Music and My Dad, Happy Fathers Day

My first record albums were purchased for me by my father at Peaches Records and Tapes on the corner of Pearl and Brookpark in Parma/Cleveland, Ohio. My father worked 80-90 hours a week as a school music teacher, a private instructor of woodwind instruments, and a professional musician playing five nights a week at Pesano’s Restaurant, a somewhat notable supper club in Garfield Heights, Ohio.

Monday was a short workday for my father. He only had to work two jobs that day: teaching school from 7AM to 3PM, then teaching music lessons at Grabowski Music on Ridge Road in Parma from 4PM to 8PM. Peaches Records was just down the road from Grabowski's. After my dad's last lesson on Monday nights, he'd often drive down to Peaches, check out the cut-out bin and pick me up some recorded treasure somehow overlooked by the scores of shoppers who pawed through the discounted albums. One such find, called "Early Bones," featured seminal recordings by trombonists J.J. Johnson, Kai Winding & Bennie Green with a bevy of sidemen - Gerry Mulligan, Brew Moore, Charlie Rouse, Kenny Dorham, Roy Haynes - that I'd come to know and love over the next 40+ years of listening. Other notable Monday Night finds at Peaches included my first albums by Buddy Rich, Bill Watrous, Don Ellis and Frank Rosolino. For those of you reading unfamiliar with jazz, those names may not mean a lot. But to a kid cutting his teeth on improvisation, their recordings formed the lexicon of my musical vocabulary.

I treasure all the times I spent with my father when I was young, whether it was hanging out with him at Grabowski's or tagging along with him on the various gigs he played. Places like Pesano's Restaurant and the Aragon Ballroom were pretty cool stomping grounds for a kid back then, and more than anything I just liked to sit back and listen to my dad and his band-mates "break balls" and rehash war stories from decades on the job. Anyone who's read my novel Cat & Cat will certainly see the days of my youth reflected in the relationship between Chris Telamon and his musician father, Lennie Telamon. While I was growing up, many of my friends had the kind of love-hate relationships with their fathers that are now so cliché in literature and popular culture. Thankfully, I never experienced anything of the sort with my dad. I think from an early age, I instinctively knew the sacrifices he made for our family, and I never felt anything but gratitude, respect and admiration for his tireless efforts and selfless work ethic.

When I talk to my father now about those bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived days back in the 60s & 70s, he always seems surprised how much of an impact they made on me. In his eyes, he was just a guy trying to get by and feed his family. He's told me that he regrets all the long hours away from home and the fact that he didn't do more with my siblings and me. I hope I've managed to convince him by now that waiting up on Monday night so I could listen to a new jazz album or watch Monday Night Football with him and my brothers was always the highlight of my week.

No doubt I could continue writing for days about various memories from childhood featuring my dad - family vacations he spent refereeing all four of us kids crammed into the backseats of the assorted of Chevy Impalas he always bought, or all those Christmas Eves when he would buy a tree and all our presents in one ferocious dawn-to-dusk marathon because Christmas and Christmas Eve were really the only days off he had all year. Perhaps my dad's greatest gift to me, however, was a well-honed ability to appreciate and understand music on a much deeper level than the average listener.

I remember when I first realized my dad could tell the difference between musicians like Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley or Sonny Stitt simply by listening to them play. Back in my musical infancy, all I could hear was a saxophone, piano or a trumpet. To my dad's ear, however, every instrumentalist had a sound and style as distinct as the voices of Frank Sinatra, Robert Goulet or Elvis Presley. At ten or eleven years old, I had no idea how he accomplished this feat. It struck me like a magic trick. But he patiently sat with me and my brother, Mike, listening to recordings and teaching us how to listen, until one day I realized I could distinguish Dizzy Gillespie from Fats Navarro, Frank Rosolino from Carl Fontana, Oscar Peterson from John Lewis, or Benny Goodman from Buddy DeFranco after just a few notes of a chorus. The same went for classical composers. Sixteen or thirty-two measures into any symphony or concerto, and I can always tell Mozart from Haydn, or Schubert from Beethoven, etc.

Now, granted, this ability isn't really that spectacular in the grand scheme of things. It doesn't make you any money, and any schooled musician or careful listener can do the same. And honestly, to the majority of people who just love music, identifying a chord progression, time signature or key change seems as pointless as analyzing brush strokes on the Mona Lisa or mythological allusions in Shakespeare's plays. After growing up with my dad, though, I can't help listening to music any other way. Just like I can't help seeing the world through the eyes of a kid who still wants to grow up and be half the man his dad is.

Happy Fathers Day.