Big Redd always called out my name, and I’d go over to talk with him. I sometimes wondered if he missed his kids, but I rarely asked him about them. Here he sat on the bench, his red hair gone white, mine still brown then. He still worked, playing the piano in a fancy restaurant, just a few blocks away. His cohorts, all younger guys stood hovering around, closer to my age then, and I taught English 15 miles away, and often had late afternoons free to read and grade more papers.

We sometimes ended up talking about Aaron, who had made a career as a professional jazz saxophonist, and Big Redd said a few times, “He played with Sam Rivers; he was out there.”

I never mentioned the concert or gig Big Redd had played somewhere down near Old City, at Grendel’s Lair or the Khyber Pass, where my older brother and I had heard Redd play. Nor did I mention that Society Hill Hotel where he played for years; I went there with a date in college with Mari, and they cooked great steak sandwiches too. But at that one concert of those years Big Redd played solo on a baby grand at night, and boy could he play! Up and down the ivories like a true jazz master.

In our conversations in the Park in a sunny afternoon, I never thought back to when I had been a little kid, a Cub Scout with a classmate who lived in a stately, three-story Victorian, with a near empty third floor below a glass-paned, octagonal cupola, below which Oliver had a model Saturn V rocket as tall as us. One day Oliver said to me, “Let’s go see Big Redd.”

I had no idea who he had just mentioned, but we made our way down three flights of stairs, then down the wooden porch steps, then out past his wrought-iron gate, which he closed behind him, then catercorner across the avenue, then through another open wrought-iron gate, and Oliver knocked on the door. Mrs. Big Redd must’ve opened the door, recognized Oliver and said, “He’s in the living room.”

And there sat Big Redd, and he rose from an arm chair, and then sat behind a drum set in the corner and started to play. That’s where and when Big Redd knew me from: a lifetime ago, before he moved on, and met and married another younger woman who became a second Mrs. to him.

That same school year, in the spring, Oliver told me months later, his family would move to Florida soon, and he did send me a letter about visiting Cape Kennedy, but I never saw him again.

One afternoon, just maybe ten years back I may have mentioned, “We saw Dexter Gordon right there, Aaron and my little brother, right here on Rittenhouse Square, in The Ethical Society.”

“Man, he could play,” Big Redd said. “One of the great ones.”

Big Redd never said a lot, but you knew when he said something, it meant something. He always asked about my father, and he had known my stepfather too, Guiseppe, who lived just a few blocks from here and had an art materials store, where I had worked a lot as a teen decades before. I knew Center City well, had walked all over, made deliveries, ran errands to the Pharmacy, The Camera Shop, Photo-Cine, and The Post Office, even The State Store and the market on Spruce, just passed Delancy from Pine. But my mom and my stepfather had both passed now, and that era too. Big Redd, the only one I knew around here, except Sean and his wife, and they seemed always busy working, and my dad had moved north when I was still a kid.

I recalled back in my twenties, before I moved away, in the sort of beautiful late cool summer evening which sometimes blessed Rittenhouse Square Park back then, sitting beside on a bench with a young woman with short, dark brown hair, and talking with her, something somewhat rare for me there then. I do not recall her name; I never asked her for her phone number.

“I’m a valet in the hotel over there,” she said.

I sat next to her quietly stunned. I’d never met anyone who did that, but my mom used to joke, “You need a valet.”

I had just begun teaching English then, but previously I had worked in a local bookstore, a few blocks away, then later one Christmas season, a department store, and of course, before that for my stepfather’s art materials store. I did not realize then that a few years later, in a different city, I would meet a young woman, and she too became a valet.

One college girlfriend, Mari visited me in this area a few times; we visited a sandwich shop she knew, and a bookstore she introduced me to, and an art gallery, where a famous artist had a show, with a glossy, write-up; that sort of gallery never showed interest in my mom’s paintings. I introduced Mari to a few sandwich places too: Smedley’s and another one just a few blocks away. She had short brown hair too.

Before then, as a teen, working for my stepfather, I bought a Yamaha Folk Guitar new, with my earnings, and Guiseppe got us a discount, and he bought me a new Dunlop Maxply Fort tennis racquet from Pearson’s on his discount too. But I never got past the opening to “Here Comes the Sun” and a few scales and chords on guitar. “But I had played the saxophone since elementary school, then in high school, Aaron taught me an old jazz standard, and we went to see Dexter Gordon, right over there,” I told Big Redd.

Sometimes I could not remember the name of some jazz standard, and Big Redd knew so many; he’d mention “Cherokee,” one I did not know.

Big Redd and I didn’t go into my entire personal history with jazz music, or with the school band, or even rock ‘n roll, but sometimes I mentioned different musicians and albums: John Abercrombie and Ralph Towner or Ben Webster, or Sonny Stitt, and of course Coltrane.

John Coltrane, and Paul Desmond, both Aaron and I knew of, and probably both of us felt awe toward their music. My older brother played the piano, and he had a handful of Coltrane records: “The Atlantic Years” and some Ahmad Jamal piano albums, and Vince Guaraldi, and my younger brother and I bought some George Benson, Jimi Hendrix, and my high school friends introduced me to The Allman Brothers, The Doobie Brothers, and I found Bob Dylan on my own.

I had played the alto saxophone in school before I turned 10. My mom rented a new Conn Alto Saxophone for me, and I took weekly lessons with Mr. Peneke. As an elementary school kid, in the summer, I played with high schoolers in The Dance Band as the youngest member, with tall and masterful musicians on trumpet, and trombone, tenor sax, bass, and percussion. But in Junior High I stopped taking lessons, and Bess who always sat beside me, then became first alto, and I became second.

But the summer before, when I could still play well, with The Dance Band, we played “In the Mood” and old classics from before my time. I could feel the power of the music in the orchestra pit back then. Then in high school I started lessons with Mr. P. again, and Aaron helped me. I told Big Redd the story of the first and only tenor sax I ever owned.

At the start of high school, I played a decent school alto saxophone, then I regressed to tenor sax. Freshmen year, soccer and tennis interested me more. Then sophomore year I gave those up, and fooled around with an old, clunky school tenor, but then as a junior I had my own tenor, and Aaron and his friends who played guitar and drums and piano asked me to join them, and Mr. P. got me back on track with practicing and lessons, and I even joined the Orchestra too, along with Concert Band and Marching Band.

I still played tennis occasionally on the old, red clay courts of a local club, but my original tennis friend had become obsessed with soccer, and I ran cross-country junior year instead of playing soccer. But I had fallen out of the loop with varsity athletics and jazz music drew me in deeper.

I never told Big Redd that I had attended my first rock concert with his son and daughter, and that we sat down with a group of kids, on the old, abandoned railroad tracks below the road bridge, in our old small town, in the twilight and drank pony bottles of Miller, 15 miles from where we stood in the Park that afternoon. That first concert, a year before I got my first tenor sax, and joined the school orchestra too, with my own horn.

But I did tell him how I came to own a nearly antique, silver saxophone.

“In those years you could find anything you needed in the Classifieds section of the morning newspaper.”

“Don’t I know it,” Big Redd said, which was exactly the expression my father would use too.

“In The Philadelphia Inquirer, through those small, narrow For Sale ads, you could find just about anything, from an English Setter puppy to a Tenor Saxophone.”

“I know what you’re saying,” Big Redd nodded.

“And there I saw listed one afternoon, “Tenor Sax, $125.00. Call LO3-3698.”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t call that number right away, but I called up my dad and told him about it, and later in the week he dropped off a check for $125.00 and gave it to my mom. When I called the number, I asked the man to meet me at my stepfather’s building at 18th & Pine, as my stepfather suggested, and to bring the saxophone so I could see it and play it.”

“Did the guy show up?” Big Redd asked.

“Yes.”

A late afternoon that fall I took the train into the city to my stepfather’s place, where he and the man awaited me. An African American man sat on a low couch in Guiseppe’s parlor, which seemed not lit well, and he had the old saxophone assembled and laying lengthwise over the case, open at his feet, a semi-dull, silver saxophone. I sat down across from him, and he said, “Here’s the horn; it plays fine; you can try it.” And I did.

“It played well, and the neck strap fit fine, and there in the side pocket rested an extra, silver, metal mouthpiece, the kind I knew about, but had never used. Also, a few new Rico Reeds rested in a cardboard pouch.

I said, “OK, I’ll take it,” and handed him the check.

He stood up, and quietly said, “Thanks,” and then he seemed in a very silent way very eager to leave.

In the soft light I looked at the horn and could tell it seemed older than any horn I had played in school, and of another era entirely. I could ascertain the case as also old, with some worn, maroon plush upon which the horn rested. As I looked through the side section of the case again, I saw again an extra neck strap, a few more loose reeds, and the extra metal mouthpiece. As I disassembled the silver tenor saxophone, I felt moderately pleased; I had my own horn, the first one I had ever owned. I pulled off the mouthpiece, placed the cover back on, unscrewed the screw for the neck, and pulled it off, and placed the neck in its holder, then folded up the neck strap and put it in the side section, and placed the body of the horn back in the case, and slowly closed the half-broken lid, and saw in worn, faded, printed black letters across the umber-crimson case, length-wise, “Property of Benjamin Franklin High School.”

Big Redd’s face lit up and I heard him laugh, then say, “Man.”

Thus began my new chapter as a saxophonist. I returned to school with that horn the next day and informed the music director of both the band and orchestra, Mr. Peneke, with some pride, “I have my own horn.” In his office, I showed him the broken case, and took out the horn and assembled it, and he said, “Let’s schedule you for lessons again.” He continued, “OK, I want you to buy an exercise book; it will challenge you and help you progress again.”

He wrote down, “Rubank’s Advanced Method for Saxophone” and said, “Get “Rubank’s, and new, Rico reeds, number 2 and 2 and a ½, and we will meet for lessons here once a week, Mondays at 11 AM, and you must start practicing.”

To my surprise, that first afternoon in his office, he said to me, “I have a better case for you; we can toss that old, broken one,” and he went to the back of the band room, where the old school instruments sat on wooden shelves across from where our Marching Band uniforms hung, and returned with an old, but solid, rectangular, tan tenor saxophone case.

He placed my silver saxophone in it, and said, “You’re all set now.”

I followed his directions, purchasing the book of music exercises; the book with light blue cover contained difficult exercises of almost all 8th notes, and 16th notes, up and down the register, but I progressed smoothly and enjoyed the practice and the lessons, but I disliked lugging the heavy case home from school, then back again.

I bought a stereo from a schoolmate I knew from Junior High wrestling, he also from the other side of town; he had built his own stereo from a kit and in Woodshop built large wooden speaker cases and screwed in 12-inch woofers, and two other smaller speakers in each cabinet. He sold me “The Captain and Me” by The Doobie Brothers too, and I blasted that record, and Bob Dylan too in my room at home, upstairs with JP, with the door closed. JP would turn up the volume for “Rainy Day Women” and sing along with the refrain he loved, “Everyone must get stoned,” from his favorite Dylan song. Later, after he had gone home, I listened to Jeff Beck, and John Coltrane, Ben Webster, and more.

My older brother had dropped out of Georgetown after two semesters, and seemed to be enduring a prolonged funk, but he had a stack of jazz albums. He worked in a newspaper press room at night, and slept late in the morning, while playing his clock radio, which irked me. I had to rise early to deliver newspapers before school, and I could not sleep at night with his radio playing.

He studied with a black man, Sam in the inner city, whom Big Redd knew, and learned “Tenderly” and played it well. And I learned of “Lush Life” and “Body and Soul” from Aaron’s music friends, and he taught me one standard and invited my little brother and me to see Dexter Gordon,” I told Big Redd one afternoon.

I listened to my older brother’s jazz records: “Monk’s Greatest Hits” and “Oh Good Grief” by Vince Guaraldi, “The Koln Concert” and “Ellingtonia” and “My Favorite Things” during those years, along with “Love In Us All” by Pharoah Sanders, and my younger brother’s “Mellow” by Sonny Stitt, and his “It’s Uptown” by George Benson, and “White Rabbit” and I bought “Sargasso Sea” by Abercrombie and Towner, and listened to Sonny Rollins, Paul Desmond, and Gato Barbieri albums I took out from the library.

My sister’s friends had a rock band years before, and they played “Good Golly Miss Molly” and hits by Chicago, and like that band, they had a trumpet player, a trombone player, and a tenor sax player, but even with my brother’s collection of records, jazz still seemed new to me, and I did not know many jazz standards.

Aaron, from my younger brother’s class, I knew of from Concert Band, and he too lived in a tall Victorian not far from our house. He played well, and he invited me over one evening, and played his soprano sax, just like Coltrane, and taught me the notes in his third-floor aerie, after playing a record on the turntable. In his attic aerie just a few blocks from our old elementary school, and about five blocks from my house, he asked incredulously, “You’ve never heard of ‘Mack the Knife’?”

I shook my head.

“It’s easy,” here listen; I’ll teach you the tenor part, and I will play my soprano, and we can play it together.”

That was the first, and only jazz standard I ever learned to play.

To our surprise, late in the Fall semester, a difficult circumstance occurred. The original Mr. P., who had invited me to join the Orchestra and was giving me lessons, and had us playing Shostakovich, a composer, my father, who devoted nights out to The Philadelphia Orchestra, even admired, announced to the Concert Band, “I will be leaving at the end of the term to take a job in Oklahoma with a school which has a large music program.”

As it seemed with my father leaving our house, quietly in the dark of a winter night, this was another departure. Mr. Peneke, using a match to heat the glue had repaired and replaced worn or loose pads on my saxophone over the years, adjusted the octave key with a tiny, thin, silver metal screwdriver, and had taught me how to play the saxophone, for years in elementary school, and also taught me for years in high school, and now he had just announced his departure.

“Why should I even keep playing?” I wondered. Later that evening, after dinner, back at home, in our library off from the living room, where my brothers and I had moved the stereo, I put on a Coltrane album and stretched out and listened in the dim light.

But one afternoon in school, Aaron and my brother, Eddie approached me, “There’s a jazz concert this Saturday afternoon right off Rittenhouse Square; we’re going, OK.”

Then as the air remained cool, we walked up the steep, concrete steps from the subterranean subway station and out in the fall air of Locust Street headed toward Rittenhouse Square. To attend live jazz put a bounce in our strides.

As we walked under the falling leaves of the sycamore trees winding up into the pale blue and white sky, Aaron said, “We’re seeing Dexter Gordon; he’s been in Europe for a long time.”

Anticipation put a little jauntiness in our steps, as we climbed the front stone steps of the stone building. But we did not rush or take giant steps. I sensed something exciting as Aaron said, “This marks the return of Dexter Gordon.”

I had heard of Dexter Gordon but did not really know his music. I knew only that he played “Be-bop” and we had heard rumors, that he had had trouble with drugs or something, years back, and he had not been in the United States for a while. We, still in high school, had never seen a true jazz master in person. Aaron, a few years behind me, already played like a master, a prodigy, years beyond his age.

After walking up the steps and pulling open the glass doors, then walking into a large, elegant, marble-floor hallway with very high ceilings, we turned to our right and entered between open, glass-paned doors into a large, rectangular, white room, with chairs set up in two rectangles, with an aisle between them. We may have paid a small fee back at a desk where an elderly pale woman stood, just inside the door. In the room sat maybe 15 people, mostly older men in their twenties and thirties and beyond, and several African Americans, a few middle-aged ladies, and one young black man, perhaps 25, sat intently with a large, black, boom box on his lap.

We sat together on the left side, as if at a wedding, choosing between one side over the other, and saw before us, a low, improvised stage, and a small drum set, a black piano, and a brown, upright bass lying on its side. Soon a few musicians entered the room from the right side before us; the boom box man behind us a few rows, across on the right side smiled, and pressed in a few silver buttons.

A man stood up before us and announced near the front row, “Today we have with us jazz musician, Dexter Gordon, with his quartet.”

No other teens sat in that room, and then Dexter Gordon, tall, walked in in a light dress shirt, with an unbuttoned-at-the-top, spread collar, and his neck strap flattening out his fat soft necktie, and below he held his old, gold tenor saxophone as he stood, with a casual smile on his face, and nodded. Never before had I seen a real jazz master. Coltrane had died a decade earlier.

Dexter Gordon held his saxophone out before him in his large hands. He checked how his sax hooked to the end of the wide, black strap and brought the mouthpiece to his lips, while turning a quarter sideways, and they all began to play. I looked over and saw the boom box man smiling more broadly; his tape deck rolling, and Dexter played, loud and strong, breathing in quickly then blowing and playing up and down the octaves, the registers, from one octave to another, like a powerhouse of wind and sound and melody. After about ten minutes, he turned a quarter sideways again, looking over to his drummer behind him and his bassist off to the side, as if nodding while still playing, and brought the piece to a final note and a close.

He paused, then spoke very quietly, as if murmuring, then said, “Here’s an old classic you might know, ‘Body and Soul.’” Then he looked back over his right shoulder again at his drummer, and he and the bassist, and the piano player over behind him, to our right, all began to play again. I heard the somewhat familiar, slow melody; I heard the richness of his tone; I saw his eyes close as if remembering from long ago and from a different place, as he played. His fingers moved smoothly, quicky down on the lower keys, his right hand holding the weight of the tenor horn with ease. He towered over us, and his bandmates, a full 6 feet 6 inches, I later learned. A doctor’s son. And he played, boy did he play, up and down the octaves, bebopping like I had never heard in my life, the real thing, a jazz great of some thirty years before.

Over 10 minutes later, as the quartet moved toward the last measures, he turned again, just slightly sideways; his band knew exactly where he stood and where they played in that standard. Then the final legato note, stretched out long and loud. Then the applause and smiles all around, as loud as maybe twenty people could generate. Then he stood before us, held his horn out in front of us, the tenor saxophone across in front of him sideways, parallel with the wooden platform below him, and away from his shirt, holding the horn out to us as if proffering it, and he bowed slightly, and a subtle smile appeared.

Then, less than five minutes later, amid the quiet and shuffling of their feet, he looked back, pulled the horn back up to his lips, and they played again, off on another journey of sound, and five minutes in, he paused, and his pianist took over, playing the ivory keys, and Dexter stood off to the side, and lit a cigarette for himself, and began smoking. Minutes later, his bassist took over on a solo, the quiet, rhythmic thudding, soft and deep, as he leaned over beside the rich, shining umber of the curving wood of the upright bass. Then at least five minutes later, his drummer took over, rat-a-tatting the snare with one hand with ease, then the other too, while thumping the bass drum with his foot pedal behind, and rocking over the drum set, chiming the cymbals like aural sparks in the air of that room. Then Dexter, joined in with all three bandmates, the entire quartet filling to the walls and windows with acoustic sound.

I watched and heard Dexter slide up into the highest registers, and down into the lowest, with a syncopating rhythm, even steps and spaces at a time, as if climbing up steps two at a time, then climbing down steps two at a time, under total control, and I heard his sound filling this room, as only the greatest masters could, and heard as he flew up and down the octaves with his own rhythm, I knew he bebopped as only he could, to his own personal beat, to his own inner voice, to his own, original soul.