Bob James

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I was first exposed to jazz by my parents. They had a record player and taught me how to handle the records properly,.. So when I was 3 years old, I could use the phonograph. I would sit for hours looking at the cover and listening to Erroll Garner's "DreamStreet". My parents told me later that I played it so much the black vinyl turned grey. We also had a piano in the house. My mother played piano & my father played guitar.... so I started to try to pick out EG's melodies. At 6 years old, I begged my parents to take piano lessons. They said "We'll make you a deal... you can take piano lessons... but when you want to quit... you don't get to." It was the best deal I ever made in my life.... sure I went through some periods when I didn't want to practice 90 minutes EVERY day, but I did. And now 58 years later I can easily say it was the best present my parents ever gave me.

I have played piano since I was six years old and listened to my parent's jazz records before that. Erroll Garner and Ella Fitzgerald were my early favorites back in the '60s. My mother told me the story that the first time I saw a black woman in person (we were in an elevator; I'm three years old), I asked my mother, "Is that Ella Fitzgerald?" Everyone in the elevator laughed. Fast forward 30 years later and I am at a company party for Apple—they knew how to throw a party because the musical guests were Tower of Power and Ella Fitzgerald. I met Ella and told her my story. She laughed and laughed and called me "Junior" the rest of the evening. She was about 74 years old at the time. We got along great talking about music so I decided to ask her manager if he and she would like to come over to my home (about five minutes away) and continue our conversation there and surprisingly she said yes! So Ella, four people with her, me and four of my friends went to my house. I have a baby grand and she asked me to play for her. I played "Darn that Dream" and as I was about three bars into "All the Things You Are," she walked over to the piano and started to sing the song. Nothing I have ever experienced in my life has felt more special to me than those five minutes... nothing! And I have played for thousands of people but that moment, that "house concert" is seared in my memory as one of the greatest musical experiences of my life.

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