first time my mother’s life fell apart was when she found out that she was pregnant with me. She’d been accepted into the music program at Oberlin, and she had nearly a full scholarship; but before she could even start her first year, she learned I was on the way. She said she really didn’t want to go to Oberlin, that it was her parents’ idea, that she wanted to fly on what talent she had, not on a lot of music theory that might stifle her. She wanted instead to work her way from one dinky club to another less dinky and steadily up, up, up, getting experience. She claimed I came along just in time to save her from Oberlin, and maybe I believed that when I was a kid.
She’d taken a year off between high school and college, and her father had used a connection to get her an age exemption and a gig in a piano bar, because she was a piano man, too. In fact, she was good on saxophone, primo on clarinet, and learning guitar fast. When God ladled out talent, He spilled the whole bucket on Sylvia Bledsoe. The bar was also a restaurant, and the cook—not the chef, the cook—was Tilton Kirk. He was twenty-four, six years her senior, and each time she took a break, he was right there with the charm, which, as far as I’m concerned, he got from a different source than the one that gave my mom her talent.
He was a handsome man and articulate, and as sure as he knew his name, he knew that he was going places in this world. All you had to do was say hello, and he’d tell you where he was going: first from cook to chef, and then into a restaurant of his own by thirty, and then two or three restaurants by the time he was forty, however many he wanted. He was a gifted cook, and he gave young Sylvia Bledsoe all kinds of tasty dishes refined to what he called the Kirk style. He gave her me, too, though it turned out that taking care of children wasn’t part of the Kirk style.
To be fair, he knew she’d have the baby, that the Bledsoes would not tolerate anything else. He did the right thing, he married her, and after that he pretty reliably did the wrong thing.
I was born on June 15, 1957, which was when the Count Basie band became the first Negro band ever to perform in the Starlight Room of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City. Negro was the word in those days. On July 6, tennis star Althea Gibson, another Negro, won the All-England title at Wimbledon, also a first. And on August 29, the Civil Rights Act, proposed by President Eisenhower the previous year, was finally voted into law by the congress; soon thereafter, Ike would start using the national guard to desegregate schools. By comparison, my entrance into the world wasn’t big news, except to my mom and me.
Trying to ingratiate himself with Sylvia’s parents, well aware of Grandpa Teddy’s musical heroes, my father chose to name me Jonah Ellington Basie Hines Eldridge Wilson Hampton Armstrong Kirk. Even all these years later, almost everyone has heard of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Lionel Hampton, and Louis Armstrong. Time doesn’t treat all talent equally, however, and Roy Eldridge is known these days pretty much only to aficionados of big band music. He was one of the greatest trumpeters of all time. Electrifying. He played with Gene Krupa’s legendary band through the early war years, when Anita O’Day was changing what everyone thought a girl singer ought to be. The Wilson in my name is for Teddy Wilson, whom Benny Goodman called the greatest musician in dance music of the day. He played with Goodman, then started his own band, which didn’t last long, and then he played largely in a sextet. If you can find any of the twenty sides that he recorded with his band, you’ll hear a piano man of incomparable elegance.
With all those names to live up to, I sometimes wished I’d been born just Jonah Kirk. But I guess because I was half Bledsoe, anyone who ever admired my grandpa—which was everyone who knew him—would have looked at me with some doubt that I could ever shape myself into a man like him.
The day I was born, Grandpa Teddy and Grandma Anita came to the hospital to see me first through a window in the nursery and then in my mother’s arms when I was brought to her room. My father was there, as well, and eager to tell Grandpa my full name. Although I was the center of attention, I have no memory of the moment, maybe because I was already impatient to start piano lessons.
According to my mom, the revelation of my many names didn’t go quite like my father intended. Grandpa Teddy stood bedside, nodding in recognition each time Tilton—who was cautious enough to keep the bed between them—revealed a name. But when the final name had been spoken, Grandpa traded glances with Grandma, and then he frowned and stared at the floor as if he noticed something offensive down there that didn’t belong in a hospital.
Now, you should know Grandpa had a smile that could melt an ice block and leave the water steaming. And even when he wasn’t smiling, his face was so pleasant that the shyest of children often grinned on first sight of him and walked right up to him, a stranger, to say hello to this friendly giant. But when he frowned and when you knew that you might be the reason he frowned, his face made you think of judgment day and of whatever pathetic good deeds you might be able to cite to balance the offenses you had committed. He didn’t look furious, didn’t even scowl, merely frowned, and at once an uneasy silence fell upon the room. No one feared Grandpa Teddy’s anger, because few people if any had ever seen it. If you evoked that frown, what you feared was his disapproval, and when you learned that you had disappointed him, you realized that you needed his approval no less than you needed air, water, and food.
Although Grandpa never put it in words for me, one thing I learned from him was that being admired gives you more power than being feared.
Anyway, there in the hospital room, Grandpa Teddy frowned at the floor so long, my father reached out for my mother’s hand, and she let him hold it while she cradled me in one arm.
Finally Grandpa looked up, considered his son-in-law, and said quietly, “There were so many big bands, swing bands, scores of them, maybe hundreds, no two alike. So much energy, so much great music. Some people might say it was swing music as much as anything that kept this country in a winning mood during the war. You know, back then I played with a couple of the biggest and best, also with a couple not as big but good. So many memories, so many people, quite a time. I did admire all those names between Jonah and Kirk, I did very much admire them. I loved them. But Benny Goodman, he was as good as any and a stand-up guy. Charlie Barnet, Woody Herman, Harry James, Glenn Miller. Artie Shaw, for Heaven’s sake. The Artie Shaw. ‘Begin the Beguine,’ ‘Indian Love Call,’ ‘Back Bay Shuffle.’ There are so many names to reckon with from those days, this poor child would need the entire sheet of stationery just for his letterhead.”
My mom got the point, but my father didn’t. “But, Teddy, sir, all those names—they aren’t our kind.”
“Well, yes,” Grandpa said, “they’re not directly in the bar and restaurant business, like you are, but their work has put so many people in the mood to celebrate that they’ve had an impact on your trade. And they most surely are my kind and Sylvia’s kind, aren’t they, Anita?”
Grandma said, “Oh, yes. They’re my kind, too. I love musicians. I married one. I gave birth to one. And, dear, you forgot the Dorsey brothers.”
“I didn’t forget them,” Grandpa said. “My mouth just went dry from naming all those names. Freddy Martin, too.”
“That tenor sax of his, the sweetest tone ever,” Grandma said.
“Claude Thornhill.”
“The best of the best bands,” she declared. “And he was one funny man, Claude was.”
By then, my father got the message, but he didn’t want to hear it. He had a big chip on his shoulder about race, and he probably had good reason, probably a list of good reasons. Nevertheless, for the sake of family harmony, maybe he should at least have added Thornhill and Goodman to my name, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that.
He said, “Hey, look at the time. Gotta get to the restaurant.” After he kissed my mom and kissed me, he hugged Anita, nodded at Grandpa Teddy, said, “Sir,” and skedaddled.
So that was my first family gathering on my first day in the world. A little tense.
The second time that my mother’s life fell apart was eight months later, when my father walked