Joy and generosity accompanied beloved pianist Eddie Green The jazz-and-everything musician helped others learn to sing from the soul.
I first met pianist Eddie Green in a Holiday Inn lounge in Cherry Hill. He had come ready to play a top-40 gig with a disgruntled ex-disco queen in her late 20s hoping to get into jazz. I had no idea who he was until my swooning drummer stammered: “You got who? Eddie Green? From the group Catalyst? This is a dream come true!” And it was.
So ignorant, I hadn’t the slightest notion that this night I’d fall in love at first sound. I remember the first tune he played. It was “Meditation.” Antonio Carlos Jobim’s tune would never sound so exquisitely personal and fresh again, or so I thought. But playing the latest wrinkle of what was happening right then was Green’s specialty. His mastery of the finest tradition, along with his almost impish delight in turning revered musical history on its head, instantly gave form to what Ralph Ellison once called “the chaos of living.”
A hungry student had met her mentor, so I cajoled him into playing gigs with me on the Philadelphia hotel circuit, even after he scoffed that no white girl/black guy duo could get a job in this town. But he did it. We did it.
There were moments. We got fired from one job because the club owner, unaware it was an integrated band when he signed the contract, decided Green couldn’t play the piano. I bristled and took it to court along with a picture of my friend playing Carnegie Hall with guitarist Pat Martino. Of course, we won. The police stopped us every time we played in Jersey and were riding in the same car. We were even arrested once because I had a forgotten a folded plastic rain hat in my cheap purse that absolutely had to be tested for cocaine.
Green was a very generous musician. He once told me that he loved making other folks sing from their soul. Because of that, he was sought after by instrumentalists and singers alike. From Lou Rawls and Dexter Gordon to Rachelle Ferrell and Slide Hampton, Green was able to delicately balance his personality to mesh with his musical collaborators. He timed his own breathing with the musicians around him, and this allowed him to play in the cracks and around everyone’s edges to cushion and inspire others to play their hearts in ways they never thought possible.
Green was so well-respected that he sometimes reduced young musicians to speechlessness, quite innocently. I remember one night at our jam session at the Latham Hotel in Center City: An eager guitar player had lugged a huge amp to the side of the stage in order to sit in with the band for just one tune.
As the guitarist’s turn came to solo, Green noticed he couldn’t hear him and asked the young man if he was going to turn on his amp. With that one statement, the poor kid bolted from the club, and, worried, I found him sobbing in the alley. He had been afraid to have Green hear him play.
In contrast, organist Joey DeFrancesco arrived, with his parents, to sit in on piano. He was all of 14 years old and confidently counted off “Billie’s Bounce” to bassist Steve Beskrone and ripped through the blues like an old pro. After the shock of this performance sank in and the astounded crowd burst into applause, Green, his timing perfect, said good-naturedly to Joey, “Go to your room!” and the audience spontaneously exploded in pleasure once again.
The last few weeks were traumatic for my old and good friend. Something awful happened when he was busy with other things. Pancreatic cancer was diagnosed. Green insisted on playing the West Oak Lane Jazz Festival in June with his musical intimates from Catalyst.
All he talked about the week before was making that gig, no matter what. He did, but he got through only one tune, his composition “Little Miss Lady,” with saxophonist Odean Pope and bassist Tyrone Brown, before he had to leave the stage weak and in pain. He doggedly worked on his latest CD, overseeing the project through the last stages, using delicately amusing yet knowing hand motions to indicate what he liked and didn’t like in the mix.
Acts of continuous creation and an absolute belief in spiritual healing through music allow for a special kind of grace under pressure, and I thought: This is how a jazz musician faces death.
Green gave many people an inside view of his passion nightly and never hid his joy no matter where he played: the Montreaux Jazz Festival before thousands or in front of the small but cheering Blue Note crowd of old fans who followed him to tiny Slim Cooper’s on Stenton Avenue. It didn’t matter. Once his fingers hit the keys, he was totally in the moment and made everyone playing with him and listening to him feel the same.
There was no halfway. Trusting in art is a kind of heroism that is difficult to define or understand, unless you live your life that way. Teacher, friend, player, composer — Eddie Green taught me one last lesson that I will never forget. Gifts freely kept in motion in the community don’t ever die, and neither do the gift givers.
Suzanne Cloud writes from Collingswood.
Originally published at articles.philly.com on August 12, 2004.
