I Feel Good

By now most of you faithful readers know that my last husband was young.  Like very young.  Like one month older than my youngest child young.

But you may not know that he was a Julliard-trained, scholarship-winning musician and composer.

And although he was primarily a bass guitarist, he could play any instrument. When he’d record a song he had composed, he would do the bass line, the keyboards, the drum line himself- and then meet with the vocalist.  He loved working with other musicians but he didn’t really have to.  He was a one-man music machine.

And he loved all genres.  Jazz, blues, pop, soul, classical, he was for them all.

And he was twenty-six years old when we got together so this meant concert-going.  Like all the time.

I loved it.

We saw Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu, Sting, George Benson, Tower of Power, Maceo Parker, James Brown (at the end of his life and career. This was sad.) Eric Clapton, Maxwell and Prince- three times.

And through the miracle of CDs, he introduced me to Jamiriquai, Nellie Furtado, Kylie Minogue and countless other music makers I’m too old now to remember.

He insisted that some Miles Davis opus be wailing at our wedding.  I didn’t get it, but he dug it and only wanted Miles to play him out of bachelorhood.

He was a virtuoso and an enthusiast.  And it was fun to hitch a ride on his bandwagon.

(He was also a brat with a heavy foot.  Constantly in trouble for speeding.  I got tired of the traffic tickets and traffic court.  And I also wasn’t wild about the drum practice at two a.m. every night.  “Shut up!” I’d scream up the stairs.  It was just like living with a naughty teenager. Which he kind of was.)

As fun as it all was however, when I knew I was coming back to Chicago I realized I had to leave him behind. What happened in Aspen would have to stay in Aspen and my parents wanted me returning to civilization as a sober citizen, not the wife of bass player- no matter how talented he was.

And I knew that it was the right thing for him, too.  When I met him he had a beautiful, young, age-appropriate girlfriend and I had kind of highjacked him away from her.

It was sneaky and not really fair, and I knew he wanted to have kids some day, too. (And that ship, the S.S. Maternity Ward, had definitely sailed.)

So gently as I knew how, I asked him to let me go.  He was sad- I was too – but he reluctantly agreed to it.

And he did go back to the beautiful girlfriend who forgave his defection.

So that’s all good.

He was, like I said, a serious musician, but I have one indelible memory of him that isn’t serious at all.

He could play any instrument- guitar, bass guitar, bass fiddle, drums, piano, organ, but he wanted, above all, to take up the saxophone.

He adored Maceo and Junior Walker and Boots Randolph and John Coltrane and Charlie Parker and Ornette Coleman and Clarence Clemons and he thought that he should be able to blow some hot and sweet licks himself.

I heard about this saxophone thing ad nauseam.  And finally one day I caved.

I called a music store down valley in Glenwood Springs, and lo and behold, they had a gently-used tenor saxophone all polished up and ready to go to some lucky customer.

Uh, that would be me.

So as a surprise, I threw him and his mother (a doll btw.  And younger than me, btw.) in my car and we headed for the store.

You should have seen his face when the owner handed him that horn.  It was Christmas times a thousand.  He was thrilled.

We all hopped back into the car- me driving, him shot-gunning it, and Mom in the back.

As I drove, he quickly put that horn together, popped in a James Brown CD and found “I Feel Good.”

And he played along.

Except he couldn’t quite get that sax to behave.

Have you ever heard a beginner caterwauling on a saxophone?  It sounds like someone is torturing a cat with yowls, and shrieks, and squeals, and blares.

It’s definitely NOT music.

But is is hilarious.

Every time he would put that thing to his lips and blow, the most tormented, unearthly sounds would fill my car.

It was hysterical.  And his mother thought so too.

We were screaming with laughter after every riff.

He wasn’t discouraged by our philistine behavior, however.  He was in seventh chord heaven flatting notes and wildly missing by a mile as he grooved along with Maceo and James.

“I feel good”

Put God-awful squawking here

“I knew that I would now.”

Put screeching tires here.

“So good!”

Mooing cow sounds bleating sheep sounds

“So good!”

Dying hyena here

“I’ve got you.”

Honk of a foghorn, clamor of hysterical mob of women, wail of a banshee.

It was a riot and you know what?

Sometimes, about two o’clock in the morning, it gets pretty quiet around here.