side of me and Mary Jo Gilberts sat on the other. Mary Jo had been the reason I’d fallen out of my seat in sixth grade when she walked through the door into Mrs. Nichols classroom and Roxanne though older than me was just plain gorgeous. Having inspiration like that on both sides of a fourteen year old boy could only mean he was going to try his very best to get noticed.
For whatever reason music was an important part of high school for a rather large percentage of us; in my first year there was no less than twenty percent of the student body participating in the band and likely a slightly higher number taking part in vocal music. I’m not sure what it was, I doubt the uniforms drew many though I have to say I loved the gals with their batons, but something or possibly someone drew many of us. For me it seemed that being there in that room with all those other guys and girls made as much sense, or maybe even more, than being out chasing a ball of one sort or another. It was for me a place where I belonged, where I found meaning and where I found passion.

I will always believe you cannot have music and be a part of music without passion. It has to mean something to you; it has to touch a place inside you that moves you from the space where you are bordering on numbness to a place where you feel. And when music means something to you you want it to mean something to others as well. If you’re not a selfish person then you want them to “feel” it within their very being no less than you feel it within yourself. Because it means something to you you insist that it mean something to others. You want others to hear and feel the things you do when the music plays.

Most people enjoy music and even make it a part of their life in one way or another but few find their being in music. I found it in those little yellow and red 45’s that I played over and over until they were worn through when I was five and six. And then I found it in that tenor sax and playing it with a high school band surrounding me because in the end, whether they realized it or not, those fifty some others playing their instruments were merely backing me up. Perhaps for that very reason they would say that my future lay in becoming the first full time tenor saxophone player in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. They were wrong.

For the most part I can’t tell you what music we played. Nothing comes to mind and I doubt that even if someone were to tell me the names of most of the songs we performed I’d not recall them. There is one though that I’ve never forgotten. I remember it as the carrot that was dangled in front of us as a reward for the rest of the practice session.
He may very well have been the reason many of us were there sitting in those chairs, holding those instruments and waiting for him to raise his arms and then bring them down to give us permission to create the sounds that made the music. In my case I could have been no other place but he made it all so much better in so many ways. He actually seemed to like us, he certainly liked music, what he did wasn’t just a job and he wanted to share his love with us. He did that in a way that never deterred me or my love, even when I got “the look” from time to time there was never anything that he would do or say to cause me to do anything other than try to become just a little bit better the next time.

And now band practice is just about to end and the bell will be ringing for the next class. We’ve gone through all the other “stuff” and the trumpets or the clarinets or the percussion have been run through their paces on one section or another of some piece we’ll be performing. We’ve worked on things that needed working on, maybe not enough but we’ve done what’s been asked of us once again and still there’s time for one more song.
It got to where he didn’t really have to say anything. It was a collective consciousness sort of thing when we’d finish that last thing we were working on and he would fold up his score. He’d reach down under everything else and you’d hear all of us reaching in the back of our folders without being told. We would never do the piece in a fashion worthy of performance but it was our reward for having done good enough or better on the rest of the things that we needed to work on.
And then the leader of this group of want to be musicians would once more assume the position of conductor. Mr. Ronald LeRoy would spread his score out before him, look out over the fifty plus teenage faces looking back at him, smile, raise his arms and as that baton came swiftly down we would all once more do our very best to try and make it sound right.
Never will I ever think of or hear the theme to “The Magnificent Seven” and not think of a very special person in my life. Thank you Mr. LeRoy. From the depths of my soul thank you.