When I was a teenager in Kirkland, Washington, I sometimes took the ferry across Lake Washington to Seattle to see movies at the large movie theatres there. One theatre didn’t show movies. It was a vaudeville house, the Palomar, which featured dancers and comedians. There was a small live band in the pit which accompanied the dancers, and the drummer provided punctuation for the comedians.

The Palomar’s drummer played only with his right hand, since his left arm ended at his elbow. He used his damaged arm to hold sticks and brushes ready to play, but all his drumming was done with his right hand.

He could hold two sticks in his right hand and play rolls and rhythmic patterns with them. And he had a terrific eye for catching anything that moved onstage, with rolls and crashes. His drumming added to the comedy.

On one matinee that I saw, there was a father and son act that was always well received at the Palomar, but on this occasion, the son wasn’t doing his part as well as he usually did, and the father crossed in front of him and gave him a quick slap. The drummer caught the slap with a rim shot and a cymbal crash.

The father was so impressed, he leaned over the footlights, reached into the pit and shook the drummer’s hand.

***

When I got out of my three-year stint in the Army in 1949, I returned to Seattle and resumed my studies at the University of Washington. I soon discovered that there was a jazz scene in Seattle which I hadn’t known about while living across Lake Washington in Kirkland.

There were plenty of good jazz musicians around Seattle, some of them attending classes at the U, and others scattered around among jazz clubs. I met the singer Janet Thurlow (who later married trombonist Jimmy Cleveland), and she introduced me to a high schooler named Quincy Jones, who played the trumpet and was teaching himself to write arrangements. His friend — a blind pianist who everyone called “R.C.” — had a trio that was trying to sound like the Nat Cole Trio. It was Ray Charles.

Another fine Seattle musician, tenor man Gerald Brashear, became my friend. Gerald had two interests, jazz and the movies. He usually spent his days in movie theatres and his nights in jazz clubs. Whenever I would go to a movie in the daytime, I would look around the audience when the house lights came on, and as often as not, there would be Gerald in one of the rows behind me, waving hello.

Several years later, after I had moved to New York and joined the Marian McPartland Trio, we were playing for a week in Columbus Ohio. Count Basie was in town, and I knew most of the guys in his band, so I borrowed Marian’s car and drove over to their hotel. Joe Newman was glad I had wheels, since he wanted to visit a friend whose house was just outside of town. We got directions and drove there, and when we walked in, there was Gerald, sitting on this guy’s couch, waving at me.

I never found out exactly how Gerald happened to be in Columbus, and I don’t know what ever became of him, but I sure liked the way he played.

***

In 1957, when I had returned to the Marian McPartland trio after playing for over a year with Gerry Mulligan’s sextet and quartet, we took a leave from our steady job at the Hickory House on New York’s 52^nd Street for a couple of jobs in Detroit and Columbus, Ohio. Marian had also booked a couple of summer months at a chain of hotels in Indiana, but while we were in Columbus, she was notified that the chain had been sold, and that the new owners didn’t want any music.

Since Marian had hired a replacement trio for the Hickory House, she broke up our trio and went to Chicago to be with her family for the summer, and I took the train back to New York.

There was family across the aisle from me who, as I gathered from their conversation, were on their way to Italy. As we traveled down the bank of the Hudson River, the young boy and girl from that group came over to my side of the car, taking the seat behind me, where they could look out the window. After quite a while, the little boy said, “Do you think that’s the Atlantic Ocean?”‘ The little girl answered, “It must be. We’ve been going by it all morning.”

I enjoyed imagining their surprise when they saw the real Atlantic.

***

I was playing an Off Broadway show in Greenwich Village and got a call from Gerry Mulligan. “I’m starting a new quartet with Art Farmer,” he said. “Do you want to be on it?” Of course I did. I resigned the show and joined the quartet, and Art and I soon became good friends. Art had an identical twin brother, Addison, who played the bass. Once, for a joke, Gene Lees asked Art, “How do you tell the difference between yourself and Addison?” With a straight face, Art replied, “Well, every morning when I get up, I try to play the bass, and if I can’t, I’m Art.”