The Studio Where It Happened
I tried to learn to play upright jazz bass between 2000 and 2004. I’d been enjoying doing a vocal impression of a plucked upright bass for several years beforehand — probably ever since my voice dropped and I re-listened to Floyd Pepper performing Johnny Cymbal’s “Mr. Bass Man” — but I did think that it might be more impressive to actually be able to play the instrument instead of miming it. However, to get good at something one needs to practice, and at that particular window of my life, between holding down a job and a half, trying to build up my portfolio as a future comic book artist, and transforming into someone who would be defined as “extremely online“, it was hard to find the time to play a bass badly often enough that I would eventually get slightly better. So when I went to grad school to learn librarianing, my bass went into storage, as it was too unwieldy to fit into my two-room, $480-a-month studio apartment. When I graduated and acquired a job and an apartment with two and a half more rooms in it, my bass returned, but in the less active role of now being referred to as “my most beautiful and expensive piece of furniture.”
I carefully positioned it within the apartment where the sun would hit the thick lacquer finish, and the room would glow with it’s golden warmth. But I didn’t play anymore. While I had tried to immerse myself in the world of jazz bassists, this mostly consisted of being able to namedrop “Paul Chambers.”
Despite these limitations, somewhere around 2006 I’d learned about Esperanza Spalding. Considering she’d graduated from Berklee in 2005, I’m not quite sure how this is possible, but a careful Facebook search reveals my speculating whether my wandering around Simmons and the Fenway could possibly result in bumping into her, since I miiiiight have heard a rumor that she’d already been invited back to Berklee to lead seminars since she had already ascended to being generally thought of as a godhead. Most of this isn’t easy to prove, and sounds mostly like a wannabe trying to claim he was streets ahead of the fandom, but since the Boston Herald tells me that a huge banner with her likeness was being displayed on the side of a Boston building somewhere close to her senior year, I maintain that it’s possible her name was in the aether, even to poseurs like me.
That said, what Spalding became best known for just a few years later, was being unheard of. When she was nominated in the Best New Artist category for the 2011 Grammys, I was naturally in her corner despite doubting she had a whelk’s chance in a supernova of victory. And then I was gleefully, hilariously glad when she won in the face of seemingly overwhelming Belieber Fever. (A moment that continues to reward both taste and schadenfreude.) I relished every moment of stolen valor of having already been her fan during the subsequent deluge of “Who Is Esperanza Spalding?” articles and then during the subsequent further honors she accrued. After missing an victory lap appearance by her in Boston at the Sculler’s Jazz Club due to weather later that year, I was finally able to catch her a couple years later as part of the jazz supergroup The Spring Quartet at Dartmouth’s The Hop.
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