[Dixielandjazz] Bio: Charlie Hooks

[Charlie Hooks]

   One hot breathless summer in 1938 when I was nine and the world was young
and beautiful a Music Man (think the musical) named Charlie Tunstall came to
our tiny Texas town called "Italy, Texas,"  where I lived with my dad and
mom in a space behind our dry cleaning shop.  I was nine.And I had a
clarinet--sort of--an Albert system clarinet that cost my dad 2 suits of
clothes, cleaned and pressed, at 25 cents a suit.  My clothes were always
clean--and pressed.

   Our world was tiny (fewer than 800 people and livestock), but we had a
school with a few teachers  who knew something, and we persevered.

Then, in 1938 when I was nine, Charlie Tunstall showed up.  He was a former
WWI Army bandmaster, and he would teach any horn to any kid for 50 cents a
lesson.  That's at least 2 dollars a month  in modern money--a steal for any
kid!  

   But more: Charlie Tunstal was the real thing.  He knew what he was doingl
He was a guy much like one of our listmates:  a real honest-to-God
teacher/player.  He is/was, quite literally, responsible for my life, all
the good parts.  

   Charlie taught me the mechanics of music: the rest was up to me.  He
taught me during that one wonderful summer of 1939 when the world was clean
and we thought that this rinsed world of 1939 was the world of the future.
If I could hold onto a moment in history, I would choose that moment in
Texas, bright and clean and scrubbed, when the sunlight blazoned away at our
reflections,  and we swelled to inhale the airs of earth, sky blue, cool,
and clear: Our Planet.

   I would return there in a moment.