Fourth Rick Saylor Memorial Jazz Concert

And words about Rick

After a brief summer hiatus, The Merry Gentlemen of Jazz present the fourth in our series of concerts honoring Rick Saylor, jazz musician and impresario extraordinaire, in the glorious acoustics of the Sanctuary of First Christian Church of Decatur on Thursday, January 29 at 8 PM. This event is free and open to the public, and we'd love to see you there!

https://acole.net/event/6400424/748897885/rick-saylor-memorial-jazz-concert-series-featuring-the-merry-gentlemen-of-jazz

Here’s a brief essay I wrote about Rick after his death.

I met Rick walking his dog near my home. We lived two blocks from one another. He saw me loading my keyboard into the car one time and mentioned in passing that he used to road manage for Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but I was polite about it.

He proceeded to ask me if I had any keyboard students who might want to come to his home where they had a weekly jazz jam. “Students?” I said. “I’ll go!” I hadn’t played jazz in a long while and had always found restaurant jam sessions to be very unpleasant experiences at their best.

Well, it turned out Rick HAD road-managed for Herbie and Wayne. And George Thoroughgood. And Jaco Pastorius. And had been involved with any number of other amazing musicians. He was a hard-nosed true-blue music industry vet who had seen it all, and the stories he told could curl your hair. The Jaco stories in particular were harrowing and outrageous. Rick was no liar. He had no need to lie. He loved a good story, but they were all true.

He’d grown up in the Bay Area, went to school with Huey Lewis. He’d been allowed to hang at Mike Bloomfield’s crazy house parties as a teen. As a young man he’d worked at a record store and had been a sound guy in a club, each where all kinds of acts and names blew through, until he finally got asked to go on the road.

Later in his life he’d lived in Manhattan, helped produce astounding documentaries of jazz musicians like Monk and Sarah Vaughan. Collaborated with Gary Giddins. He’d forgotten more than most people ever learn.

And he had no ego to speak of. It was what he had done. He had no illusions that these people remembered him in particular. He knew some folks in the industry, other folks he’d just run into, still others he’d never had the opportunity to meet. It was all just business and his life and he didn’t care about trying to be self-important. He was just another guy living in Grant Park, who happened to have had an interesting life.

He had his living room set up with a permanent drum set, an upright bass, a keyboard, and a selection of scotch. He had his people that he’d call in on Thursday nights. I was one of his main piano players for about 10 years, and I watched a string of amazing players (all with day jobs like myself) come through in various configurations. Sometimes it was just a trio or quartet, sometimes four winds and a rhythm section with guitar. Occasionally it would just be the two of us.

Rick knew he wasn’t the world’s best bass player. He lacked somewhat in confidence, and almost never took a solo. He could read fairly well and hold his own in medium tempo tunes. Beyond that, though, he had the mind of a great musician. He KNEW what good music was, and what it was supposed to be, better than a lot of pros I’ve worked with, and he encouraged all of us in the room with him to focus on that.

We had fun. We cut up. Sometimes he’d rib people. Rarely me, cause he knew how sensitive I was. We played interesting tunes, Wayne Shorter tunes, lesser known standards like “Beatrice,” tricky tunes like “Jordu” and “Dahoud.” Sometimes we didn’t do so great. Other times it was the best jazz I’ve ever been a part of. We were fine with it either way, and we’d pat ourselves on the back or laugh at ourselves, however it happened.

Rick made sure we had charts whenever we needed them, and he’d print them out on the spot. He had great instruments for the drum and keyboard to play, and his little living room sounded great. Neighbors would walk by and comment on how wonderful the music sounded from outside.

Rick had POCKET. He was able to do more with his limited bag of skills than a lot of other folks I’ve known who played better. It took me years to find his pocket, but when I did, we locked in and it was sheer heaven.

And that’s the most important thing about Rick. He was in it to learn and get better, and he did. He got a lot better in the ten years I knew him, because he invited great musicians to his home, and he took himself and what we were doing seriously. And he only wanted to play with folks like that. So if you got the call from Rick, you knew he respected who you were and what you were trying to do.

And I got better. Way better. Although I’d led a trio for ten years in my 20’s, I’d never found playing jazz particularly blissful, not like it had been when I was listening on the side in college, wishing like hell I could get in there and play too. My trio years were a lot of society gigs with talented band-members-for-hire who weren’t going to push me, because I was paying them. I never knew how I sounded, whether I was playing well or not. I never had that time to just JAM with a bunch of like minded souls.

Until Rick.

The first few years were fun but hard. I was very uncomfortable with my sound and abilities. But there were moments when I’d say, “Hey, I kind of liked that solo I did,” and everyone would be receptive.

Two to three hours of playing once a week does a person real good, especially in jazz. There’s so much inside baseball to learn, the music inside the music, in between the cracks, the part that you’re not going to read about in a book, the part that a lot of teachers know how to do (or not), but can’t necessarily tell you about. It’s like science experiments to see what kind of reactions you get. Lots of trial and error.

After a number of years I started to get comfortable. Confident. One winter when I was up in Manhattan playing an audition for my daughter Cecilia Cole, we decided to go hear Cyrus Chestnut at Smoke Jazz Club on the Upper West Side. After the concert there was a jazz jam. I’d always wondered if I could survive an NYC jam session, and Cecilia told me I had to try, so I went up to the front and gave my name.

They put me out there to play, and lo and behold, they asked me to play a second tune. It was scary. But Cecilia got the whole thing on her phone, and in the end I represented myself fairly well.

When Rick heard about that, and saw the video, he flipped. He was so happy for me that he insisted on paying for our expensive dinner at Smoke. What could I say?

I’ll tell you what I said. Every chance I got I told Rick how much I appreciated him. I told him how great he was sounding. How great we were all sounding together. How much better I was feeling behind the piano, finally able to relax, to feel joy in my playing, to be confident. To come to that place at 54 years old after a lifetime of playing in a state of terror and despair is a powerful blessing. Rick gave that to me. He GAVE that to me.

I tell people that Rick saved my life as a Jazz musician. I might not, most likely wouldn’t, be playing Jazz today if it wasn’t for him, for the years he gave me in a safe and inspired community. Again, I told him this frequently, so while I mourn his loss deeply, he died knowing I loved him, so I’m okay.

And although his wife Trudy is unfairly relegated to a footnote to this story, she was there at most of those jams, sitting in the other room, cheering us when we played particularly well (and sometimes when we didn’t), and taking care of Rick. I could write a whole other essay about her.

In sum, I got to know the last ten years of a life that was so rich, so Rick, that I almost can’t believe it lived in the body and mind of this average looking, plain-telling, wise-cracking, sometimes inappropriate-speaking, outgoing, didn’t-suffer-fools-gladly, guy. He never let me interview him, which was a pity. He said his stories were just for the jam session.

I hope you’ll miss Rick now too.”

I’ve felt quite empty at his loss, and Cecilia has too, though he was a new acquaintance fo rher. We both feel amazingly lucky that we put on that concert with him last year.