Jazz cred

I heard over the weekend that Andy Hamilton, saxophonist and elder statesman of the Birmingham Jazz scene also died recently, and while any death is a sad occasion, Andy had lived a long and fruitful life; he was 94 and had a string of albums and tributes to his name, including an MBE.  He was a great guy and I actually played trumpet in his Blue Pearl Band for a while and had a few lessons off him too.  My first lessons were literally just blowing a high C.  "You gotta blow it sweet" he told me, "ain't no point learning nothing till you can play sweet."  So I blew and blew until he reckoned I could hit that pure note; listening to Miles Davies helped too - that guy always played 'sweet and pure'.  I bumped into Andy once in a lift at BBC Pebble Mill Birmingham where he was doing an interview, and Sarah was there too, to sit it on a recording of some music for a radio play of mine.  It had been a few years since I had last seen him and played with the Blue Pearl Band, so I was dead chuffed when he recognised me and asked me how my playing was going; especially as Sarah was with me and I wanted to impress her with my jazz credentials.  I told him that I hadn't played the trumpet for ages.  "Aw, you should, man, you should - you were good!" he rather graciously replied, especially as I really wasn't half as good as the rest of the brass section in his band.  We saw him again a couple of times, including at the Symphony Hall and he always had the time to speak to me when he saw me.  An individual who proved that 'cool' has nothing to do with how old you are - he was cool right up to the end; a guy you wanted to be seen with, even at 94.