The Story of my dad’s last time in the studio. When I was 16, my dad gave me a list of 30 standards and told me to memorize the sheet music and be able to arpeggiate the chords. He made me cassette copies from sides deep within his prodigious record collection, especially versions by Stan Getz, Bird, Ben Webster, Art Tatum and Duke Ellington. Even though I was struggling to make the changes then, by internalizing the list, I had unwittingly set myself up for a career as a jazz musician. Naturally, the duo of tenor and piano served as my first …
