Art Pepper
Roadgame

It started during a scorching August in Los Angeles, it was 1981, and my friend Mud got out of jail. He had served a year, a residual sentence for an old affair of his, drug stuff, of course.

Jail had done him good. He was finally clean and slightly thinner. A 150 kilo closet, completely shaved, it was impossible to tell where his neck ended and his head began. His whole physique, between fat, muscles, and tattoos, seemed like armor to defend and hide his big secret, his emotions, as if emotions were something to be ashamed of.

He called me on the morning of Ferragosto. He explained that a guy who had been at San Quentin with him was playing in town. They hadn't been in the same cell, but they met during yard time. He explained that he was a really tough guy. In the San Quentin environment, this Art Pepper was really famous, but also outside. In jail, however, he was famous for his criminal record. An endless list of drug offenses, but not small stuff, really important trafficking (stuff to be proud of, according to Mud, of course). Then there was the music. No one understood anything about the music Pepper made, but there was talk that he was really a boss with the saxophone.

But do you understand anything about jazz?

No, I never tolerated it. All those notes, I can't follow it for more than two minutes, it gets on my nerves. I like the Ramones. Accompany me anyway. I want to hear my buddy Art Pepper.

I was also curious. Pepper had been a real protagonist of California jazz in the '50s. Some of his records were really unbeatable. I remember a fantastic album titled "Art Pepper Meets The Rhythm Section" from '57, and then an unforgettable duet with his colleague Warne Marsh, also from those years. Then he ended up sucked into the spiral of drug addiction. He returned to the limelight at the end of the sixties, but was very worn out by his personal problems. But Art Pepper was always a stellar saxophonist, something wonderful in his artist soul remained intact. I'll pick you up at 8, be ready.

It took him an hour to come down, so we arrived at the Maiden Voyage, a small club that no longer exists today, when the concert was almost over. We settled in a corner with two mugs of beer.

I remembered Art Pepper from the album covers of the '50s. He had really changed in an impressive way. He looked destroyed. Mud looked as happy as a kid on rides, even if it was evident that that river of saxophone notes passed two meters above his head. He smiled because he was seeing his jail buddy again. It was as if he identified in Pepper unique recognition symbols, which made him familiar. That Hawaiian shirt open on the chest, those big gangster glasses on a face full of marks, the rings, the tattoos. And then he didn't seem well, very pale, a face disfigured, expressionless due to all that methadone. But Mud smiled, as if he were watching his brother play.

Next to the small stage, I noticed a woman standing, very attentive. The wife Laurie. More than a wife, she seemed like a caregiver.

We managed to listen to half of a piece. Then I discovered it was the penultimate piece of that evening's concert, titled Roadgame. He played the alto sax and the clarinet, accompanied by a very good pianist (George Cables), a bassist (David Williams), and a drummer (Carl Burnett).

I had never heard jazz played that way. Even his music, beyond his appearance, communicated to me that he was a destroyed man. His sax phrasing. How can I explain it to you? Imagine someone whose head no longer works, talking to you. A very dense utterance of many rapid words, but no coherent speech. Says one thing, then starts a subordinate that becomes main, so the initial speech is lost, then more digressions, interruptions, retakes of a previous concept, but again a subordinate that gets lost. Imagine that person talking to you that way: you've totally lost orientation and the logical sense of the speech.

Yet in the end, a miracle happens. You haven't understood the logical content of the speech, yet with all those words, that person has perfectly communicated an emotion to you. And they have done it with impeccable clarity and precision. Isn't that a miracle?

Pepper introduced what had to be the closing song of the evening, Everything Happens To Me, a slow and intense standard. After a minute of his solo, I found myself deeply moved. But Mud was the real show. The music this time had lowered its aim and seemed to hit him in full. He had his mouth tightly shut, a tense look, as if he was pushing a door trying to prevent someone from entering.

In the end, when Pepper lowered the sax, yielding space to the piano, Mud was sweaty and had extremely shiny eyes. He whispered something in my ear, but he stammered. I believe he was moved. Mud moved, I assure you if I hadn't had that lump in my throat too, I would have burst out laughing. It seemed to me that he said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard in his life, but I'm not entirely sure.

After the concert, Mud wanted to go greet his jail buddy. The two recognized each other. Mud hugged Pepper in such a way that for a moment, Pepper disappeared from view, and his wife, worried, was almost about to intervene to separate them like a boxing referee. They moved to a corner to talk intensely to each other. Laurie and I stayed aside, two strangers with half-smiles of embarrassment.

Then they said goodbye. Laurie took her husband by the hand and they walked away like a mother and child. Mud and I went out to find the car. I had never seen Mud like that. It seemed as if he had met, for a moment, the love of his life, which he had never had.

Art Pepper died the following year. Of course, I accompanied Mud to the funeral. Again I saw that tightly shut mouth, like someone pushing a door to prevent someone from entering.