part two of the greatest sax player...
by Mark Blickley
I jumped into my familiar defense. I told him I hear symphonies in my head. I explained that the only value my heart has is as a metronome.
He shrugged and said, “Yeah, I know watcha mean.” Then he ripped a piece of paper out of his book and scribbled out an address and handed it to me. “I tell you what. we got a gig over at this club on the South Side. Stop by tomorrow night at nine and we’ll see how your act goes over.”
“It’s not an act,” I insisted. “It’s my life!”
“Yeah, yeah, gotcha kid. Clean yourself up. And why don’t you practice up your leads a bit. We can’t have you blowing any clams ‘cause this is a class gig.” Then he laughed, slapped me on the back, and disappeared inside a taxi.
At ten to nine I managed to stagger into the Jicama Jazz Emporium. What a place! I squinted through thick clouds of smoke and saw two men in tuxedos making their way towards me. They grabbed me by my shoulders and lifted me three feet off the ground.
“Hey, wait a minute! Let me down! I’m a musician! Let go of me! How dare you! I’m an artist!”
One of the men kicked the saxophone out of my hands. It crashed to the floor. A couple of musicians at the bar recognized me and came to my rescue.
I dropped to my knees, opened the case and examined my sax. There was no damage. When I thought about what this guy had done I threw a downfield block that sent him crashing into the bar. I wanted to kill him! I was dragged away by some musicians before the man could get up and avenge himself. The crowd was applauding me.
I was taken backstage to Mr. Hackersby, the band’s manager. “That’s some ballsy thing ya did, kid. Them Godzillas had it coming.”
I told Mr. Hackersby that I didn’t care what people did to me, but when they started abusing my saxophone I wouldn’t permit that. I told him life would be nothing more than exertion and excretion if my sax was ruined.
Hackersby said there were other saxophones to be had, that my life was certainly more important than an instrument. I explained that this saxophone represented a legacy - the immortality of a departed master survived through the fellowship of my lungs and this hallowed brass.
Hackersby shook his head and agreed that my sax was, “the hollowest damn brass,” he ever saw. Then he said, “if you can put half the effort into playing your sax as you can defending it, you’ll be a smash.” He pushed out of the wings.
The moment I stepped on stage there were applause and I heard someone yell out, “Atta boy, play like you slay!”
I bowed, put the saxophone to my lips, drew a professionally calculated breath, and vanished into my silent world of misplaced trust.
I learned what really happened that night. It seems the audience was impatient and then shocked when it became clear no music would flow from my saxophone. The crowed, I was told, grew restless and offended. Insults were yelled at me but I was too absorbed in my music to know where I was or who I was with.
Luckily, my absorption coupled with my burlesque exaggerations on the saxophone transformed a hostile crowd into one convulsed with laughter. Hackersby’s gamble paid off.
I must’ve looked pretty stupid out there.
At the conclusion of my set, I was given an ovation. A standing ovation! Since I was ignorant of the laughter during my trance, I blew kisses to the audience and mumbled a thank you to Professor Bindt. I felt that we were both vindicated.
Mr. Hackersby signed me to a contract on the spot. The Monk’s Corner Ridiculously Juiced Jazz Ensemble now had its first touring soloist.
I was euphoric over my success and determined to work harder than ever at perfecting my craft. It was all hard work for me, not fun.
We toured the United States and parts of Canada. Everything was going pretty smoothly. After a grueling gig in a tiny club in Nova Scotia, most of the musicians headed for the seedier parts of the island.
Not me. I went back to my hotel room to practice.
As I inserted my key in the lock, a blanket was thrown over me, my ankles were bound with rope and I was hauled, kicking and screaming, to a car. My abduction ended when I was rolled onto a marble floor.
I sprang up, swinging wildly with my fists. When my eyes made the transition to light, I saw my abductors. They were six members of the band.
I was confused. I asked what they were doing. “You know, guys, what the idea?” They all laughed and Ezra, this bald guy in sunglasses, put his arm around me. He said the guys were grateful for the creative lift I’d given the band and had decided on showing me a good time.
“But you know I can’t miss a day of practice!” Ezra bit down on his mustache and said, “We know, Ric. But why not try loosening up a bit. Relaaaaaaaaaaax.”
I told him I was anything but relaxed. “Where are we?” He grinned and pointed to these scantily dressed women circling the room. Ezra puckered his lips at one of the women and said that we were in the hottest little whorehouse in the Commonwealth.
One of the women, this six foot three blonde in flesh colored leotards crept up behind me and stuck her fingers through the belt loops of my pants and started nibbling on my ear.
I broke out of the Amazon’s grip by using an old football move which resurrected images of my father lying on the couch denying me music lessons, and of Professor Bindt, staring at me with the disgust he usually reserved for discoveries of cold french fries inside his Chicken Lickin’ boxed lunch.
I sprinted out the door and hid inside some bushes by the side of the road. When Ezra found me I was still shaking. He apologized for getting me upset, but he thought if anyone could put a smile on my face, Skyscraper Sally could.
I told him I wasn’t angry. I knew they were acting in my best interests. I also knew I was slightly dull. It wasn’t that I disliked women or anything weird like that. But I explained to Ezra that long ago I asked Professor Bindt if I could cut down on my lessons and spend some time and money on girls.
The Professor sat me down and explained the medieval belief that when a man expends his precious bodily fluid it upsets his internal chemistry and drains him of a large portion of his intellectual and creative energies. Bindt said that women’s purpose on this earth is to zap up a man’s vitality by having him transfer it into her. “It is artistic destruction by injection, if you know vot I mean.”
I knew what he meant.
Ezra pulled me to my feet and walked me back to the hotel.
For six years I toured with the Monk’s Corner Ridiculously Juiced Jazz Ensemble. I loved the traveling and the respect of my peers. After that embarrassing incident in Nova Scotia, the guys never interfered with my privacy or practice sessions.
When I was twenty-three, my life was altered during a gig in Goose Creek, South Carolina. In the audience that night was a debt-ridden millionaire named Tony Pranklin.
He was the innovator of the Pet Stone craze. You people remember that, don’t you? Through greed and neglect, Pranklin squandered the fortune he made from his conception, advertising and marketing of the stones he swore “would bring comfort to millions without the mess and expense of a breathing pet.”
Tony Pranklin was lazy, but he was no fool. He immediately saw the appeal of a silent saxophonist. When he visited me a couple of months ago he told me he had learned to “exploit the universal fear of casting the first stone.”
Pranklin claimed that although my popularity originated through travesty and as the years went by the novelty of a reedless saxophonist might wear off, I would endure because he would promote me as an artist.
Now if this all sounds like a crock, all I can say is Pranklin pulled it off. I became known as the World’s Greatest Saxophone Player - but that comes later.
Pranklin offered Hackersby one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for my contract. I wasn’t happy about the sale, but Pranklin promised me complete artistic freedom and the change to reach an audience of millions.
Pranklin pulled strings and within weeks I popped up on national TV. My father saw me one night on a talk show. He wrote me a letter apologizing for his behavior towards my music lessons. He said that the solo I performed on television reminded him of when he was in the army in ‘43 and saw Woody Herman’s band . . . but that he couldn’t hear anything.
I didn’t know people were laughing at me. I didn’t! I felt I was achieving artistic maturity and touching my listeners. Every time I finished a tune, all I heard was applause. How did I know? How could I know?
Nine months after leaving the Juiced Ensemble I cut a solo album produced by Pranklin. It was called Music for the Disenchanted and released by the Avantgardarama label. Although I heard elegantly textured orchestrations when I played the record, all anyone else heard was the clicking thud of sax keys against the pads and my breathing.
But that didn’t stop Tony Pranklin. He contacted a music critic for Art on Parade and coerced the man to publish a favorable review of my album. I have it here, in my shirt pocket.
I originally kept it out of pride . . . now I keep it for . . . I don’t know. This is it:
‘Eric Tesler may be the most dynamic musical innovator on the scene today. Known throughout the nation because of his prolific television appearances, this is the young man’s first attempt at recording, and he succeeds admirably.
Like any pioneer of creativity, Mr. Tesler has attracted the indignation of some critics. These short-sighted people hate change. I believe these critics would even resist the change of a dollar bill at a grocery store. They claim it is absurd to purchase an album that only offers the sound of an artist inhaling and exhaling.
Let me say this: Music for the Disenchanted may, on a physical level, be just breathing; but as I replay Mr. Tesler’s recording it reminds me of God breathing life into Adam. Eric Tesler breathes life into a fresh musical genre.’
Can you understand how I felt when this came out? I had published proof that what I was doing was valid, don’t you see? I’m not a fraud. I wasn’t lying to myself or public.
In twelve years I never missed a day of practice or a rehearsal. I was oblivious to fame, and oblivious to the huge sums of money regenerating Pranklin’s bank account.
The concert halls grew in size to accommodate The World’s Greatest Saxophone Player! This epithet was dreamed up by Pranklin after he engineered my election to the South Carolina Music Hall of Fame and my winning of the Annual Rantoul John Philip Sousa Memorial Award. This last honor truly touched me.
On my twenty-fifth birthday Pranklin produced my second album, Quarter Century Blues in a Half-Assed World. By this time, Pranklin had learned from his mistakes. Instead of the LP being a solo venture, he hired a backup group. Three of the eleven tracks were my solos. On the remaining tracks, I played with accompaniment. Quarter Century Blues in a Half-Assed World was a huge success. I was told recently that it’s become a collector’s item known as “The Birthday Album”.
My popularity was at its peak. I was such an enormous box office draw that Pranklin was able to book me into Lincoln Center in New York City.
The flight to New York was one of the most exciting afternoons of my life. Immediately after my plane touched down at Kennedy Airport, I made my way to a taxi stand and asked the cab driver to take me to the hippest jazz club in New York. He dropped me off at a place called The Cookery on Eighth Street.
There was a long line of people stretching form the club’s entrance and all around the block. When I told the doorman I didn’t have a reservation, he recognized me and said no problem. He directed me to a stage side table - his table.
Within minutes the house lights dimmed and a tall man with a beard brushed past me. The stage lights reflecting off his silver saxophone blinded me. I was rubbing my eyes when I heard my host announce, “And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, a musical legend, your friend and mine, Red Gorky, Junior.”
There was applause. I squinted up at the stage because the light reflecting form the saxophone made it impossible for me to look directly at the musician.
And then it happened.
Red Gorky, Junior sucked at the air and produced the sweetest, most hauntingly beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. My eyes became moist and I started to shake. For years I hadn’t followed contemporary saxophonists. Professor Bindt insisted it was dangerous to my development.
For the first time in my life I felt terror. Terror that - oh, my God! - my God! - I’d been living a lie for thirteen years.
The music soared out of that man’s saxophone like a celestial conversation between the Creator and the human spirit. I mean, it was a feeling I always experienced whenever I played, but as I looked around the club, I realized it was a feeling not limited to the artist, but shared by his listeners as well.
I mean, when I played one tune it would excite a hundred people a hundred different ways. But you know, never, not once, did anyone ever come close to describing what I felt while I was playing with what they had heard. Sometimes that would bother me. That’s when Pranklin would say, “Your music is much more sophisticated than you realize. And if you ever realize where this sophistication comes from, you’ll probably be ruined at an artist.”
But listening to Red Gorky’s sax, I knew all that mystic mumble jumble about playing for the heart was a bunch of crap. It was the ears! The ears! I’d been trained not to use my ears. I don’t care what the music critics wrote about me. It’s the ears that count!
I got up out of my seat and ran out the door. I was shattered. Fifteen minutes later I was perched on a bar stool sipping a G and T when I heard a high, squeaky voice.
“Pssssssst, psssssssst, are you Eric Tesler?”
I spun around but didn’t see anyone so I went back to my drink.
“Hey, man, you Eric Tesler?” I felt a tug on my pants cuff. I looked down at a smartly dressed midget biting a cigarette. “You Eric Tesler, the world’s greatest saxophone player?”
I cringed at the title. I told him I was Eric Tesler. “Who are you?”
“Just call me a fan,” he said. “Mind if I join you?”
I reached down and lifted him onto a stool. This angered the little guy. “Lemme go, will ya? I ain’t no baby. Wanna smack in the mouth?” I apologized and asked him what he wanted. I suspected it wasn’t an autograph.
The little man grinned, adjusted his tie, and handed me his business card. It read: Turner Arnold, The Entrepreneur of Avenue B. I immediately recognized the name. He was the midget conductor that inspired me when I was young.
“Turner Arnold! You were one of my heroes when I was a kid! I read all about you in Beauty Knows No Pain.”
I expected him to be flattered, but he looked at me with disgust and said, “You did, huh? I’m a musician who overcame my handicap in pursuit of my art, right, kid?”
I nodded. Right. I was excited. This was a great musician! But he just laughed and asked me if I believed everything I read.
Turner Arnold told me the book was written by a second-rate writer who needed cash. Turner Arnold seemed to get pleasure out of telling me that this hack writer lied like a dog about him and everyone else in the book.
I couldn’t believe it!
Turner Arnold said, “Sure, I went to a fancy music school. But that stuff about me finding work after I graduated was pure bull. Nobody wanted me. Nobody. They didn’t even want me at the school but I had enough bucks to get in so they took me. I was always treated like somebody’s joke. But I ain’t here to talk about myself. I been following your career for some time now. I run a pawnshop down on the East Side. I trade mostly in weapons and musical instruments - guess I can’t get it outta my blood. Anyway, I got a present for you.”
He reached inside his jacket and pulled out this cane object that he held up in front of him like someone repelling a vampire with a cross.
I asked him what it was and he called it, “a reeeeeeeeed.”
Turner Arnold said he knew I was playing Lincoln Center later that evening and had hoped to give it to me after the show. Then he explained how to position the reed on to the sax.
I asked him if Red Gorky, Jr. used one and the midget smirked and said, “you’re catching on.” Turner Arnold assured me I couldn’t go wrong if I used the reed at my concert that night.
I put the gift in my shirt pocket and looked at my watch. I was going on in an hour. I opened my wallet to pay for my drink but Turner Arnold insisted on treating me. I thanked him again for the reed and hurried uptown.
Lincoln Center was mobbed. The audience consisted of all types. I was told there was even a balcony filled with senior citizens representing the New Jersey Geriatric League for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. They were bussed in at taxpayers’ expense to show their support for a music form that did not discriminate against their handicap.
At 9:04 p.m. I dragged myself to center stage. I was bombarded with applause. The instant I stepped up to the microphone the crowd fell silent.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, my first number will be a composition I wrote backstage tonight entitled, A Legacy of Laments for Lunatics, Listeners and Lickin’ Liars. In F minor.”
For the first time in my career I didn’t close my eyes and drift into a creative vacuum. I filled my cheeks with air, toyed with the keys, and stared at the audience that had paid eighteen dollars a ticket to watch me.
It was my first appraisal of an audience and it made me sick. I released the air from my cheeks, pulled the saxophone out of my mouth, and disappeared backstage to vomit.
I reappeared on stage to a standing ovation. Muttering curses under my breath, I shook my head and bowed. As I leaned forward, the reed fell out of my shirt pocket and bounced off my shoe. I smiled, picked it up and attached it to my sax.
The ovation lasted nearly five minutes. When it finally died down, I bit into the mouthpiece, took a deep breath and blew as hard as I could.
The initial blast stunned me and the audience. As I manipulated the keys, the raucous sound dissolved into a crisp, blue-tinted rhythm. The audience gasped, but no one was more surprised than me. Employing the technique I forged out of years of silent practice, I made a smooth transition form a natural romantic flow of melody to a series of forceful jazz riffs.
I lost myself in the delightful music - not imagination, MUSIC! I didn’t hear my fans shouting at me to stop. All I heard was the beautiful tunes I was producing. It was incredible! It’ll always be the happiest moment of my life.
A little while ago I received a cassette in the mail from a fan of mine who was at my Lincoln Center performance. His recorder was smashed in the excitement but he saved the tape. It’s the only record I have of my music and my most valuable possession.
I was oblivious to the orchestra section running towards the stage cursing me. The sounds coming out of my saxophone took me far, far away.
But not far enough.
My fans surrounded me and the last thing I heard was a plea to “PLAY WHAT WE PAID FOR!”
The first blow landed on the back of my neck. It caused my teeth to clamp down on the mouthpiece. The follow up blow knocked out three of my teeth, tow of which I swallowed. Blood gushed out of my mouth, splattering the attacking mob.
They pulled me to the floor and kicked my face. All of my ribs were cracked and my leg was broken and still they swarmed over me. Despite this punishment, I hunched over my saxophone, cradling it.
Eventually my arms went limp. That’s when the crowd turned their anger on my instrument. They stomped on my sax until it was nothing more than brass flecks!
But I hurt, Doctor Wandaplatt, and I don’t mean from the bruises covered by these bandages. You say that my injuries could not heal while I was in a coma because my body was using all its resources just to maintain my survival. I wished I never opened my eyes.
You claim that my condition won’t improve until I confront a saxophone. But it’s over! My saxophone was destroyed, Doctor! Will you stop trying to force me to touch one? I told you I want to stop feeling things!
I’ve listened to the other patients, Doctor Wandaplatt. I’ve heard them explain how experiencing a closeness with death clarified some kind of meaning or direction in their lives. Well, it hasn’t happened to me. But they you can’t always trust what you hear, right Doctor?
I’m scared, Doctor Wandaplatt. Real scared. But I’ll get through it on my own, thank you. I’ve always been a solo act.
