THE BLUES ALMOST WRECKED
MY MARRIAGE AND MY LIFE
"I was just out for a little fun but before I knew it, I was disappearing from work, taking short trips out of town and burning through money like I just hit the Lotto."
I had it all. In the mid-70’s I graduated from law school at the University of Florida and went right into private practice by myself. My wife, two-year-old son and I moved to not-so-sleepy Cocoa on Florida’s east coast, not far from where the first Space Shuttle would soon be launched.
We didn’t know anyone other than my in-laws. Opening a law office in a town where no one knew me wasn't the stroke of genius it might first appear to be. Neither was leaping into practice capitalized by a $1,000 bank loan secured by my ‘71 Ford Mustang, a brilliant business plan.
It was far from easy, but it all worked out. After thirty years of long hours, worrying myself sick over clients’ woes and routinely knocking heads with my colleagues in court, I was the head of a five-man firm. My wife and I were financially comfortable, our son had graduated from Harvard Law School and the soft dreamy years of retirement lay just ahead. All was right in my world.
Then it happened. A hunger began gnawing at me. It became a day and night yearning for something new. I wanted to shake my life up, turn the clock back a few years, not a lot, just ten or fifteen. Okay, twenty if I could.
I'd seen men with these symptoms before. A man has what appears to be a solid marriage, the kids are out of college, he's making big money and he has all the accouterment of success. But it isn't enough for him. He has to have it all.
Pretty soon he's out doing stupid things: hitting the Happy Hour bars after work, flirting with young women, dressing like a thirty-something. All that and—god forgive him--coloring his hair. The next thing you know, it's Divorce City and he's sitting across from me at my desk writing me a big check.
You think it’ll never happen to you. But it happens to clean-living people exactly like you all the time. This is how it was with me.
One blazing summer day, I was browsing through compact discs at a Borders books and music store in Orlando. (I’ve spent two-thirds of my adult life haunting book and music stores from Miami to San Francisco). I was minding my own business, had just slipped on a set of headphones for music sampling when I found myself becoming mes—mer—ized—by—a—black—man.
It was an old black man. He was wearing a paisley-patterned mauve vest across which hung a gold chain that looped upward and disappeared into his watch pocket. He had a deep gray bowler on that forced his salt and pepper hair to billow out from the sides of his head like a pair of frothy ocean waves. His husky voice made it clear that he was super-energized as he belted out a blues tune called “Broke & Hungry.” In the middle of it he launched into a ferocious harmonica solo. I closed my eyes and rode with him, tapping my foot to the rhythm. By the time the song was over, I was hooked.
This was the beginning of my love affair with the blues in general and blues harmonica in particular.
The album cover said the man was Junior Wells. I snapped it out of the bin and hurriedly flipped through the rest of the discs looking for more Junior Wells recordings before anyone else could spot them. Not finding any, I rushed to the front of the store, paid the clerk and walked briskly toward my car, unwrapping the CD as I went.
The plan was to hit all the music stores on my way out of town and stock up on Junior Wells. I slipped into the driver seat, carefully slid the CD into the six-speaker Bose stereo system and cranked up the volume. My life was taking a new direction.
For a week Junior and I lived and slept together. At home, in my car, at the office, my time belonged to Junior. When I turned in for the night, Junior was tucked into my walkman. When you love music and you make a discovery that lights you up the way Junior’s harmonica playing did me, it’s like the rush you get from a new romance. You know you shouldn’t be spending all that time in bed, but there’s nothing more important that you should be doing.
The following week, in a move I still maintain was a humanitarian gesture, I set out to buy every blues album I could find, even those with the least artistic merit, to pass on to my son with instructions to leave them to the Smithsonian upon his passing.
Six weeks after hooking up with Junior, I owned some of the best “harp” (proper name for a blues harmonica) music that’s ever been recorded. I was happily lost in the blues. The Deep Blues became my passion and I was and remain heavily stuck on Chicago blues and bluesmen with roots in the Mississippi Delta.
In just three months I had a whole new bunch of friends: Big Bill Broonzy, Pine Top Perkins, T-Bone Walker, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Elmore James, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Little Walter, James Cotton, Bobby Bland, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Otis Spann, Albert Collins, Big Walter Horton, Charlie Musselwhite, Billy Branch and B.B. King.
I had become the “Mad Curator of the Blues.” When I wasn’t confined to court or some other silly business. I was on mission. My preference was to shop in Orlando which, at the time, boasted the largest number of music stores contained in one contiguous land mass within a municipality.
When I couldn’t get to Orlando (and almost nothing could stop me), I’d sneak out of my office and shoot down to nearby Melbourne to hunt at Best Buy, Barnes & Noble and a few other places whose names I can’t remember because they closed their doors right after I quit shopping at their stores. If nothing else, I am a relentless son-of-a-bitch: I scoured flea markets and pawn shops.
One afternoon, on the way home from the funeral of an elderly woman I’d never met, I even persuaded my wife to let me stop at an estate sale for ten minutes. They had nothing but a couple of 78rpm records of carioca music which I like, but not on 78rpms.
Throughout this crazed adventure my wife remained her usual calm and patient self. With the exception of her occasionally pounding on the bedroom wall and shouting, “Please turn it down, the pictures are falling off the walls out here,” things were cool at home.
Have you ever noticed how people who are not in love with music keep wondering why those of us who are don’t wear headphones all the time? I don’t believe in them unless they are legally mandated or medically necessary. If good music (which is the only kind I listen to) isn’t played at a volume that will keep it bouncing off the walls ten minutes after the stereo is turned off, it cannot be appreciated for the great art it is. Turning down the volume is like looking at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with the lights purposely dimmed.
My wife, who means every bit as much to me as Buford, my trusty bloodhound, has seen my nuttiness before. She’s hung in there through all of my otological affairs. My rock habit? She knew about it before we married. She saw how ugly it can get when I was heavily into bop and Latin jazz. She handled Hank Williams, Jr., David Alan Coe and other country rowdies like them. She’s heard “Jack Daniels If You Please” enough times that she knows the lyrics by heart but she'll never admit it. Classical music was fine with her, a relief really. We did a couple of weekend Bach Festivals in Winter Park and a Boston Symphony Orchestra gig at Tanglewood in the Berkshires.
After taking her and my son on my “Never-Ending Classic Samba Tour” in the mid-1980’s when we drove to Upstate New York and back listening to the same fabulous classical samba album over and over again, nothing scares her anymore.
New CD’s continued to pile up. The blues gushed out of our massive bedroom speakers daily. The blues flooded our house. At breakfast I’d munch Kashi Go-Lean Crunch while Muddy Waters rolled through my headphones. I’d cruise to and from work encapsulated by the blues. Weekends I’d drive around aimlessly windows down for hours with my windows down, the stereo blasting. Other drivers did double takes, surprised to see I wasn’t some kid whom they were sure would be stone deaf before his next birthday. The blues shoved TV, newspapers, books and conversation out of my life. The Blues WERE my life.
It did get a little scary when I added up how much money I was burning through. But that wasn’t going to stop me. Guilt is easily rationalized and brushed off. When that accusing finger is thrust at me, I have all the answers:
“Do you remember how many hours I suffered in that law library?”
“Do you know how many nights I’ve spent burning the midnight oil, preparing for trials?”
“Do you know how many hours of sleep I’ve lost fretting over clients like they were sheep?”
“These CD’s are nothing. I could be out there crawling around strip clubs at night, getting drunk and doing whatever else they do in those places.”
“This money is nothing compared to what guys out there are blowing on gambling and high tech cameras. Family fortunes have been frittered away on gun collections!”
I’ve had clients who talked this way about their “rights” to drink, toy with recreational drugs and engage in a little harmless philandering. I briefly felt I could be turning into one of them.
Instead, I became "The Blues Monk."
Cut off from family and friends, I was drawn toward the dark sensuality of the blues. Not just the blues mind you, but that moaning, ululating music that rose out of the Mississippi Delta, took a hundred years to wend it’s way up river, bringing untold thousands of people to sin and ruination through tawdry lyrics as it sang and danced its way into Chicago and the Twentieth Century.
There is no denying it--I was badly out of control. My infatuation with the blues had crossed the line: I wanted to learn how to play blues harp.
It made perfect sense. I studied clarinet because my father--a man who swore that Benny Goodman did more for this country than Franklin Delano Roosevelt--decided I would. He guarded my bedroom door like a KGB agent, making sure I practiced for one full hour each and every day, Sundays excepted. After six years I finally wore him down. I bought an alto sax and spent the next six years giving him payback by playing in one rock group after another, stopping only after graduating from college. Even if it is in poor taste to say so, I got pretty damn good on that sax.
Taking up blues harp was a natural, irrespective of my age. It would be a piece of cake for someone with my experience. I figured that in six weeks tops, I could be wailing with most any blues band anywhere.
I found a harp teacher through a small ad in The Orlando Weekly. He was the real deal. His name was Larry Eisenberg and his blues monicker was “The Ice Man.” I phoned Larry immediately and told him my story, saying nothing about my six-week plan. “Well,” he said, “this shouldn’t be too rigorous for someone with your background. I have an eleven-year-old student right now and she’s capable of jamming with a group.” I snatched that “she’s” word out of the air like a chameleon spearing a sleepy fly. I thought, “Wow, is this going to be easy!”
Larry agreed to fit me in after lunch on Fridays so that I could safely plan on taking the half day off. He concluded with, “Pick up a Hohner C Golden Melody and I’ll see you next Friday.” To say I was elated would be to come up short. I felt like I was about to get my first bloodhound puppy!
On Friday I was on Larry’s doorstep, a little late, but with my shiny new Hohner in hand. He was a small framed man with a shaved head and very soft spoken. As we chatted, I knew this was no mistake. I had found the best there was. A grand piano dominated the living room which is where he conducted lessons, and as I scoped the place out, it was obvious that he had been classically trained and knew jazz and the blues intimately.
The first thing I learned was that it wasn’t going to be easy. Pushing and pulling air through a harp is an art in itself. Your lips must be sealed against the instrument, your mouth centered above its ten blow holes perfectly. You must prevent the hiss of air escaping out of the corners of your mouth.Why is self-evident.
Don’t hold your lips too tightly against the harp, easy does it. Don’t blow too hard, easy. Don’t play loudly, easy. Don’t blow into it, just try to breathe into it. I got the picture, easy was the goal for the student. It didn’t mean learning would be easy.
As soon as we took a break I asked Larry if he was expecting the eleven-year old girl that day He wasn’t but said she had been on the local TV news recently, and had played splendidly, wowing the greater Orlando audience. He hadn’t seen the film yet, but expected to receive footage soon.
After my lesson, I zoomed down to Sam Ash’s, a cavernous musical instrument store in Orlando. The place is like The Whole Earth Catalog of music. It’s where the pro's go to shop and amateurs flock after them. They had every horn, reed and string instrument, drum and noisemaker you could want. It was what I call a “Whatever Store.” Whatever you want, they got.
I wanted to see a few of their big time harmonicas, the bigger, bolder and sexier ones, that I’d be moving up to in the near future. There they were, right in front of me. I stared at them as they lay gleaming in the display case just like I used to stare at penny candy in the store next to my elementary school. When I finished paying my respects to the super harps, I combed a few more stores for blues then piped in Junior real strong as I drove home.
My first week of practice was spent trying to play one note at a time, which requires training your mouth to direct air through one, not two holes at a time. You go up the scale one hole at a time, one through ten, and back down again. Slow, easy, ten through one. Do it again, each time pushing your breath through the hole and tugging it back in. The notes change pitch as you go. Up the scale and back down. Slow, easy.
On breaks from this hellish practice, I’d listen to Junior on the stereo and try to play along. I felt that if I could just get the feel of what he was doing, I’d learn a lot. I had terrific success with that when I was a sax player. But now I couldn't catch the feel of it.
Friday afternoons I was flying down the road to Larry’s. I liked him. He was teaching me all the right things, he was patient, consistent. I kept making furtive inquiries—or so I thought—about the young harp whiz. I sincerely wanted to see the tape and hear her play. Maybe it would give me some extra hope because mine was leaking. The six weeks mark had been passed and it was beginning to look like I wasn’t going to be jamming with anyone in the near future.
For all the progress I made, I might as well have been learning how to build Egyptian pyramids. I knew what the problem was and it wasn’t Larry. He was a champ. The problem was that I wasn’t practicing long enough.
Being the pro he was, I knew Larry knew it. But he never brought it up,never chided me, always a gentleman.
Fifty years ago, if I went to a clarinet lesson after ducking a few practices because my dad was still working, my teacher was truly amazed that I could just waltz in and throw away my dad's hard-earned two dollars on a half hour lesson. A couple of times I think I saw my honorable teacher’s eyes well up with tears. It struck me as really funny though I didn't dare laugh. This
man was a devoted teacher who fervently tried to pass his knowledge on to me. Moreover,
he was raised in an immigrant Italian family where $2.00 was probably a week's pay. I was too ashamed to laugh.
I was disgusted with myself for not practicing my harp. Forty-five years ago, when I bought and paid for my saxophone I gave him payback. I’d practice a minimum two hours a day, an
average of four, and frequently six hours a day. I practiced all kinds of scales—major, minor, and chromatic, in quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes and triplets. Slowly at first then faster and faster. Then came the classical pieces written for alto sax by Marcel Mule, the French master. The rock stuff came last.
This daily regimen drove my father crazy. He couldn’t understand how or why I had become such a zealot. A few years earlier he had to threaten to ground me, put me up for adoption or fine me one New York Giants game a week just to get a lousy hour a day out of me. The Giants games made me a true believer.
The harsh truth is that it wasn't forty or fifty years ago. I was no longer the street kid who could run on high all day with just an hour of sleep. The absolute certainty of success I foresaw so long as I practiced with unbridled devotion can’t be seen from where I am now. I took those Friday half days off. But I just couldn’t take anything off my effort at work. (That's how law school warps your sense of values.)
It wasn’t just Friday afternoons, but all those hours I disappeared to hunt down blues albums. The lost hours had to come from somewhere, so I was working longer Monday through Thursday and running myself ragged like in the old days when I was just learning my way around court.
If I wasn’t going to practice, there was no point in enduring the emptiness I felt. My harp sits in a drawer now. But I still spend time with Junior and Muddy and all the other guys. Just not as much time. What I ultimately learned from this affair is that this dog can hunt, but he’s too tuckered out to track after a ten or twelve hour work day.
If only I could get my dad to come down to Florida and stand outside my bedroom door.
