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Thought y'all might find this interesting (and a little disturbing, and<BR>
touching).<BR>
Wayne Wright sent it to me; he did not write this.<BR>
<BR>
-Jon Kellso<BR>
<BR>
Thought you might find this article interesting. Although I met him when I<BR>
was a kid in Detroit, I got to know and hang with Frank Rosolino some when<BR>
he came to NYC for a gig. --Wayne<BR>
<BR>
Original Message is from Freudfrend@aol.com. I do not however, know who<BR>
this person is. <BR>
<BR>
<B>What happened in November 26, 1978?</B><BR>
<BR>
THERE ARE THOSE, the fine saxophonist Don Menza among them, who long<BR>
afterwards found it all but impossible to talk about what happened in those<BR>
early hours of November 26, 1978. By one of those bits of mental<BR>
prestidigitation with which we protects our sanity, we all succeeded in not<BR>
even thinking about it. We pushed the event into some closet in a back room<BR>
of the mind, and then we all shut the door. I cannot to this day explain,<BR>
and neither can the homicide detectives, why it happened. I'll tell you, as<BR>
I told them, what I know. Frank Rosolino was among the best-loved men in<BR>
jazz. One of the finest trombone players in the history of the instrument,<BR>
he had a superb tone, astonishing facility, a deep Italianate lyricism, and<BR>
rich invention. Frank was, very simply, a sensational player. In addition<BR>
he had a wonderful spirit that always communicated itself to his associates on<BR>
the bandstand or the record date. He was one of the funniest of men, with a<BR>
wit that literally would not quit. He bubbled. Quincy Jones remembered<BR>
touring Japan with a group that included Frank and drummer Grady Tate.<BR>
"With those two," Quincy said, "you can imagine what it was like. The band was<BR>
always in an uproar."<BR>
<BR>
Frank was one of a number--Donald Byrd was another--of fine jazz musicians<BR>
to come out of Cass Tech in Detroit, a superior high school which drew its<BR>
students from all over the city. Only the exceptional could even get into<BR>
it. Frank always had the air of a mischievous kid looking for some hell to<BR>
raise or trouble to get into, and this trait had emerged by the time he<BR>
went to Cass Tech. Giggling in that way of his, he would in later years recall<BR>
swiping cars for joyrides. It was always a serious mistake to get into a<BR>
poker game with Frank. He was one of those men who, but for a soaring and<BR>
compelling musical talent, might well have ended up in jail. Like everyone<BR>
who knew him, I remember vividly the last times I saw Frank. We were at<BR>
Dick Gibson's party in Colorado, one of those events that sprung up in recent<BR>
years in which aging rich jazz fans invite brilliant musicians to come and<BR>
play for them. At one point he played with Carl Fontana and Bill Watrous,<BR>
and the three-trombone music was gorgeous. In another unforgettable set,<BR>
Clark Terry and Frank did several scat-singing duets. They kept making each<BR>
other laugh, and afterwards I urged them to record together, not playing so<BR>
much as scatting. Frank was one of the few people who could scat on the<BR>
same bandstand with Clark Terry. The main events of the long weekend were held<BR>
in the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, noted for exciting scenery, dull<BR>
food, and sullen service. <BR>
<BR>
After the last performance at the Broadmoor, we all traveled by bus back to <BR>
Dick Gibson's house in Denver, Frank and the girl he was living with, Diane,<BR>
were in the seat behind my wife and me. We did not know it at the time, <BR>
but Frank's third wife, the mother of his two<BR>
sons, had gone into their garage, shut the door, turned on the car's<BR>
engine, and sat there in the fumes until she died. I do not know her motive. Frank,<BR>
in the seat behind us, was talking about following her, killing himself and<BR>
taking the two boys with him, since he could not bear the thought of<BR>
leaving them behind in this world. Were we hearing him correctly? Diane said,<BR>
"Don't talk that way, Frank. Let's pray together." <BR>
<BR>
That evening in Denver there was a final informal party at Gibson's house. <BR>
Frank seemed cheerful, making mywife and I doubt the accuracy of our hearing in the noise of the bus. She and I leave early to get back to Los Angeles. So did Frank, who had a gig the next morning. We took a cab to the airport together. Frank was as funny as always. The conversation overheard on the bus seemed like the morning<BR>
memory of a nightmare. We were told at the airport that the flight would be<BR>
boarding late. My wife and Frank and I wandered around with little to do.<BR>
Frank shattered the impersonal tedium that hangs in the atmosphere of all<BR>
airports: he had us laughing so hard that a salesgirl in the bookshop,<BR>
watching us with suspicion, pointed us out to a security guard, who kept an<BR>
eye on us. <BR>
<BR>
Part of it was Frank's delivery. It has been said that a comic says funny<BR>
things and a comedian says things funny. Frank was both. He had a lazy<BR>
low-key way of talking, the epitome of cool, that was either the archetype<BR>
or the mockery of the classic bebop musician. You never knew who Frank was<BR>
putting on, the world or himself. Or both. And he had a loose-jointed<BR>
rag-doll ah-the-hell-with-it way of walking. Frank could even more<BR>
humorously. He seemed to relish the idea of the bebopper, even as he made<BR>
fun of it. Having exhausted the airport's opportunities for amusement, we<BR>
went into its coffee shop. It had a U-shaped counter and a terrazzo floor<BR>
that someone had just mopped with a hideous disinfectant. The air was full<BR>
of flies, drifting back and forth in lazy curves. We slid onto stools. A<BR>
waitress about thirty years old approached us. Frank said in that<BR>
nruffled-by-anything drawl of his, "I'll have a bowl of those flies,<BR>
please." With unexpected sang-froid, the waitress tossed the ball right<BR>
back<BR>
at him. "We only serve them on Thursdays," she said. "Then I'll come back<BR>
Thursday," Frank said, and we all laughed, including the waitress. Finally,<BR>
late, we were told that we could board the plane, a TWA flight on stopover<BR>
between Chicago and Los Angeles. On the plane, returning from an engagement<BR>
was, to our delighted surprise, Sarah Vaughan. Red Callender, the bassist,<BR>
and his wife were also with us. We all sat together and talked, waiting for<BR>
the take-off. The pilot's disembodied voice told us that there was fog in<BR>
Los Angeles and the flight would be further delayed. Frank got funnier,<BR>
Sass got helpless with laughter. Frank asked a pretty stewardess if we could<BR>
have drinks. She said it was against regulations for her to serve them before<BR>
takeoff. But Frank soon had her laughing too, and she left to get us the<BR>
drinks. Frank said, "I have to be careful. I wouldn't want her to lose her<BR>
gig over it, 'cause then I might have to marry her." At last the plane took<BR>
off. Sass wanted to sleep but Frank kept up his jokes, and she said,<BR>
"Frank, stop it!" Finally, shaking her head, she moved further back in the plane to<BR>
escape him. At last weariness overcame him, and Frank too fell asleep,<BR>
sprawled across two or three seats of the nearly empty aircraft. I awoke in<BR>
daylight to the sound of the pilot's voice telling us to fasten seat belts<BR>
for the descent into Los Angeles. I peered around the back of the seat<BR>
ahead of me and saw that Frank was still asleep. By this time in his life, his<BR>
thick dark curly hair had become almost white and he had a full iron-gray<BR>
mustache. And yet, asleep, he looked like that boy at Cass Tech, trying to<BR>
find a little action. I shook his shoulder and said, "Frank, Wake up, we're<BR>
home." <BR>
<BR>
I turned on the television that morning to watch the news, then drifted<BR>
back into that soft state between sleeping and waking. Then there was a voice<BR>
saying, "The internationally celebrated jazz trombonist Frank Rosolino took<BR>
his own life last night." Police in the Van Nuys division say that Frank<BR>
Rosolino shot his two small sons and then turned the gun on himself. One of<BR>
the children is dead; the other is in critical condition, undergoing<BR>
surgery. Frank Rosolino, who became nationally known with the bands of Gene<BR>
Krupa and Stan Kenton, was... ""No!" I shouted, waking my wife. She asked<BR>
what had happened. I told her. She burst into tears. We remembered his<BR>
words on the bus. I got up and, after staring at the floor for a while,<BR>
telephoned the Van Nuys police and asked first for homicide, then for whoever was<BR>
handling the Frank Rosolino "case." After a while a man took up the<BR>
telephone and gave me his name. I gave him mine and asked if he could tell<BR>
me any more than I had heard on the news. "Did you know him, sir?" he<BR>
asked. "Yes, I did." "Then perhaps, you can help us." he said. "We're just<BR>
puzzled." "So am I," I said. "But not totally surprised." I told him about<BR>
the bus trip to Colorado. "Is it possible that drugs were involved?" the<BR>
detective asked carefully. "I don't know," I said. "Although nowadays, you<BR>
always wonder that." I told him what kind of person Frank was, how loved he<BR>
was. But even as I said it I questioned how well any of us had really known<BR>
him. I had realized there was a dark side of Frank but had never dreamed<BR>
that it was this dark. And, as Roger Kellaway said later. When somebody<BR>
cracks four jokes a minute, we all should have known there was something<BR>
wrong." The conversation with the detective at last ended, as unsatisfying<BR>
to him as it was to me. In the course of that day and the next I learned a<BR>
little more. Diane (the girl Frank was living with) had wanted to go to<BR>
Donte's to hear Bill Watrous. Donte's is a nightclub in North Hollywood, a<BR>
hangout for musicians and one of the few places in Los Angeles where the<BR>
best studio players can go to play jazz and remind themselves why they took<BR>
up instruments in the first place. Frank said he wanted to stay home with<BR>
his two boys: Jason, who was then seven, and Justin, nine. I met those boys<BR>
once, at a party at the home of Sergio Mendes. They were full of laughter<BR>
and energy and mischief, like Frank. They were wonderfully handsome and<BR>
happy little fellows, scampering like puppies amid the hors d'oeuvres and<BR>
among the legs of people, having a high old time. Diane went to Donte's<BR>
with a visiting girlfriend. They came home toward four o'clock in the morning<BR>
and were sitting in the car in the driveway when they saw a flash of light in<BR>
the boy's bedroom. Thinking the boys were awake, they got out and went into<BR>
the house. As they entered they heard the last shot, the one Frank put into<BR>
his brain. He was still alive. I do not know and do not want to know the<BR>
further details. In any case, he soon died. Frank had gone to the bedroom<BR>
where Jason and Justin were sleeping and shot each of them in the head.<BR>
Justin was dead. Jason was not. That night and long into the next day he<BR>
underwent surgery--fourteen hours of it. The autopsy deepened the mystery.<BR>
The coroner's report said that there were no significant amounts of alcohol<BR>
or drugs in Frank's system.<BR>
<BR>
A service was organized or Frank's friends. His two brothers, Russell and<BR>
Gasper Rosolino, had flown out from Detroit to take Frank and Justin back<BR>
with them for burial. I do not remember the name of the funeral home, but I<BR>
can see its polite and muted decor. A lot of us, including Don Menza,<BR>
Shelly Manne, and Conte and Pete Candoli, were standing around in little groups in<BR>
the lobby, watching our friends arrive. It seemed everyone in town was<BR>
there. I don't think any man ever had fewer enemies and more friends than<BR>
Frank Rosolino. J.J. Johnson and Herb Ellis came in together; I can still<BR>
see their bleak faces. Med Flory said, "Well, Frank sure took care of<BR>
Christmas for all of us." Finally, because it seemed the thing to do, I<BR>
wandered into the chapel. The two coffins were in the expected place at the<BR>
front of it. Roger Kellaway and I walked apprehensively toward them. The<BR>
cosmeticians had done well. Beautiful little Justin truly did look as if<BR>
were merely sleeping on the velvet cushion. Frank too looked asleep, as I<BR>
had seen him on the plane over Los Angeles.<BR>
<BR>
Roger Kellaway said something softly as he looked at Justin. Later he told<BR>
me it was a prayer. Then he looked down at Frank and said, "You asshole,"<BR>
expressing the strange compound of love and grief and anger we were all<BR>
feeling toward Frank. I couldn't face sitting through a service. What was<BR>
there to say? Roger and I headed for a nearby tavern and had a couple so<BR>
Scotches. For, as Roger put it, "I've had friends who killed themselves<BR>
before, but I've never had one who killed his kid." He stared into his<BR>
drink. The bar was lit softly. The upholstery was red. He said, "You can<BR>
make that decision for yourself, but you have no right to make it for<BR>
anyone else." After a time we went back to the chapel. The service, which had been<BR>
short, was over, and our friends were standing quietly in the lobby. Later<BR>
there as a wake at Don Menza's house in North Hollywood. Menza and I talked<BR>
for a while about Verdi. And about Frank. Frank had fought his share of the<BR>
jazz wars. He had been through financial hard times and lived to see<BR>
himself and other musicians of brilliance and in some cases genius struggling to<BR>
pay their telephone bills, while grungy illiterate singers rode around in<BR>
limousines, with expensive whores, and demolished hotel rooms and recording<BR>
studios and told their underlings to put it on the bill. He had even lived<BR>
to see their likes earnestly analyzed as artists in the New York Times and<BR>
the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone and Newsweek. But things had been<BR>
improving for him, Menza told me, including Frank's financial situation.<BR>
Frank had wanted to play more jazz, and he was doing it. Don said that he<BR>
and Frank had been scheduled to make an album, and there was more work of<BR>
that kind on Frank's calendar. He and Frank had been very close. Med Flory<BR>
was right. Christmas was dreary that year.<BR>
<BR>
At first we heard that Jason would be both deaf and blind. For a long time<BR>
he was in coma. We heard that he would come out of it and scream and then<BR>
lapse back into unconsciousness. You found yourself thinking some strange<BR>
thoughts. What would happen to him if he should indeed be both blind and<BR>
deaf? What communication would he have with the world? Would he be a<BR>
vegetable? Or, worse, would he be a sentient conscious being trapped in a<BR>
black silence with memories of sight and sounds and never knowing why and<BR>
how they had suddenly ceased? Had he been the second one shot? Had he seen<BR>
his brother killed?<BR>
<BR>
After a while we heard that Jason could hear. He was living by now with<BR>
relatives of his mother. Gradually I stopped thinking about him. And about<BR>
Frank. Every once in a while, though, something would happen to remind me.<BR>
Roger Kellaway and I were on our way to an appointment in Tarzana, an area<BR>
of Los Angeles at the west end of the San Fernando Valley. We saw a little<BR>
boy, about three, crying in the street. We stopped the car. The boy was<BR>
lost. Roger and I decided that he would go on to our appointment while I<BR>
tried to learn where the boy belonged. I asked passing people if they knew<BR>
the child. Gradually a crowd gathered. A tall handsome man in his late<BR>
fifties introduced himself. He was a cop, a lieutenant. He lived in a<BR>
nearby building. We went up to his apartment, where he gave the boy something to<BR>
eat. The child stopped crying. The man picked up the phone, dialed, and<BR>
identified himself. He was head of the Van Nuys homicide division. While we<BR>
waited for a police car--which in due course did find the boy's home--I<BR>
asked the lieutenant if he had handled the "Rosolino case." He said that<BR>
two of his men had. <BR>
<BR>
I found myself going over it all again. So did the lieutenant. He told me<BR>
that in his line of work one inevitably becomes inured, but the two<BR>
detectives who had gone to Frank Rosolino's house that night had come back<BR>
to the office in tears. "Yeah," I said. "They were beautiful little boys."<BR>
After that I banished Frank from my thoughts. I never listened to his<BR>
records. But Jason Rosolino didn't cease to be. He was adopted by a cousin<BR>
of his mother, Claudia Eien, and her husband, Gary. Caring for him<BR>
exhausted the family's resources, emotional, physical, and financial. Jason was sent<BR>
to Braille school, but he was suffering from psychological problems.<BR>
Surprised? "But he's beautiful," Don Menza's wife, Rose, said. "He's smart<BR>
as a whip. He has all Frank's fire and energy." He was also, she said, very<BR>
musical. He had tried trumpet and trombone and piano, but he had no<BR>
patience. <BR>
<BR>
Five year passed. The strain on Claudia and Gary of caring for him had<BR>
proved enormous. Don and Rose Menza and other musicians and their wives<BR>
planned a concert to help Jason and some other people in need. It ran from<BR>
5:00 p.m. to midnight on the evening of October 30, 1983, at the Hollywood<BR>
Palladium, a grand old ballroom from the 1930s filled with the ghosts of<BR>
vanished bands. It seemed everyone was there: the big bands of Bill Berry<BR>
and Don Menza, Supersax, Steve Allen, Jack Lemmon, Shelly Manne, Ernie<BR>
Andrews, the Tonight Show band... And Jason. He was there with his adoptive<BR>
parents and a young psychologist who had been working with him. At first I<BR>
stayed away from them. A lot of people did. Finally my wife said, "We can't<BR>
all ignore him." I thought, what is it? Am I afraid of a twelve-year-old<BR>
boy? Or am I afraid of seeming to manifest a morbid curiosity? Or are you,<BR>
I<BR>
said to myself, afraid that you can't handle what he has been through? "Go<BR>
and talk to him," my wife said. "You go and talk to him!" I answered. But<BR>
in the end I did it. Very timidly, I introduced myself to the Eien family, and<BR>
soon found myself caught up in conversation. My wife then joined us. "I<BR>
used to know you a long time ago, Jason," I said. "Before I was seven?" "Yes," I<BR>
said. "Before you were seven." He was a handsome boy, tall, dark, and<BR>
strongly muscled. There was a scar on his temple but it was not all that<BR>
conspicuous. The eyes were in deep shadows, unseeing. The bullet destroyed<BR>
the optic nerve but it did not touch the centers of intelligence. The<BR>
psychologist told me Jason had a genius I.Q. And you could see, as you<BR>
watched him listen to the music, that he had elephant ears. An uncanny<BR>
thing happened then--two uncanny things. He touched my wife's hair. Not her face,<BR>
just her hair. He said, "I know what you look like." "And what do I look<BR>
like?" He gave a wolf whistle, then said, "You have blonde hair and a full<BR>
mouth." All of it accurate. I was not too severely unnerved by that. Dave<BR>
MacKay, the pianist, is also blind. I have known Dave, at a social affair,<BR>
to describe the color of a sweater worn by someone just entering the room.<BR>
And Dave has a remarkable ability to fathom character merely from the sound<BR>
of a voice. "How do you know that?" I asked Jason. "From her voice," Jason<BR>
said. But the next one was even stranger. My wife mentioned a friend in<BR>
Santa Barbara who grew flowers. Jason said he knew what the man looked<BR>
like. He said the man was tall and fair-headed. This was accurate. But how many<BR>
tall sandy-haired Japanese have you met? Don Menza's band was performing.<BR>
"Who's playing the trumpet solo?" Jason asked me. "Chuck Findley," I said,<BR>
and then thought, why misinform him? "Actually, it is not a trumpet, it is<BR>
a flugelhorn." "What's the difference?" "It's a somewhat bigger instrument,<BR>
it plays in a slightly lower register, and it has a darker sound." "What do<BR>
you mean by darker?" That stopped me. One of those moments when you realize<BR>
that music cannot be described. And in the attempt we usually resort to visual<BR>
analogies, which did not seem appropriate in the present instance. "It's<BR>
fatter, it's thicker somehow," I said. Then Bill Berry played a solo.<BR>
"That's a trumpet in a Harmon mute," I told Jason, and explained the use of<BR>
mutes. "It sounds a little like a saxophone," Jason said. And not many<BR>
orchestrators have noticed that resemblance. Shelly Manne was playing with<BR>
Don Menza's band. Two weeks earlier Shelly had been hurt in an encounter<BR>
with a horse on his ranch and one leg was immobilized by a cast. This meant<BR>
he was working without a high hat. I explained this to Jason. "What's a<BR>
high hat?" he said. Give me your hands," I said, and put them palm to palm<BR>
horizontally. I slapped them together on the second and fourth beats of the<BR>
music. "Two cymbals facing each other, like that. You work them with a foot<BR>
pedal." "Oh, yes, I know," Jason said. "I used to play drums." We listened<BR>
to the music for a time. "I think a lot of people are trying to help you,<BR>
Jason," I said "A lot of people in this room love you." "Why?" "Just<BR>
because. Take my word for it," I said. "Do you know who really loves me?"<BR>
"Who?" "God loves me," he said. <BR>
<BR>
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