[Dixielandjazz] Another death

[Charlie Hooks]

on 10/7/02 11:24 PM, Schnabbels@aol.com at Schnabbels@aol.com wrote:

> Charlie,
> 
> Not to spin another thread out of a death announcement, but, like Jim Beebe,
> I also am curious as to what "blowing one's lip" constitutes. Do you know
> what happened to Cox and what the etiology of that condition was?
> 
> Rob van der Plas
> Scottsdale, AZ
> 

I think we should ask Fred Spencer, MD, at <drjz@bealenet.com> for a medical
guess at the cause of Clyde's condition.  But I can tell you (and Fred) the
presenting symptoms:

An embrouchure (sp?) is a muscle--actually a complicated group of
muscles--around the mouth.  In Clyde's case, the right side of his mouth,
especially the right "corner" of the mouth, could no longer retain air
pressure.  It resembles (I think?) my own mouth at the edges when I've not
played in awhile and air escapes if I try to blow too long.  Since my
muscles can strengthen by practice, I can regain my "lip," my strength.

Clyde couldn't.  The right side of his mouth was effectively paralyzed. It
didn't affect his speech; but that strong muscle around the mouth was
weakened on the right side, and under the pressure necessary to blow a brass
instrument, it could no longer hold more than a short time--about 8 to 12
bars, depending on the tempo.

There is surely a medical term for this condition, and Clyde must have told
me; but I can't remember.  Hell, I can't remember what I came into the room
for a minute ago!  But Fred Spencer probably knows--or can make a guess.

All I remember vividly is Clyde's describing how one minute he could play
and was about to really make it New York among the eat-or-be-eaten folk, and
the next mminute he couldn't.  I guess he'd been warned, cautioned that this
was just a muscle, like any other muscle, and could be damaged by strain, by
pushing too far too hard.  But Clyde continued.  He was like that. If he
said he was going to do something, then get out of the way because it was
going to get done...

But imagine: one moment you're on top, or one step away from the top--Stan
Getz is getting high in your apartment and playing for several hours, naked
to keep cool and sweating alongside you...(that's a whole nother tale!).
Next moment, you are done.  Kaput.  Out of it.  All the way out of it!

What the hell are you going to do now?  Music is your life.  Suddenly you
are dead?  You wake up to find yourself in Far Rockaway, alone on the train
with an empty vodka bottle in your hand... What happens now?

Well, if you are as smart as Clyde Cox--if you are as self-disciplined as
Clyde Cox--you get off the train, drop the vodka, and enroll in the
University of Michigan graduate school in Ann Arbor. You use that same
compulsion that tore up your lip to earn your doctorate in English
Literature and change professions, going to the top of the second
profession, just as you did the first.  You take your wife and children with
you and provide for them.  In short, you are one admirable sunnovagun!

That was my friend, Clyde Cox, and I'm honored to say so.

Charlie