When I lived in Houston Texas I got involved in something called the Jazz Tour. We traveled to night spots to hear live jazz. I knew it was music but I could not make sense of it. Some things really appealed to me like Thelonius Monk. Other things sounded like kids in the kitchen banging on pots and pans and playing kazoos. I understood Big Band music. It was written down!

We went to one club on the east side of Houston on the river, I think. There were two old cats in the front near the band stand. Each time the trumpet player would get up to do a solo, one or the other of them would start shaking their heads. After this happened a few times I sidled up behind them to listen in. The trumpet player put down his horn and the piano player started into his solo. The guy on the right leans over to the guy on the left and says “He don’t know the tune, man” and his buddy was nodding his head and saying “You right about dat.”

I was mystified.

What that trumpet player played sounded the same to me as what the sax man played and what the trombone man played. Those guys didn’t get the rough treatment though.

What on earth did they mean?

I’ve started to finally understand this and it has only taken me 33 years to get here.