The Trumpet: a short mixtape with a longer story

Trumpet

Music, like the written word, has forever been a member of our family. My earliest memories include a collection of warped vinyl LPs and an industrial German record changer that proudly proclaimed itself to be ‘Hi Fi’. Oddly, even though Mom and Dad were conservative evangelical missionaries, a significant part of the collection was ‘worldly’ music, a broad and dangerous genre not to be confused with what is known today as ‘world music’. Worldly music was jazzy, bright and light. One of the devil’s slippery enticements. It was the sort of music I imagined people in America had playing in the background as they sipped cocktails and sunned themselves by the pool. What on earth this music was doing in our house, which was about as anti-jazzy as you could get, I never did figure out. Classical music, especially minor label piano concerti and sonatas, dominated our collection and the playlist. But it was the bright flare of Al Hirt’s cornet and later, the pseudo-Mexican melodies of the Tijuana Brass that first sucked me into a lifelong addiction to music.

Our souls being thus infused with music from birth it was inevitable that eventually, in the fullness of time, each of my siblings and I would turn our attention to learning to play an instrument.

As in our record collection, the piano was the preferred instrument. My sister, Beckie, developed into a mature pianist and is the only one of us to have stuck with her instrument beyond adolescence. Mom tickled the ivories too. Frequently drafted into the role of accompanist in chapel I never heard her play anything other than hymns, which she delivered at a steadfast but slightly impatient pace. Intro, verse one, chorus, verse two, chorus, verse three, chorus (repeat), inspiring thumping end. Dad used to haul out an accordion with a shiny red plastic face and faux-ivory keys every now and then to add a bit of rompiness to the family songs of praise.  Mike played the cornet and Gregg, ever the odd man out, grappled with an incongruous tuba, though this section of his life remains the stuff of legend. I never once saw the obese piece of brass in his arms. But family history like any other is rich with rumour and tantalising but unproven ‘facts’.

And so, it transpired that when it came time for me to announce my musical intentions I chose the trumpet.

I was 10. I insisted that I wanted, needed, had to have a trumpet to play.  Now. My big brother Mike had led the way with his cornet but just as influential was the sparkling, joyful, upbeat and emotional music I heard on those Herb Alpert and Al Hirt records.

In an era before rock ‘n’ roll swept all before its electric wave, and in a small cloistered conservative Christian community in India the trumpet seemed to me the instrument with the most edge. It was loud and brash, it shone in your hands and it killed conversation if you played it with gusto. The trumpet was also, and importantly, the instrument of the archangel Gabriel and thus, the King of all Instruments. How many times had we read in the Bible that the trumpet would sound big cosmic news? The end of the world! The Second Coming! Judgment Day!

I fantasized about how that horn would sparkle and glitter like a bar of gold in my hands. I’d be worthwhile. I didn’t yet think in terms of having girls look at me but I sensed that the trumpet would in some way make me a sort of proto chick magnet. I was sure it would make me feel as light and essential as those trills and as bold as those flares that Herb Alpert blew so easily. In some mysterious process I believed that as I blew, that heroic man, lips and all, would be drawn into my pre-teen frame.

Years later, when I dabbled with jazz I discovered that the saxophone, not the trumpet, is indeed the King and the most sexy of all instruments. But sexy music was not promoted in our household. Secular, maybe. But definitely not something as snaky, slippery and low-down and corrupting as the alto or tenor sax. Even that word, sax, was dangerous. Change but one small letter and you wound up with embarrassing, dangerous, shameful sex. But in India the only sax player I knew was Tom O’Dell, a skinny Canadian kid who struggled to make his instrument cooperate in the school band. It was more of a bloody nuisance than a musical instrument. I had not yet heard John Coltrane or Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

But I had heard of Louis Armstrong and how he’d grown up poor in an orphanage, which I suppose made me feel as if he would understand what it was like to live in a boarding school seven hundred miles from your parents. I knew Satchmo was the King of Jazz and that he played the trumpet.

So, trumpet it was.

The first trumpet I blew into was one that belonged to the Woodstock School music department. It was well used and hardly used at all. Both disappointing thoughts devastated my soul at once: This has been played by others before. Why hasn’t anyone played this for so long? From that very first moment my love of the idea of playing trumpet began to tarnish like the dull and spotty metal I clutched in my hands.

And, of course, when I blew into the mouthpiece with the expectation that the world would suddenly warm to the loungey sounds of the Tijuana Brass, but   produced nothing but a flat squawk followed by a strained, staccato high C, I felt aggrieved. It was immediate, the falling out. Like several of my adventures in love later in life, that magic feeling faded mighty fast. Sullen, I put the silly instrument back into its case.

When I began lessons my misery turned to resentment. Why did I have to practice so much? Why didn’t my puckered lips and full cheeks do what Al Hirt’s did? Why had Mom and Dad listened to my stupid demand to play a trumpet in the first place? Weren’t they trained as parents to know better?

A few months after I started lessons they bought me another (second hand) trumpet. We picked it up in a store in a small Minneapolis shopping center filled with pianos and organs. Again, I was disappointed that it wasn’t new. Because if it had been I was 100% sure I would have found that original love of the year before and dedicated myself cent percent to learning to blow just like Herb Alpert.

Alas. No doubt my parents had sensed a waning in my interest and hedged their bets.

But at least the bugle was mine, and that knowledge, for a while, kept me motivated.

As I look back now, I cringe in the realization that in my short-lived love affair with the trumpet lies early evidence of who I am now.  I must confess that the pattern of burning up with intense desire and determination followed by sudden deflation and disinterest has hounded me throughout my life.  In many projects over the years I have abandoned all too soon what I began all too passionately.

Yet, I soldiered on. Mom and Dad encouraged me to patience aperseverance and practice. Feeling guilty about my parents $45 investment, I bitterly practiced my  scales and learned a few simple tunes.

The tunes grew in sophistication as I entered junior High School. And the trumpet led me to new friendships with Mark Bauman and Fali Kapadia that gave me much pleasure and intimacy in my teenage years.

My schooling was done at a boarding school in India known as Woodstock. Those of us who played instruments were made to practice 2-3 times a week (the frequency determined by your lack of skill and the diligence of your instructor) in the ‘music cells’. And indeed, that name signified much. Prison cells were probably warmer and friendlier than those freezing bare-walled cubicles that were lit sharply with neon tubes and separated from each other by warped plywood panels.  Each practice period we each entered our own individual box and attempted to warm up our fingers, lips and especially mouthpieces, which felt as if they were carved of ice. This done, for the next 30 minutes we blew, banged or beat our chosen instruments and sent a horrible cacophony out into the Himalayan atmosphere. 

Somehow my motivation plateaued (or perhaps bottomed-out) at a level sufficient enough for me to make slow but inelegant progress. I joined the school band, recruited with Mark and Fali to play 3^rd chair. Even though I was buried deep in an jumble of adolescent humanity and was invisible to any but the most persistent member of the audience, I derived a sense of specialness from my 3^rd chair. I was performing; I had found an audience. Being in the band gave me, at last, a little bit of the Herb Alpert sheen that had got me to pick up the trumpet in the first place and that I always imagined should glisten around me whenever I blew the horn.

Being in the band was also intimidating because the big boys like Johnny Warren who took trumpet playing far more seriously than me and who occupied the 1^st chair never hesitated to send withering looks down my way when I fluffed an entry or hit a note flat instead of sharp or, as frequently happened, lost my place in the score. 

But mostly, being in the band was a chore and the music we played was boring. The initial buzz of being ‘a musician’ faded very quickly.

Then Mr. Dahl arrived. Like a visitor from some freakish distant galaxy he flapped through the staid Woodstock hallways in outrageously wide seersucker bell-bottoms, garish billowy-sleeved shirts, a far-out white belt that matched his white golf shoes, and a beard. His enthusiasm for music, teaching and life matched his sartorial extravagance in intensity. At first, we gave him the friendly Christian cold shoulder. His appearance we were convinced, evidence of his worldliness; his clothes covered up a heart that didn’t belong to God.

Mr Dahl didn’t just look different, he treated us differently. He congratulated us on being great musicians and wonderful people. Dangerous things to say to institutionalised teenagers. Suddenly, I couldn’t be bothered about Mr. Dahl’s eternal destiny. He oozed passion for the brass instrument and the get-up-and-boogie music it could play. Mr. Dahl formed a small brass ensemble from within the band and much to my surprise, I was selected. I still believe I was chosen precisely because I was lousy. Mr. Dahl knew that the best way to get a young boy excited about being excellent was to make him feel special. 

After a few weeks of practice he took the ensemble on tour of other schools in Mussoorie, which was the most fun I had had with my trumpet. Playing fast loud music and receiving thunderous applause (or so it seemed at the time) from an admiring audience made my frail chest jut out. When we played for Mr. Dahl, Fali, Mark and I never seemed to lose our place in the music, and we never mistook flat for sharp. We would have practiced for days on end for Mr. Dahl. But Mr Dahl, as bright as a meteor, disappeared in a flash. He left after one semester and the brass ensemble fell apart. My family moved to Kentucky for a year. I hated the trumpet again.

Even though I played on until my last year in high school, I had really lost my wind a couple of years earlier. It was one of those horrific experiences of youth whose impact shatters your world, confidence and self-belief.  Alas, it happened thus.

It was Christmas time in Allahabad. The year was 1971, my age, 14.  As my sister had been a diligent piano player for a number of years, Dad suggested that she accompany me on the opening carol of the Christmas Eve service at the seminary chapel. I had grown to understand that the ‘idea’ of me being an Alpert-esque trumpet player and the ‘reality’ of me being a mere squawker of middling talent were quite different things. But while I understood that these were two different me’s I was not yet mature enough to realize that never would the twain meet.  I reluctantly agreed and set about practicing.  I chose the easiest carol I could find, We Three Kings of Orient Are. A composition as plodding as the tired gait of the dromedaries the three wise men rode to find baby Jesus. It started on a low D and didn’t go awfully far up the scale anywhere in the piece. I figured with a couple days of practice I’d be able to rip off a smart rendition and make Dad and everyone else pleased with me.

On came the night. The chapel was unheated but full of people bundled up in their mufflers and coats.  A few of my friends sat in the front row smiling cheekily at me as I blew into my mouthpiece and silently pumped the keys of the trumpet. I was a boxer limbering up for the big fight.  Dad gave the nod and Beckie moved to the piano.  I suddenly felt my ankles go weak. I swallowed hard and took a shallow breath. My chest was tight…not a good sign.  I erected the music stand and laid out the sheet music.  I wanted to run away. My friends were now giggling and poking each other. My hand-me-down sport coat, rather comfortable just a few second ago, now felt like a straight jacket made of asbestos. I wanted to itch and fling it off. I experienced a pinching sensation in my armpits.

Beckie waited patiently and at last I looked in her direction. She played a bar or two by way of introduction. I raised my horn and puckered my lips positively on the mouthpiece. I inhaled and when Beckie paused for me to hit the first note, I let ‘er rip. A lovely lurid brassy D. Without thinking I took off across the desert leading the train of Magi. But by the end of the first line, a mere 9 or 10 notes after the inaugural one, I knew something was wrong. I slithered an anxious look towards Beckie who was mouthing something, but what?  I persevered, finding it ever more difficult to hit the notes. You said this carol was full of low notes, an aggrieved and embarrassed part of me cried out to my lips and puffing red cheeks. Another look at my sister reminded me I was alone. She was finding it hard to keep from smiling but I now could see what she was saying, “You’re too high.” 

With a bleat that probably sounded like an irritated camel or a sheep having its throat slit I pulled the vile instrument from my mouth, leaving the awkward ugly tone to echo off the cold walls of the chapel.  The order of what happened next I can’t say. I may have restarted, this time on the correct octave. Or I may have burst into tears then and there. But tears did come and with them utter humiliation. I resented the trumpet after that and didn’t touch it again for the rest of the holidays.

**

The last time I played the trumpet was on the night of my graduation from Woodstock School, in June 1975.  A few of us, under the hectoring leadership of Martyn Nicholls, decided to entertain our classmates with a spot of jazz. That none of us had the vaguest idea of what jazz was or how one played it didn’t bother us. It was a chance to goof off and get the girls and parents laughing.  There were a few practice sessions. Martyn and Mark were serious about this. They really wanted to play something called ‘Alleycat Blues’. I could hardly be bothered.

We took the stage as the last event of the graduation dinner. Martyn and Mark and some others launched earnestly into the song. I stumbled behind for a while but soon the center fell away and we were sounding exactly like a bunch of brawling alleycats. I remember feeling relieved. I hated being on stage with my trumpet. My dream of being the new Herb Alpert had been buried in the chapel in Allahabad. But I blew hard and wild that night. I gathered the air into my lungs and blasted it out with ferocity, moving the keys madly, frantically careening up a scale and then down again only to leap as high as the pursed lips could take me once I had hit bottom. That I made no musical sense or melody or kept to no time was liberating. I kept blowing, somehow exercising and exorcising at once. With each blast of air and peal of sound I felt free. I was leaving school. I was leaving home. I was leaving the wretched trumpet behind. In a few hours I was heading to America. And my trumpet would not come with me. That night, I know realize, I did play jazz. For a few wild minutes I became my hero.