The Best Birthday Party Ever

He was born in the ghetto, on a street barely wide enough for two cars to pass. He was raised in a little cinder block shack in one of the poorest, and most dangerous, areas of the city. An area pockmarked by failed industry and Superfund pollution. Like his mother, he also was born blind.

Now a professor of Jazz Studies at Florida State University, Marcus Roberts is one of the premier jazz musicians living today.

I first met Marcus when he won the inaugural Great Piano Jazz Competition of the Jacksonville Jazz Festival. Another youngster, Harry Connick, Jr., finished a close second. We hung with Marcus all evening in the hotel lounge as the jazz jam just kept on going. The great Louie Bellson sat-in for a stint, as well as jazz legend Clark Terry. It was quite a night, one of many such nights surrounding the jazz festival over the years.

But one of my fondest memories of jazz comes not from a festival or a performance, but from the backyard of that little cinder block house up on 23^rd Street.

Marcus had cut a deal with Columbia records and was playing with the Jazz at Lincoln Center band. He was getting headline attention in the jazz world. He had made good and he wanted to do something nice for his aging mother. He wanted to do something special for her birthday. He wanted her to hear him play live and wanted to bring her to New York, but she was afraid to travel. He wanted to move her into a new home, but she was blind and didn’t want to go to a new place. She knew her home intimately. She was comfortable and secure there. She knew her neighbors and they looked after her. She didn’t want to leave her church. They were her foundation.

So, since she wouldn’t go to the mountain, Marcus decided to bring the mountain to her. He had a large tent set up in the back yard and a wooden floor constructed under it. He rented a Steinway grand piano along with several dozen chairs. He hired a caterer and invited all of his friends to the party, including the band members of his band, the band he played with… the Wynton Marsalis jazz combo.

Wynton and the band accepted his invitation along with some of the hot local jazz players and a few select students and professors from the University of North Florida’s Jazz Studies program, one of the finest in the nation. That was how I got the invitation, from trumpeter Marcus Printup, a friend and totally hip and rising jazzer, himself now a member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center orchestra.

The party got started around dark and continued into the night with one musician after another joining the jam. At the time, Wynton’s band included Marcus on piano, Herlin Riley on drums, Wycliff Gordon trombone, and I believe Roy Hargrove on trumpet and Christian McBride on bass, although my memory fails me somewhat on this. I can tell you for certain that it was world-class musicianship and no better jazz to be found anywhere on earth.

Mrs. Roberts was a sweetheart. She had her place of honor, front row center, and she was doted on by everyone. She swelled with pride for her son’s accomplishments, but also that he had so many friends who obviously loved and appreciated him. Marcus wore a tux, and an ear-to-ear grin, the entire evening.

Of course, the word got around and there was a huge crowd there. Cars were parked all over the neighborhood and that is partly what made it such a magical evening. The entire neighborhood was in to it. Not only in Mrs. Roberts’ yard, but out in the street and in the yards next door. Her house backed up to a little city park and the baseball outfield was full of lounge chairs neighbors had dragged up, along with their coolers and charcoal grills. You could smell Bar-B-Q chicken for blocks around. And even though people were laughing and talking, they were also listening to the music while boogying down.

Everyone was safe in that neighborhood that night. No cars were broken into. No one was busted leaving the place, no one harassed. It was as if the neighborhood knew they had something special and they wanted to help their homeboy celebrate his mother and his success and they wanted his guests to be comfortable.

As I walked back to my car, about 3:00am, I was stopped along the way by people offering me a drink or just wanting to talk, just trying to keep the glow alive. It was a brotherhood brought together by mankind’s highest creation… music. And by what many would argue is music’s highest incarnation… jazz.