Bookstore Bebop

Well, the book signing at Barnes and Noble in Stockton went fine. We moved a few copies of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond and I signed a batch of shelf copies on which Kathleen Anderson, the store’s lively, intelligent events manager, slapped “Autographed Copy” stickers. “These will go fast,” she promised.

Before the signing and as it happened, a combo of talented summer colonists from the Brubeck Institute played. A fifteen-year-old alto saxophonist from Bakersfield, Isaiah Morfin, began his blues solo on Coltrane’s “Cousin Mary” with a couple of bars of “Take Five.” “That was for you,” he later said, shyly. His parents and little sister were in the audience, beaming.

More later on these remarkable youngsters.