During a summer college
break in the 70’s, I shared an apartment on New York City’s Upper East Side
with a school friend. One afternoon I was perusing the Village Voice
classifieds section looking for a job.
An ad immediately caught
my eye: “Cook for well-known jazz group needed.” Out of curiosity
and on a dare from my roommate, I called the number, and before I knew it, I
was going on an interview to work for Weather Report. A few days after, I met
with the group’s manager Robert Devere in a Greek diner around the corner, and
to my delight I left having bagged the job. I was stunned at my great fortune
to be going to live with one of the hottest jazz groups of the time. The job
was to live in their manager’s house in Port Jefferson and cook for them for a
month while the group auditioned drummers and prepared for an upcoming tour
promoting their new album Mysterious Traveler.
While I had accumulated
culinary skills willy-nilly over the years (including a class or two at Le
Cordon Bleu while I was in Paris studying at the American University), this was
to be my first professional foray into what would become a lifelong
relationship with the culinary world. Looking back, I have no idea what I said
to convince Jeff to hire me. It might have been that I was a pretty young
thing, but I suspect it could have been as simple as that I was in possession
of a rare commodity for a city girl: I had a driver’s license.
A few weeks later, on a
mild summer morning there I stood waiting on the ferry platform, my long hair
teased by the steady breeze off the Long Island Sound. Next to my feet, tucked
into my tote bag were The Joy of Cooking and Mastering the Art of
French Cooking (Volume One AND TWO). Irma and Julia were to be my culinary
spirit guides. As the ferry set sail through the swirling waves of the Sound
toward Port Jefferson, I felt a mix of excitement and trepidation, like an
adventure seeking stow-away in a Robert Louis Stevenson tale.
The house was an
unremarkable weathered suburban Victorian. It was immediately evident that a
relaxed style of living went on there. Jeff was divorced and the place had all
the markings of a bachelor. It was a home devoid of the proper daily
tucking-in, as well as the decorative flourishes a woman might have imposed. My
responsibilities were straightforward: grocery shopping, all meal preparation,
and kitchen clean-up.
Day and night, the house
was saturated with music. It elbowed its way up the stairs and through the
floorboards from the basement. In
between duties I would sometimes follow the notes and wander downstairs, sit
unobtrusively in a corner and soak it all in. Something was being birthed
there. I had been drop-shipped into a moment of jazz history. I confess, I only
partially grasped the global implications of what I was witnessing. Joe seemed to be
the self-appointed ring leader. He was very adamant about directing the others
to achieve his vision of what would affect the strongest visual arrangement of
bodies on stage as well as how things should be organized musically. Each day
he furiously covered piles of virgin sheet music with a number two pencil and
at the end of the day the pedestrian, round-mouthed trashcan would be brimming
with cast off inspirations.
I don’t know why but I
picked some of those sheets out of the can and squirreled them away. Decades later I
gifted them to a dear friend’s father who was a jazz aficionado when he was
gravely ill.
Joe Zawinul was a
showman. He
inhabited his body like an actor but not in the overly conscious way of a
dancer. The whimsical tufts of fine toffee-colored hair looked pasted on to the
sides of his scalp.
His thick broom mustache gave his face an extra punch of drama. He often wore
ethnic multi-colored woven caps that concealed his bald pate but also lent a
bit of visual pizazz. There was a casual side to him that could be almost be
called twee, and then there was the work side where his tone could turn a bit
bullish, abrasive and muscular.
I realized pretty early
on Joe wanted more of me than just a home cooked meal. I let him kiss me once.
I knew I wasn’t groupie material, and besides: what would Julia and Irma
think?
Wayne Shorter was
gentle, modest, and soft-spoken with an ethereal charm. His eyes were kind and
intelligent. In the evenings I would hear him chanting. It was a time when
different Eastern religions and various sects, some of questionable ambitions,
were circulating. The
Hare Krishnas with their saffron-clad adherents in strangely choreographed
swarms, beating drums and pushing flowers at random
people hoping for a hand-out or a conversion, were a common sight in airports
and public parks.
Wayne chanted one of the
Buddhist mantras: nam myoho renge kyo. I remember one evening sitting on the
single bed up in what was once one of Jeff’s son’s rooms across from him as he tried to teach me
the chant. It was, he explained, to ask the universe for things. He told me
about his daughter who was special needs, and he did a kick-ass imitation of
Miles’ gravelly voice, regaling me with crazy tales of his days playing with
Davis. Years
later Wayne’s wife and daughter would be killed in that crash of the TWA flight
exploding off the Long Island Sound. I always wondered if he
ever came to understand his real holiness, the appellant’s spiritual chant that
occurred when his lips met reed and fingers petted and dallied on the sax’s
keys.
I drove the old family
beater, an un-pedigreed Ford station wagon. It was just for trips to the
local supermarket to go grocery shopping. At
moments it felt as though I was playing house with a bunch of temporary bachelors or
in some weird sit-com where I was the “Alice” to
a group of rag-tag out-of-work musicians.
The arrangement seemed
strangely comfortable. The
breakfast favorite was hands down, poached-eggs on English muffins. Sandwiches
for lunch. They ate with gusto and gratitude. I dipped into each of my
cookbooks for dinner inspiration. Saluted chicken livers
from Irma and quiche from Julia. I had a
pretty good personal repertoire under my belt too. I remember making moules marinieres one night and after steaming the
mussels I served all of them without inspecting
them to make sure they had opened. Later that night
I remembered consuming cooked un-opened mussels could
sicken you. I was on the phone panicked with my aunt at midnight trying to get reassurance that I
hadn’t inadvertently poisoned everyone. After an anxious night
the next morning everyone
arrived for breakfast looking just fine.
During the month there
was a steady influx of hopeful
drummers arriving with drum-sticks in hand. The
group swelled from just a few musicians into
a river. Alphonso Johnson was there: a shy, tall and
slender with a boyish face. There were many others from past configurations
of the band and some who came in to rehearse for a
potential solo gig. Memory fails to identify
them by name.
Later that year when
they hit NYC on their tour, I was there sitting right up front. After the
performance, Robert took me back stage where we had a warm but brief
reunion. Our moment
was over .. we were family for a month in an old weathered house on the Sound. Weather Report was
soaring on a stunning upward trajectory and would go on to have
several legendary talents like Jaco Pastorius come through
and leave their imprimatur on the band’s legacy.
Over the years due to
the compression of great talent and ego the band
experienced huge power
plays and much upheaval. Joe
died of cancer several years ago. Wayne is alive and has achieved his legendary
throne at 83 as a
venerable Jazz Great. Still thrilling the world with his glorious sax. Our
time together is now just some sweet jazz riff from the past… that still resonates in
this woman’s memory.
