Plainfield's Bob Young still jazzing things up at 82
Posted in Courier News By Mark Spivey On March 7, 2011 (6:16 pm) In Uncategorized
By MARK SPIVEY
STAFF WRITER
PLAINFIELD - It's almost as much fun to watch Bob Young play jazz as it is to listen to it.
Plainfield's Bob Young - a local jazz legend.
Seated in a simple folding chair, the 82-year-old periodically rises to his feet to rattle off improvisation-laced solos on a gleaming silver trumpet. He soulfully belts out lyrics in a gravelly baritone that makes you swear Louis Armstrong just walked in the room. With light reflecting off his bald head, wearing dark glasses, slacks, a sports coat and tie, he taps one foot slowly to the rhythm when his fellow musicians launch into solos of their own.
The sight comes with just a hint of irony, because Young has never watched anyone play jazz. Legally blind since his 1928 birth in a West Virginia coal-mining town, he has been totally blind for more than two decades. He has lived in Plainfield Tower West, a senior-living community, for 17 years. He is continuing a slow and occasionally frustrating recovery from a stroke he suffered in 2010.
And yet he keeps right on playing.
"I wasn't at my best yesterday. I wasn't at my best," Young lamented recently, a day after performing at the Piscataway Senior Center. "I did the best I could, though, and people seemed to like it all right."
Young probably is known best locally as the founder and public face of The Friends of Jazz, a nonprofit organization "committed to bringing the joy and healing power of music to the underserved in the community and influence the next generation of jazz enthusiasts," in the words of its mission statement. Created in 1998, the group's musicians — who currently include longtime members Lester McKee of Old Bridge on the drums and Dan Kostelnik of Newton on the keyboard — have performed in nursing homes, hospitals, schools, facilities for the disabled, political events and other locales.
But Young, who moved to Plainfield with his mother when he was 14, has been wrapped up in music for the better part of seven decades. As a student at Lafayette Junior High School in Elizabeth and later the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind in the Bronx, he would sneak out to play at 52nd Street Manhattan jazz clubs, once even getting the chance to jam with the legendary Charlie Parker.
But the good times didn't last. A bid for a serious career in music was hamstrung by Young's blindness.
"To have a gig, to go somewhere, I had to have someone to drive me," Young explained. "It was hard for me to get a driver."
Young bounced between odd jobs for years before finding his career calling as a piano tuner. He worked for NBC Studios in Manhattan, tuning pianos on "The Tonight Show," and the job even took him to the Metropolitan Opera House. But it kept him so occupied, he rarely had time for jazz.
It was an impromptu performance at Plainfield Public Library in the mid-1990s that reignited Young's passion for the music style that traces its roots back to rural black communities in the South at the start of the 20th century. He hasn't slowed down since.
"I guess I've been at it a long time," he said. "I'd like to get more performances in. I should be getting more."
Young's bandmates marvel at that mentality, still intact after so long.
"I love his enthusiasm," McKee said. "I think it's the people you get involved with that make jazz what it is. They seem to be down to earth, just more real."
Young cited a number of musical influences, including many of the jazz greats such as Dizzy Gillespie. But he singled out the man whose voice sounds so much like his own.
"I like Louis, man, he's the best," Young said. "I kind of swing behind Louie."
To find out more about The Friends of Jazz or to inquire about performances, go online to http://www.friendsofjazz.org or call 908-755-1120.
Mark Spivey covers Plainfield, North Plainfield, Warren, Watchung and Green Brook. He can be reached at 908-243-6607 or mspivey@njpressmedia.com.
Article taken from Plainfield - http://plainfield.injersey.com
URL to article: http://plainfield.injersey.com/2011/03/07/plainfields-bob-young-still-jazzing-things-up-at-82/