Wedding Theme

Listening to the music we picked as our wedding theme way back in 1992. The title is not very evocative but the memory still is.

No words but a jaunty theme in waltz time, I think. It made me happy the first time I heard it- walking into a smoke filled store in the avenues of the Sunset District. The proprietor of the Jazz Quarter, Tom Madden, six foot plus built like creaky stilts with a constant haze of cigarette smoke surrounding him. On a daily basis, he might not have sold many records, but he played music that he like and smoked a lot of cigarettes. Doing a bit of research I just found out that he died late last year and with the name of Madden, might even be a relative. Anyway, if you could determine what he was mumbling behind his glasses, frizzled hair and laconic wit you might discover something, and Tom was always happy to share (as soon as the side or CD played out). You might even find the perfect (for us) wedding song.

Mr. A.T. kicks right into the melody, and as I hear it I can feel Maria's hands in mine,
sweaty. The horns speak together, separate, individually pushing the conversation while the rhythm always swirls behind, beside and in front, a journey where all meet to conclude everything that came before. We laugh nervously but feel relieved to have made it this far. And eighteen years later, we've made it this far. Our best days are those days when we laugh nervously, holding hands as we did that October afternoon. Having not practiced our dance, we stumbled a bit but continued, waltzing across time.

Our Art Taylor story: The year following our wedding, we were in the West Village seeing Taylor's Wailers play in the Village Vanguard! Between sets Art Taylor (who has a fine book of interviews with musicians, Notes and Tones) was sitting with an old friend, fellow musician Milt Jackson. Maria had been working at a kind of a fancy retirement home and a very cool security person, Sgt. Johnson was a big Milt Jackson fan. And there was Mr. Jackson just sitting and visiting his friend. Maria had the gusto to approach them and say to Taylor that she was at the club to see him play but at this moment was there for his (Milt Jackson's) autograph. They laughed and I stopped pretending that I didn't know who Maria was.

After the last set, Taylor had a surprise for his band members; Taylor's Wailers t-shirts. I had to have one- I asked Art Taylor if he would sell me a t-shirt. As I said this I realized that I was on the hook for whatever price he put forth; it would be insulting if I said "no. too much"- after all, I was the one who asked- so I was going to pay whatever Mr.Taylor said. Please don't say $50... He left me go for $15. Whew.

Art Taylor (1929-1995)
Tom Madden (?-2010)