Improv Cats

“What we play is life.”

-Lois Armstrong

Wendel Jennings, Wen-Dawg to his bandmates, was not like other jazz players. He could open up, zone into the depths of the music, and he could pull you into it. I remember the first time I played with him. We were just chilling at this cat Melvin Rhodes’s place. It was out near the Kick It Club, and Melvin worked there, playing piano on weekend nights, but during the week, we’d go out there and hang at his place and drink and smoke, and soon enough, he’d sit at the keys and reel out some progressions and invite us to jam along. This was before Gus Talver joined with his kit and sticks, so it was just me, Melvin, Wendel, and this other cat they called Ricktoe. 

We were just bopping, working through something by one of Melvin’s teachers up at the college, and then Wendel, he takes out his silver sax, man, and it was so smokey, and I just knew right away that this man was on a whole different level.

You’ve heard about Paganini and how he sold his soul to the Devil to be able to play the violin like he could. Robert Johnson, down at the crossroads, too. Well, Wen-Dawg was something else besides that. His fingers moved in such a way. It was flawless. He didn’t talk much. Always wore all black and those shades; never took them off at all. He would just sit back and smoke and not say anything, and then, when Melvin would kick in at the keys, then suddenly that silver sax would come out and we’d all be blown away and I’d sit there, blowing my horn and thinking that I was going home that night and tossing it in the river and saying fuck it to music forever. How could I keep going when Wen-Dawg was here at my level and he was just doing almost magical stuff with it?

I’ve been listening to jazz music since I was a kid. Other kids from my part of town were rap or metal heads, and I mean, I listened to everything, but my Uncle Jimmy was a real hifi head, and he had a jazz collection that just about blew away anything I’ve ever seen. And I listened when he put on any records. Man, the music just spoke to me. I could feel it, sometimes hear it, even after the music had stopped. My favorite, early on, was Bird. That cat could blow. True, he was almost always high, but he could still do things with that sax no one else could. And that was what got me into wanting to play. When I was old enough to start in band, I thought that I wanted to be a sax player, but I heard that you had to start with the clarinet and graduate through the oboe up into the sax. Well, I wasn’t that patient, so I told my mom that I wanted to play the horn. She got me this old jacked horn in a green case with red velvet lining at the pawn shop, and she spent fifty or sixty bucks on it. 

I took lessons from old Mr. Kemper. I played my heart out. It was Mr. K who taught me about Miles. I listened to everything that Uncle Jimmy had by Miles, but I played and I played and I played, trying to emulate him in every way. I auditioned and suddenly, I was in the high school jazz band. It wasn’t really jazz. More big band shit, but I still played. I even convinced the band teacher to let us play So What the first track from Kind of Blue, which is only the best record Miles Davis ever made. 

After high school, though, I had to get a job, and so I only played gigs when people needed a horn player, which was getting less and less. I would still go up to the college now and then and use their studio or do some session work, but I was getting to where I thought I was never going to be like Miles, not for real. A white kid with a horn can’t play in jazz clubs. It just doesn’t happen at my level but that’s when I met Melvin, and that’s when we started hanging out.

One night—this was like three years ago, now—I was up at Melvins and we were just drinking and shooting the shit. Wen-Dawg was there, but he wasn’t saying anything like usual, but then he just says, “Look.” Just like that. “Look.” No one was used to him talking, so we all shut up.

He takes out his sax and he says, “Dig this,” and then he played. Melvin wasn’t by the keys, and my horn was in my lap. We were just hanging out, you know. And then Wen-Dawg just starts riffing on this super shiny silver sax. It wasn’t like the one we’d seen before. This one was different. It was silver, but it was also a lot of other colors, too. Like an oil slick of colors and the stuff he was playing, man, it was blowing my mind.

You know how, when a kid picks up a sax and they blow and it makes a sound like a thousand cats being skinned? Well, when this cat played, it was like a door opened and we were suddenly somewhere else. I tried to remember it. It was like a bad trip, man. I mean it. I thought someone had slipped me some acid. I saw some strange shit, and I thought for sure I was going out of my mind. But it was the music. When he stopped blowing, the visions stopped. I looked around, and everyone had the same look on their face. Pure shock. Wen-Dawg didn't say anything. He just nodded slowly and knowingly.

It was a few weeks before he brought that sax to Melvin's improv meetup again. And it was weird, man. I wanted another hit of that feeling. I wanted to see what that music showed. Melvin asked him. I even asked him. He wouldn't say anything. Finally, Melvin asked him again. He just nodded. And we got excited, like kids at Christmas.

It happened again. Here he is, just sitting there and all of us jamming and suddenly he takes out that super shiny rainbow silver sax and blows and I see visions. It pours through me like water and I cannot get enough. Just pure, perfect, amazing music.

Then one day, we get news that Wen-Dawg got a record deal and he was headed out to New York to record. Melvin called me and said Wen-Dawg wanted us to come up to his place to play before he headed out. I met up with Melvin and Ricktoe and Gus and we went out to this big old house near the river. It was behind a gate and it was huge. I mean, when I say it was a mansion, it was beyond that. And I looked at Melvin and he nodded.

So we go up there, and Wen-Dawg has this stuffed man, like a butler and he issues us into a studio and Wen-Dawg is there, man. This cat is dressed all in black, but he looks good. And I wish him congratulations and you know, he just looked at me through those black wrap arounds and then reached out a hand and shook mine and at first I thought, you know, man, that's cool, but then I had a feeling like I was a fly and he was the toad, you know?

So we set up and we just kind of warm up and Wen-Dawg takes out his shiny silver sax and he starts to blow and we fall into the beat and man, I mean it. The room opened up. It was like nothing. Nothing I have ever experienced before.

We played like that for I don't know how long. I kept wanting to take a break, but I couldn't. My ability to blow just kept coming, and my fingers and lips, man. They had this power. I swear to Miles, that's the best I've ever played. I started to feel like I really had a shot at something, and even, you know, in the back part of my mind, I even considered asking Wen-Dawg to take us along, but those visions I was having, I couldn’t even focus on it.

It was like the music was a living thing: alive and breathing and hungry, and the more we played, the more we wanted to play. I was starting to get tired and wet. This was intense, boy. And then, as if it was the first time I'd ever picked up a horn, it went out of me. My horn squeaked and squawked, and then that was it. I couldn't play. Melvin stopped, Gus, Ricktoe, and all at the same time, and then, finally, Wen-Dawg stopped. And the vision stopped. He never said nothing to us. He just had his butler take us out.

I haven't been able to play since. Not a note. Not even a note. Melvin won't say anything to me. I haven't seen Ricktoe. Gus is gone, moved. Sold his kit. Every time I try to listen to music, I just get so torn up. It sounds horrible, like screaming and bellowing. Like a whole room of tortured people. One time, my Uncle Jimmy told me this story about a guy he knew who worked up at the state hospital. It was where they kept the criminally insane and the other people who were crazies, or whatever. He used to tell this story. Someone pulled the fire alarm, and they all started hollering, and this guy went to Uncle Jimmy, who said that it sounded like what he thought hell would sound like. A bunch of people hollering and screaming, and no end to it. Well, that’s what I thought of the first time I tried to listen to a jazz record, after that night. It didn’t sound like music. It sounded like I was listening in on Hell.

I don't know what happened with that sax, man, and you'll think I'm crazy, but I think it ate my skill and any talent I had worked up. That sounds nuts, I know, but that's okay. Once I could play. I have recordings of session work, and that's me playing. But I can't play anymore, man, and I swear it. I know that Wen-Dawg stole my skills. Took all our skills with that damned sax. Now he’s famous, and I will never even be able to listen to music again.

That’s okay, man. I finally figured it out. Wen-Dawg is coming to the Upstate Jazz Festival, and I got tickets. I also got something to give to Wen-Dawg, too. It might not do me any good, but I don’t have music, so what could ever do me good again?