star?” I noted that in this instance Tanner had dropped the “step.”
“ Was a TV star,” I said. “He spends most of his time opening used-car lots and doing Rotary Club lunches—”
“Lecturing on environmentalism , believe it or not,” said Edison with a laugh. “Chump never recycled a Coke can in his life.”
“—or,” I went on, “printing truckloads of anniversary T-shirts, when Travis Appaloosa is the only man on God’s earth who knows or cares when the first episode of Joint Custody aired on NBC. TV Land used to occasionally have him on in the graveyard slot, but he burned that bridge by badgering the channel to run Joint Custody marathons the way they do with Twilight Zone and Andy Griffith . Last time I talked to him he’d gotten a fire under him about putting together a reunion show like The Brady Bunch did—only the child actors Travis worked with grew up to be wasters, bar one, and the mayor of San Diego has better things to do. Cautionary. I’ll say.”
I knew I’d been going on, but someone had to counter the deadly proffering of Edison’s helping hand. I was loath for our kids to feel exceptional for the wrong reasons, and so to fall prey to the same unjustified sense of importance from which I’d suffered as a kid. While superficially self-effacing, my keeping my parentage under wraps at school may have been even more corrupting than Edison’s bannering of his father’s identity at every opportunity. I’d still smugly carried around the fact that my father was Travis Appaloosa like a secret charm, an amulet to ward off evil, when really it was no better than a pet rock.
Even more averse than I to playing up my Burbank connection, Fletcher changed the subject—turning to the one topic sure to fill out the rest of the meal: all that jazz .
“Hey, I’ve played with some heavy cats, dig?” Having scraped out the remains of the polenta, Edison upended the bowl of Parmesan on top. Tanner and Cody locked eyes, which bulged in unison. “Stan Getz hired me for three years—paid better than Miles, believe it or not. But just my luck the really iconic recordings haven’t been the gigs I’ve been on. So nobody remembers that, yeah, Edison Appaloosa played with Joe Henderson—because I wasn’t on Lush Life . Paul Motian, too—and it’s hardly my fault the guy has pretty much stopped playing with pianists. And, man, I could shoot myself over the fact that nobody, nobody thought to record that jam session with Harry Connick, Jr., at the Village Gate in 1991. Harry Connick! Rare for him to sing in those days. Crack pianist himself, and said I had ‘the touch.’ Okay, he wasn’t big yet. But Jesus fucking Christ, I could have been everywhere.”
I didn’t enjoy the thought: He sounds like Travis . It bothered me that my brother was still trotting out the same list of musicians that I’d learned years before to impress aficionados. It was a list, apparently, that Edison recited to himself.
“Thing that really gets me in New York these days,” he went on, Parmesan pasted in the corners of his mouth, “is this obsession with ‘tradition.’ Some of the younger cats, they sound like fuddy-duddies. Studying all these chords and intervals like those mindless fucks in madrassas memorizing the Koran. Ornette, Trane, Bird—they were iconoclasts! They weren’t about following the rules, but tearing them up! Personally I blame jazz education. Sonny, Dizzy, Elvin—they didn’t get any degrees. But these good doobies coming out of Berklee and the New School—they’re so fucking respectful. And serious. It’s perverse, man. Like getting a Ph.D. in how to be a dropout.”
We didn’t usually have wine with dinner, but tonight was an occasion. Edison had opened the second bottle—which made Fletcher’s jaw clench—helping to explain why my brother was dropping consonants, slurring vowels, and adopting a drawling cadence like the honorary African-American he considered himself to
“ Was a TV star,” I said. “He spends most of his time opening used-car lots and doing Rotary Club lunches—”
“Lecturing on environmentalism , believe it or not,” said Edison with a laugh. “Chump never recycled a Coke can in his life.”
“—or,” I went on, “printing truckloads of anniversary T-shirts, when Travis Appaloosa is the only man on God’s earth who knows or cares when the first episode of Joint Custody aired on NBC. TV Land used to occasionally have him on in the graveyard slot, but he burned that bridge by badgering the channel to run Joint Custody marathons the way they do with Twilight Zone and Andy Griffith . Last time I talked to him he’d gotten a fire under him about putting together a reunion show like The Brady Bunch did—only the child actors Travis worked with grew up to be wasters, bar one, and the mayor of San Diego has better things to do. Cautionary. I’ll say.”
I knew I’d been going on, but someone had to counter the deadly proffering of Edison’s helping hand. I was loath for our kids to feel exceptional for the wrong reasons, and so to fall prey to the same unjustified sense of importance from which I’d suffered as a kid. While superficially self-effacing, my keeping my parentage under wraps at school may have been even more corrupting than Edison’s bannering of his father’s identity at every opportunity. I’d still smugly carried around the fact that my father was Travis Appaloosa like a secret charm, an amulet to ward off evil, when really it was no better than a pet rock.
Even more averse than I to playing up my Burbank connection, Fletcher changed the subject—turning to the one topic sure to fill out the rest of the meal: all that jazz .
“Hey, I’ve played with some heavy cats, dig?” Having scraped out the remains of the polenta, Edison upended the bowl of Parmesan on top. Tanner and Cody locked eyes, which bulged in unison. “Stan Getz hired me for three years—paid better than Miles, believe it or not. But just my luck the really iconic recordings haven’t been the gigs I’ve been on. So nobody remembers that, yeah, Edison Appaloosa played with Joe Henderson—because I wasn’t on Lush Life . Paul Motian, too—and it’s hardly my fault the guy has pretty much stopped playing with pianists. And, man, I could shoot myself over the fact that nobody, nobody thought to record that jam session with Harry Connick, Jr., at the Village Gate in 1991. Harry Connick! Rare for him to sing in those days. Crack pianist himself, and said I had ‘the touch.’ Okay, he wasn’t big yet. But Jesus fucking Christ, I could have been everywhere.”
I didn’t enjoy the thought: He sounds like Travis . It bothered me that my brother was still trotting out the same list of musicians that I’d learned years before to impress aficionados. It was a list, apparently, that Edison recited to himself.
“Thing that really gets me in New York these days,” he went on, Parmesan pasted in the corners of his mouth, “is this obsession with ‘tradition.’ Some of the younger cats, they sound like fuddy-duddies. Studying all these chords and intervals like those mindless fucks in madrassas memorizing the Koran. Ornette, Trane, Bird—they were iconoclasts! They weren’t about following the rules, but tearing them up! Personally I blame jazz education. Sonny, Dizzy, Elvin—they didn’t get any degrees. But these good doobies coming out of Berklee and the New School—they’re so fucking respectful. And serious. It’s perverse, man. Like getting a Ph.D. in how to be a dropout.”
We didn’t usually have wine with dinner, but tonight was an occasion. Edison had opened the second bottle—which made Fletcher’s jaw clench—helping to explain why my brother was dropping consonants, slurring vowels, and adopting a drawling cadence like the honorary African-American he considered himself to
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