Mama June, Music, and Me

A small bead of sweat formed at the corner of my eye, magnifying a momentary reflection coming from off to my right. As I turned toward the light, he caught my eye. He seemed so lifelike, positioned prominently among wicker and wrought-iron furniture pieces and a few odd-looking implements from a much earlier era. Standing guard over this melange of aging accessories on the front porch of a quaint, two-story, salt-box home, this stoic sentry seemed to beckon to me. I ambled toward the cluttered porch for a closer look at my weathered, wooden friend. As I approached, the front door opened suddenly and I was greeted by a most affable and charming woman.

"Hello," she said warmly. "I'm June."

"Hi, I'm Paul," I responded, awkwardly thrusting forward my hand and then drawing it back.

"Folks around here call me 'Mama June.' This is Jake." she offered, dusting off a shoulder of the statue.

"He keeps an eye on the place."

Jake seemed an unconventional name for an Indian chief, but I raised my right hand and offered a mock greeting to the motionless mannequin.

Casually surveying the arresting assortment of antiquity all around me, I blurted out, "I'm intrigued by all this...uh..."

"Junk?" she interrupted with a laugh. "That's what most of it is, but I can't seem to part with it. That's why I decided to become an antique dealer, so I'd have a legitimate excuse for keeping it around. Can I interest you in a particular piece?" she asked.

"Oh, no." I replied. "I was just..."

"Great!" she interjected. "I'm not in a selling mood right now anyway. Why don't you come in and meet my niece. She's just taken a batch of cookies out of the oven. I'll make some lemonade and we can sit in the kitchen where it's cool and visit."

With that, she took my arm and led me through a foyer stuffed with odds and ends of every conceivable sort toward the kitchen. On the way, June explained that this was not only her antique shop, but also her home. The kitchen was warm and inviting with its magnificent, ten-foot, textured ceiling, glass-front cupboards, butcher's block, and an antique wood-burning cook stove that had been converted to gas.

Once in the kitchen, June pointed me to an empty chair at the massive oak table next to her niece, Rene. I set my sample case on the floor and as I slumped into the chair, Rene slid a plate of fresh-baked sugar cookies in front of me. June poured us each a glass of cold lemonade and then joined us at the table.

"This is Rene, my niece." June shared.

"She's a nursing student at a school in Pittsburgh, not far from here, and is visiting for the weekend. I guess I'm the relative closest to Rene's school, so she comes here to get away when she doesn't have enough time off to go home. Of course, since I live alone, I'm always very happy to have Rene here."

I introduced myself to Rene and explained that I, too, was a college student, and that I was in Morgantown just for the summer.

"I'm a musician," I explained, "and I had hoped to spend the summer playing jazz with my trio from school, but at the last minute, that fell through. I tried to find a decent job at home, but most of the good jobs were taken, so...well, here I am in Morgantown selling books door-to-door."

"So, you play jazz, do you?" queried June, as she motioned for Rene and me to follow her into the living room--another large room with a high ceiling brimming with handmade musical instruments from a number of different centuries. June made her way through the delightful diversity of this rich room to an antique armoire in which she had hidden a very contemporary and elaborate stereo system. Next to the turntable was a shelf laden with vinyl LP records. She thumbed through the LPs, ultimately pulling one out and holding it up for me to see.

"If you're into jazz, you'll really love this!" she insisted. "Have a seat on the sofa there and I'll spin it for you."

She carefully slid the vinyl disc out of its jacket, placed it on the turntable and set the stylus gently into a blank groove somewhere near the middle of side two. The voice of Duke Ellington could be heard above the din of a crowd as he introduced his composition, "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue." Following exuberant applause the rich euphony of a classic, big-band ballad began to delight our ears. June sat beside Rene and me on the sofa and smiled at me with a knowing grin. We settled back to relish the moment together.

This particular piece began with the full band playing. After several verses and a few choruses by Ellington on the piano, there emerged a tenor sax solo that would redefine the ultimate "jazz experience" for me. I'd heard lots of great jazz solos in my day--I had listened to jazz since about the seventh grade--but this one was enchanted. I'd not heard of saxophonist Paul Gonzalves until that day, but I would never forget him after that.

Gonzalves started off typically enough, embellishing the melody of the song, but as he progressed, the festival crowd was being stirred into a frenetic celebration of music and musician like none I'd ever heard. Several choruses into the now infamous "ride," Jo Jones, a well-known jazz drummer, began to beat time with a rolled-up program offstage. As simple a gesture as that was, it ignited the crowd, provoking pandemonium, ecstatic dancing, cheering, and general mayhem. Twenty-seven astonishingly improvised choruses later, Gonzalves took his seat while the ingratiated crowd responded with thunderous and sustained applause. The occasion was the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956, and fortunately for us all, the event was carefully recorded.

As I listened to Gonzalves' epic solo, I locked onto his groove and rode it like an ocean wave to it's frenzied and electrifying conclusion. Even after the "wailing interval," as it has since been deemed, was complete and the applause faded, I was still as electrified as if I'd been there in person, and as spent as if I had played along, note-for-note, with Gonzalves. That's the appeal of jazz for me. It has to be experienced. And what an unforgettable experience that was for me. I'd heard plenty of improvised solos before, but never one that impacted me like this one did.

We all sat in silence, savoring the moment. Something wonderful had happened that afternoon, but it was more than just the music. It was, as Duke Ellington said of his first engagement at the famous Cotton Club in Harlem, "a classic example of being at the right place at the right time with the right thing before the right people." Surely, nothing binds soul-to-soul as sweetly as music. In that brief hour, June, Rene and I bonded so that it seemed as if we'd known each other for years.

Through the living room window, I could see the sun sinking low in the sky behind the distant hills. I knew it was time to gather my things and begin the long trek back to the boarding house where I was staying, especially if I wanted to get there before dark. I finished my cookies, drank the last sip of lemonade and then bade June and Rene farewell as I headed out the door. As I past Jake, the cigar store Indian chief who had greeted me on my way in, I could have sworn that he was smiling! I turned back to June, who was still standing in the open door, and asked, "Just out of curiosity, how much are you asking for ol' Jake here?"

"Oh, he's not for sale." June responded. "He's family!"

"Of course he is!"

I smiled as I skipped down the porch stairs and headed home.