HAD MY PARENTS KNOWN, WE MIGHT HAVE GONE THERE (1959, 1962, 1963)

These ruminations are provoked by several previously-unseen bits of jazz ephemera for sale on eBay. My parents didn’t particularly like jazz, although they kindly tolerated their son’s obsession with it. (My father did say, before I had a checking account and would give him twenty dollars to write a check for that amount so I could buy new records, “Can’t you save your money?” but it was a wistful request, not a roar.)

But I was alive when these events were happening, my parents were healthy, and we lived about an hour outside Manhattan. Oh, well.

The emotion-charged pieces of paper are on sale at troystreetsales at modest prices. Surely I can’t be the only person who vibrates to them.

First, a collection of advertisements / tickets to the weekend extravaganzas at Central Plaza. I associate that place with 1951-2 broadcasts MC’s by “Doctor Jazz,” so it was a delightful shock to see that the sessions were still going on more than a decade later, before the Beatles came to town.

This evening might have been impossible, for we did celebrate Thanksgiving as a family:

And I can’t blame them, because they didn’t know. But I can gaze deeply at these relics and the others for sale at troystreetsales and dream. I encourage you to do the same. (I get no commission.)

And lest tiy think this is a muffled rant by an adult about the shorcomings of his parents, nay nay. My mother pointed out when Bobby Hackett was on the radio, and my father took me to hear Louis in April 1967: life-changing kindnesses, for which I remain grateful.

May your happiness increase!