Last time I saw Jeff was back in '58. Or it it could have been '59. I can't remember anymore. He was sitting in his dusty, gray '51 Chevy two-door Streamline, parked in the red zone across the street from the Jazz Workshop, with his gig bag and a roughed up copy of Finnegan's Wake on the dash, his alto sax in his lap, and a bottle of wine between his feet. Dago Red, he called it. And then he smiled, like he was smiling to himself, and passed the bottle.
"Just 'cause it's cheap," he said, "don't mean it ain't no good."
Jeff was sucking on a new reed and fingering some kind of figure around the circle of fifths on his alto, without blowing in it. So he could play it in any key, he said. So his fingers would know what to do, and he wouldn't have to think about it. And the pads would open and close against the key holes in a rythm, with a soft, percussive sound, making their own kind of music.
"Sometimes they call up a tune in some weird key," he said. "Just to see if you can cut it. And you gotta be ready to blow, or else just go right on back to the woodshed." And then he said he was just hanging around, killing time, resting up for a jam session at Bop City.
"I might be blowing all night," he said. "Maybe I can line up a nice gig. Or maybe something else. You dig? I don't know if I'll get to sit in though. Too many names in town."
"I just caught Rollins at the Workshop," he said. "Sure sounds rough, man. Like he's playin' half an idea, an' then just leaves it hangin', like takin' fours with himself. Rollins oughta quit playin' in public," he said, "til he gets it together." That was before he found himself On the Bridge.
Jeff asked if I ever read Finnegan's Wake. I told him I started reading it once, but then put it down. "Because I have a hard time reading stuff I don't understand," I said. Jeff said I should just read it, and don't try to understand it.
"Just read it, man," he said, "and absorb the words. Like the way you listen to music." And then he passed the bottle, and then reached back into the back seat and started digging through the pile of clothes and books, and old newspapers, and Downbeat magazines and fakebooks, and manuscript paper, and old, broken reeds, and Tick-Tock hamburger wrappers, and empty wine bottles, and empty beer bottles, and pulled out a brand new Brew Moore record. You know, the one with the weird, purple, snaky, elephant trunk-looking thing on the cover. And then he said I could keep it. Because Brew was an old partner of his, he said, and he had a whole box of them.
"Man, I gotta get my tenor back," said Jeff. "I shoulda hocked the alto instead. I guess I shoulda known better. You get more Jobs with a tenor. You dig?"
"An' I just blew a job across the Bay," he said. "Like I'm tryin' to show the piano man the right changes to some tune, you know, an' he gets all pissed off, "cause he's the leader, an' he don't like to look stupid. So I tell him, man, like some tunes got more than three chords in 'em, an' he says if I'm such a great fuckin' genius, what am I playin' in his band for, and I should take my axe and hit the road."
"So I might be takin' off down the coast," said Jeff. "Get my tenor back and go to L.A. There's more jobs down there. I gotta get a good gig, man. Like maybe a nice studio job. Like I'm gettin' tired of just playin' rock 'n' roll blues. You dig? don't knock it though, if that's all you can get. If you don't mind gettin' paid for takin' your solos all on one note."
We laughed and sang a few one-note chourses, and finished off the wine, and then Jeff said he had to get some sleep.
"I gotta rest up for the session," he said. "I might be blowin' all night."
And that was the last time I saw Jeff. Like I say, I think it was back in '58. Or it could have been '59. I can't remember anymore. But then about a year later, I heard they found him down the Coast, sittin' in his Chevy, and there was bloody glass all over the place, and his horns were missing, and there was an empty gig bag and a book on the dash, and an empty wine bottle next to his feet.
I don't know if that's what really happened. That's all I heard, and that's all I know. But sometimes, even now, I like to get a jug of red wine and listen to that Brew Moore record he gave me. I still have it. You know, the one with the weird, purple, snaky, elephant trunk-looking thing on the cover.
And some day I'm going to try and read Finnegan's Wake once again, the way he said: "Just read it man, and absorb the words. Like the way you listen to music."
And sometimes, when I'm not thinking about anything, I find myself singing a few one-note chouruses, like a blues for Jeff.
Kenneth Leroy Hill (KL)
16 March 1939 - 20 Sept 2001
