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hep cat
Filed Friday, November 19 2004.

On the corner of 50th and 8th, I was stopped by an old black guy asking for a light.

Sorry, I told him; I didn't have one.

That's okay, he replied, pulling a bottle of whiskey from his jacket pocket, then offering me a drink. I declined.

But how could I refuse, he asked, when he was drinking to the memory of Ray Charles?

He was a piano player himself, he informed me, to which I replied that I play the trumpet. That stopped him for a second; closing one eye, he looked me up and down, then asked: play jazz?

My affirmative reply launched him into a street-corner test:

q. You know Clifford?

a. Sure.

q. Who play drums with him?

a. Max Roach.

q. What they play?

a. Joy Spring, Cherokee, Bouncing with Bud...

q. What key Joy Spring in?

a. F.

q. Sing it.

And so on. After about ten minutes, he closed one eye again, gave me a second up and down.

For a little white kid, he observed, you know your jazz.

Then he whipped a napkin out of his pocket, scrawled down a phone number and address.

We jam here, he told me, every Sunday from ten at night. Ain't got no little white kids yet, but if you can play jazz as well as you can talk it, swing on by.

Oh I will, I told him. Without a doubt.