Birthday

            by sam goldsmith

 

Going to jazz camp with Harry Young for the first time in six years truly humanized Him in my mind. Before He was a man who never fell victim to a virus, who never slept to ward off fatigue, who never ate or drank for nourishment, who never had to breath in the earth’s oxygen. Afterwards He was simply a man, a person subject to all the flaws naturally inherent to His species. I looked up at Him when I was nine years old, but now we saw each other nearly eye to eye.

At the end of the camp, Harry Young pulled me over and gave me a promotional copy of his new CD that wasn’t going to be released until later that year, October 2005. It was called “The Writing.” He told me I was the first person to attain a copy, even before the other members of His new band. I hugged Him tightly and tried to tell Him how much this meant to me, but I couldn’t say anything except that I was honored and grateful and thank you thank you thank you. I told Him I was the happiest I’d been since before I could remember. He probably thought I was flattering him. I probably was.

Before we left He told me He was excited to write a piece for the BHS Jazz Ensemble and that He’d be sure to give me a solo. He said He had some time after His tour to work on it and that maybe He could come out and conduct it at our spring concert at Yoshi’s. I was able to leave jazz camp assured it was not the last time I would ever see Him again.

 

I was already creating music before I was born.

My voice box was not developed yet, so I couldn’t sing. There was no air, so I couldn’t whistle. I could only pound on the walls around me. I would create intricate rhythms and complex arrangements in time signatures no one else could understand. I would pound hard to make a loud booming sound, an attempt to grab your attention. Or I could lightly tap the surface, a sound you could only hear if you were listening for it (I favored the loud music, or course).

 

There was always avant-garde jazz playing in the house as I was growing up. Music that was strange and modern was ordinary for me. This music was my caretaker. It read me stories as I fell sleep, helped me learn how to count, add, read, and write. I remember it teaching me to walk, striding alongside me, holding my hand, then letting me go when I could stand confidently on my own. In the home videos when I could finally walk without aid, an Al Harding composition watches in the background, whispering words of encouragement as I take tiny steps towards my mother, extolling my efforts as I collapse into her arms. The songs with simple melodies and complex rhythms became embedded in my subconscious and fundamental to my perception of reality.

When I was little, my favorite was a Harry Young album. It was entitled “Songs Celebrating Life,” though I didn’t know it then. I remember my father putting a CD in the CD tray and I would say, “Ooh! Dad, put on that CD with that tune that’s so cool!”

“You mean ‘Late Night Inspiration’ by Harry Young?”

“Yeah, that one!”

“Are you sure? We’ve listened to it so many times.”

“Please, Dad, please?”

And so we would listen again and I would internalize Harry Young’s unique style of world music blended with jazz.

 

Al Harding is one of the best bassists ever to see planet earth and one of the most stunning avant-garde composers in the last two decades. He’s incredibly famous, as famous as Harry Young should be, in my opinion. He performed the best concert I have ever seen, better even than any of Harry Young’s shows. It featured his big band, a group I favor over his popular quintet. The Monterey High School Jazz Competition was the next day, and half of the BHS Jazz Ensemble came to Yoshi’s to watch, the lids on their heads ajar, waiting to be filled with inspiration.

 I was in the lobby talking with the other band members when Al Harding walked in. His black upright bass case was slung across his back, its mass seeming to be a part of his body rather than a hindrance to his movement. He was shorter than I by about six inches, but he still towered above everyone else in the room. He bent over in an effort not to bang his head on the ceiling. He covered the distance of the room in one gigantic stride. His arms swayed at his side like limbs on a magnificent redwood tree, knocking away the other onlookers until he and I were the only people in the room. The best composer alive had just walked past me.

I hid behind one of my band mates, trying not to stare as Al Harding gave a hug to a friend. “That’s Al Harding!” I stammered breathlessly, trying to keep my voice from escaping to the highly trained ears of the titan at the other side of the room. I was so quiet that my friend standing next to me couldn’t hear what I had said and I had to repeat it.

“Yeah, I know,” he responded coolly. “Pretty chill, huh?”

I couldn’t make eye contact with him; I was still fixated on Al Harding. I tried to blink but my eyes refused to close. “Should I talk to him?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“I’m so nervous…” I hunched my shoulders and held my hands tightly, as if the room’s temperature had just dropped below freezing.

“So? I’ll bet he’d like to talk to you.”

“I don’t know…” I giggled nervously. “What if, like, he doesn’t like me? That would, like, totally suck.” I took my hairpin out, letting my long blond hair to fall gracefully to my hips.

“Don’t worry,” my friend reassured me.

I didn’t stop worrying, though, and by the time I had gathered all the courage I could to approach him, Al Harding had left to go backstage to hang out with the other musicians in his band.

 

Harry Young once said that the secret of happiness was to find forty or fifty of your best friends and put them on stage with you in front of thousands of wild, cheering fans. He said that He had been told this by one of His close friends whose name I now forget.

Someday I’ll say that to some young aspiring musician and he’ll never remember who told it to me in the first place.

Later that night, Harry Young and I played a song he wrote for everyone at jazz camp, a giant bonfire burning behind us so bright we didn’t need flashlights to see the music. After we were done and the crowd cheered, I said, “I am honored to share the stage with a very inspirational musician and very good friend and, Harry Young.” We hugged each other as the crowd rose to its feet.

 

At the Al Harding concert at Yoshi’s, another member of the band walked past me. I caught up to John Mendelson, the vibraphonist for Dave Holland, as he walked into the venue.

“John? John Mendelson?”

He turned around. “Hello?” He was asking me who I was.

I stuck out my hand and he shook it. “Hi,” I began, “I play vibes for the Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble.”

His eyes widened and I began to breath more regularly. “Really? What’s your name?”

“I’m sam goldsmith.”

“That’s great, sam.” He patted me on the back. “I’ve got to get ready to play, but I’d like to talk to you after.”

We separated. I’ve never seen him again.

 

Five years earlier when I was in middle school, I went to the Freight and Salvage Coffee House to see Harry Young play. He had woken up five minutes before the concert, thrown on some dirty clothes, and walked on stage without having drunk his coffee. His hair was an abstract sculpture or a new fashion statement. Maybe He had tried to cut it himself earlier because He didn’t have enough money for a barber.

He played like he thought He would never get to play the saxophone again. His energy filled the room and excitement flowed through His saxophone and floated out to the audience. Infected by the disease of this energy, the crowd was loud and spent most of the set on its feet, giving a ten minute standing ovation when Harry Young left the stage.

After the first set, I approached Him. He was talking with some of His old friends when He saw me. He interrupted himself to yell my name and hug me. His clothes were damp and his neck was wet with sweat. We talked. I was introduced to his friends as a brilliant vibraphonist, the future of Berkeley High when I graduate middle school. I tried to suppress the blood rushing to my face and the smile spreading across my face. He asked me how school was going, how music was going, and how life was going. He shared funny stories about some friends we had in common. We laughed. I told Him that I had moved to Berkeley and that he didn’t need to write me a letter of recommendation to get me into the Berkeley Unified School District. He was overjoyed. He assured me that the BHS jazz band would be a great experience and I would love it. I said I hoped so.

Then He told me He was moving to New York, that he wouldn’t make it to Feather Rive Jazz Camp this summer. He couldn’t make enough money in the Bay Area. He had already rented an apartment, He said, so He couldn’t stay, no matter how much I asked or how many times I said please. Then He had to go backstage and get ready for the next set.

To this day I don’t remember what he played at that concert. The only other thing I can remember was that when the second set ended I was too tired to say goodbye. I would not see him again until his concert on 4^th Street five years later.

 

I became obsessed with buying my own music in 2003, the year I turned fifteen. I would go to the record store once or twice each week and add a new CD to my growing collection. I did homework as some soothed me in the background, I listened to help me through depression, and I fell asleep listening. Now I was curious as to the names of my childhood companions that my father would have playing on the stereo when I returned from school. I learned that it was Harry Young’s “The Hand That Signed The Paper” that taught me how to write, it was Al Harding’s “Night Dreamer” that I ingested every night as I went to sleep, it was Harry Young’s “Slowly Striding” that helped me learn to walk and appeared on the old home video. I was fascinated about knowing their identities, and I gained a new perspective on my old friends.

 

I went to my first sleep away camp when I was eight years old. It was a music camp for kids ages 9-15, but since my birthday was a month away my parents were able to persuade the director into letting me in. It was close to the Sierra Nevada mountain range; the air was thin and crisp, the landscape was rugged and beautiful. It was called Feather River Jazz Camp because the campsite was along the banks of Feather River, a thin vein of water more accurately described as a “stream” or “creek.” Still, it was refreshing to take a short dip at noon when the sun’s heat was oppressive, the dry air cracked your lips, and the dust kicked up by people walking along the trail filled your throat.

The week allotted to this camp was not enough for me. For the first time in my life I was spending extended time with other dedicated, young musicians, many of who I was years behind in skill. I met some people in the Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble and they made me promise to come to Berkeley High and try out for the band as soon as I graduated middle school in two years. I met professional musicians, inspirational counselors, and future friends.

My father drove me home at week’s end.

“So, how was camp?” he inquired as parents usually do. I wasn’t old enough to be fed up by it yet.

“It was great really fun I played guitar all the time and met really neat people and they had four classes each day two combo-sized a big band and a section teacher for the guitars and I got a lot better and I played at open mic three times and we learned everything by ear without reading any music and I met this really cool counselor named Harry Young at least I think that’s what his name was-”

My father took his eyes off the road to look me in the eye (something I had told him not to do because I thought it would make the car crash). “Harry Young?” He pronounced it perfectly.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

For my birthday present that year my dad gave me a CD. It had a picture of my camp counselor playing the saxophone on the front. It was called “Songs Celebrating Life.” The fourth track was called “Late Night Inspiration.”

That is how I was born.