My red-headed granddaughter was shielded from the sun by the visor on her Transformer-like stroller/car seat as we trundled down the street to the Irvington library. I had committed to meet someone at the library to give away an adapter plug for an Macintosh charger. Myah is a very pale four-month-old child, so I make sure that she is not exposed to damaging UVB rays for too long. An error in communication (on my part) had me circling the floor of the library as I waited for the person I was to meet, and as I passed the information counter for the twelfth (exaggeration) time, the librarian smiled and waved at me. I stopped Myah’s carriage in front of the counter and engaged with the woman who had waved at me. She asked my granddaughter’s name, verified the spelling, then said, “Does she like jazz?”
Sue Kennedy’s question sat on my mind long after I had delivered my gift, met loyal reader Gregg Treffinger and rumbled Myah back to my apartment. The next day, I returned to the library, and timidly approached the woman whose name I could not remember from the day before. She smiled at me, and graciously reminded me that she had seen me (and my camera) at the Coal Yard Coffee House on Thursdays when jazz is being played. “We’ve spoken,” Sue told me, and I apologized for not remembering her name. (Orange Cat Pencil failed me.)
I had told Sue that Myah listens to jazz when she is with me because my playlists are weighted heavily toward that genre of music. I liked that Sue had asked that question, and that Thursday, I went to the Coal Yard to see Pat Petrus, Isaac Beaumont, Kent Hickey and Patrick Wright performing as the “Wish Quartet.” I sat in a rump-sprung and bare-buttoned tufted leather chair, stage right of the musicians. A man asked to sit in the chair beside me, and Andrew — a new resident to Irvington — settled onto the buttons of his own chair. Our casual conversation was overlaid by the music of the quartet. Andrew and I discussed the entertainment options in Irvington as I watched Pat Petrus’ “kit tricks”: a chain hung from one of his cymbals, his drag on the cymbal with his stick; the muting of his drum head with his wallet. I peered between his drums to see the neck of Patrick Wright’s guitar, listening to his underlying tonalities. I turned to ask Andrew if he liked Ash & Elm’s cider, listening to the answer as I watched Isaac Beaumont’s labor of love over his upright bass. Kent Hickey’s horn wove silver threads of accents through the solos of Isaac and Patrick, and when they finished one song, I asked its name. “All Blues,” Petrus said, a tune by Miles Davis; I had recognized the plaintive notes on Hickey’s horn. Andrew and I stayed until the night ended, and he strode away into the dark, and later that night, amped up on Coal Yard’s “Black Magic” coffee, I played Davis’ “Kind of Blue” on my iPod, and his rendition of “All Blues.”
Sue, I don’t really know if Myah likes jazz, but we listen to it. That Friday, Myah worked her way toward sleep listening to the music of Charlie Ballantine’s, “A Brief Life,” and began to drift off as Stanley Turrentine played “God Bless the Child.” She rolled onto her side to the sound of Horace Silver’s “Song For My Father,” but by the time Wayne Shorter was laying down his “Footprints,” 4-month-old Myah was done with all that jazz.