Straight Life (71 page)

My mother helped me with the funeral arrangements, and my friend, Joy, handled the newspapers and callers. I asked Ed Michel to put together a tape from the duo sessions to play for the crowd. I asked Ed to leave in the in-between-take talk. I wanted to hear Art's voice. I said we'd call the album "Goin' Home." "Goin' home" is also a bandstand phrase. It was what Art said to the band when he'd finished improvising and wanted to return to the original melody and end the song.

The funeral played to a packed house. It looked like the funeral of a celebrity, and it was. Art's friends talked about him with affection and respect and humor. The biggest and most beautiful wreath-gardenias and white orchids-was sent by our coke connection. The best was sent by the band. Art always complained, "I tell them when they play well, but they never tell me when I play well." The banner on the wreath said, "To the Greatest Saxophone Player in the World."

Art and I had talked about his death hundreds of times. He told me he was afraid to be buried in the ground; he was afraid of the worms. But he was terrified of fire. So I had him interred in a crypt at the Hollywood Cemetery, like Rudolph Valentino. He would have enjoyed the location, the company, and that creepy word, crypt.

He's come to me many times in dreams. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed with joy to see him. Sometimes the dreams are nightmares which are simply realistic recreations of the worst times we had, and I'm glad, and feel guilty to be glad, to wake up.

But I remember the best times, too. When Art was having fun, the world was a miracle. I wish I could explain it. Art's joy was like some heavenly gift he somehow shared with you, and when you had a good time in company with Art, it was the best good time you could possibly have.

I remember a day. The band was working at a pleasant club called Parnell's in Seattle. A local friend, a man who'd been in San Quentin with Art and was now rehabilitated and successful, rented a seaplane and flew us to an island off the coast, to a restaurant there for lunch. Art was thrilled with the hipness of the adventure and the loveliness of the day. I've lost all the negatives and all the photographs I shot that day but one. I have a snapshot of Art on the island. He's wearing his usual neat, not too casual clothes and borrowed rosecolored glasses. In the picture, his head's back and he's looking upward with an open-mouthed, attentive smile, as if he's looking right at God. On the way home, the fellow landed us on the water so I could take some photos of Seattle. It was evening. The sun was sinking, bright on the ocean, gold and pink on the city. We climbed out onto the pontoons. I have a memory of that that's sharper than a snapshot. I can still feel how joyous and perilous it was and how blessed I felt to be there, out on the rocking, lapping, sparkling, monstrous sea, there with my camera, clicking away, catching the sunset, catching Seattle, catching Art laughing, Art walking on the water, stumbling in his Florsheims, steadied by his friend, happy.

LAURIE PEPPER

Los Angeles, California

October 11, 1993

Art Pepper Discography

by Todd Seibert

This is a comprehensive discography delineating all known commercial recordings on which Art Pepper plays. Titles by Stan Kenton and His Orchestra are limited to those containing Pepper solos. The discography was aided by the pioneer work of the late Ernest Edwards, Jr., but was exhausting nonetheless and undertaken out of admiration for an awesome musician and the greatest alto saxophonist I ever heard.

Abbreviations of Foreign Recordings

(D)utch

(Dan)ish

(E)nglish

(Flrench

(G)erman

(It)alian

(J)apanese

(S)wedish

(Sp)anish

Other Abbreviations