My Benny Golson experience

I read that Benny Golson died today. Benny will probably be best remembered for writing the tune "Killer Joe." He was a tenor saxophonist in the hard bop mode, having played with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. 

My story:

It was early on in my time at CAPA High School, my second or third year there. We were still occupying the old Baxter High School in Homewood, and were going to the new facility downtown a year or two later.

Benny was appearing at the University of Pittsburgh Jazz Seminar that year. They would send one player every year in those days; some from other years included Larry Coryell, Abraham Leboriel (twice), Lew Soloff (the best of all of them), and British saxophonist Peter King, a real bebopper. 

Having a period free and due to unreasonable pressure on the part of a student saxophonist at the time, I was assigned one year to run a jazz quartet ensemble. I'm not mentioning a name because this student, who I think is a high school music teacher now, was to put it bluntly, an asshole.

We found out in advance that Benny Golson was coming to visit from the seminar. In the promotional material sent to us in advance, it was claimed that Benny was the "only living composer" to have written ten jazz standards. I thought, hold on there! Ten? There aren't ten that could possibly be considered standards. Three, four on the outside. Then I thought, what about Sonny Rollins? Wayne Shorter?

The saxophonist in the student quartet said, "I want to play 'Along Came Betty.'" If you don't know, that's a pretty difficult tune. I said, okay, I'll give you the chart for that, on the condition that you learn to play one of Benny's tunes by memory for him.

At the time I had a copy of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers' Moanin' on CD, which I mistakenly lent to the drummer in that group. Mistakenly, because he never returned it, AND he said he already had a copy. Years later he was shot to death in Aces and Deuces Lounge in the Hill District. To be sardonic, I guess I'm not getting my copy back. 

There's a tune on that album by Benny: "Blues March." It didn't seem too difficult to transcribe. So we spent a class or two writing it down. I probably did at least half of the work to get it down, but the students did help and they learned to play it by memory.

When Benny came to CAPA, he sat and listened to the quartet play the tune we transcribed. He then talked about growing up in Philadelphia with John Coltrane. He and the quartet then played "Betty", commenting that I had given them the correct changes (thanks to John Wilson's student fake book). 

And...that was it. Frankly he was a bore and played very little. 

I was given tickets to the Jazz Seminar concert that night. They kicked into "Killer Joe" and my wife, having heard that song several hundred times on the radio and in concert, groaned in disbelief. "No, not that song!" I told her, "He wrote it. He has the right to play it." Nonetheless, the concert was pretty boring and we left mid-way through. 

I guess there's little point to this blog post other than to document my experience. But maybe also to say, don't be too much into yourself, and don't be boring. 

PS: I left out a detail from the CAPA afternoon. We were on the bottom floor, where the auditorium was. Some student, not for the first time, had urinated on a hot radiator downstairs. The entire bottom floor hallways absolutely reeked of urine. I had a suspicion who was responsible but nothing more. 

So please...don't be too much into yourself, don't be boring, and don't pee on hot radiators. That last piece of advice might be the best but most obvious.