Lisa was a roommate of an employee, I think...she was in one of the dorms across the street at first. She was a familiar face stopping in to say hi almost every day. A cute happy friendly girl everyone was always glad to see. I hadn't seen her with a guy for quite a while, so I got up the nerve to ask her out. We set a date to see The Count Basie Orchestra. So I was all happy. A few days later I talked to her again on the phone and she gave me a bit of news. She has a boyfriend but they decided to "see other people." Well that really doused my flames. My talks with her between then and the date were short and reserved. I was such a moron! Much later I realized "We need to see other people" is girl-code for "we need to break up!" We had a nice polite date anyway, but it's one of things I look back and kick myself over! :)
The concert was really mind blowingly good. A full house at vets memorial. These old guys had been touring together in a bus for decades, and the complex arrangements and ebb and flow of parts was amazing. Around 20 master jazz players up there playing their hearts out. The Count was on his last legs and all the band members treated him with a sort of reverence. He was wheeled out to the piano in a chair and remained there till the curtain came down. At one point between songs the Count was talking and stopped short, went blank...silent. The band simply stood waiting, as if they might have seen this before. But as a minute went by the silence was deafening and some faces started to look concerned. Then the Count started talking again and the show continued.
Lisa was completely impressed with the band. She had never seen or heard anything at this level. As the crowd filtered away we were still in our seats talking in dumbfounded amazement at how good these guys were. I was looking at the stage and could tell people would brush against the curtain now and then. I said "Lets go talk to them." She looked at me like I had just said "Hey, lets build a rocket and go to the moon." But I convinced her that there didn't seem to be much security, and if we walked confidently we could go right backstage with no problem.
A minute later we were going up the stairs to the left of the stage and then back left behind the curtain. The band was all still standing around in small groups talking, waiting for the bus to arrive. One of them told me they would be traveling through the night. I think I talked to the guitar player Jimmy Green first. He is a sideman legend. Plays acoustic with no amp with a big band. His style of comping he switches the chord attributes or inversions or whatever sometimes with complex melodic parts detectable within the changes. Most of this is lost in the big sound of the band, and yet it is there, the steady strumming helping to define the rhythm section, appearing as harmonic structure when there are gaps in the horns wall of sound. I tried to express to him how much I appreciated his accomplishments, but he had heard it all a million times, very gracious and cool though.
Everyone seemed pretty subdued. I don't know if this was normal or if they were all concerned for the Counts health. We moved toward the back of the stage and talked with the bass player for a while. Up to this point Lisa was quietly looking beautiful and glowing with excitement to be there with the band. This brought a faint smile to everyone we approached.
We were facing the curtain and Count Basie was a bit off stage to our right in a wheel chair, his back to us with a small group of people around him. We kept looking over to him and the bass player said "you should go talk to him" We hesitated and he smiled saying something like "He's really old, but he loves to see a beautiful young face." So we went over and Lisa was simply amazing. She went straight to him and his face completely lit up as she profusely thanked him for the wonderful music. It was awesome. She gushed praise for a couple minutes and the Count was beaming. You could see the concern on the faces around him melt as he became quite happy. It was really the perfect finish to an evening of loving respect for a great artist. Count Basie died a couple months later.
