Friday Night at The Know

The best jam session in Durham

Friday Night at The Know

It was a cold night in February 2009, and the stinging air rushed into my warm car when I opened the door. I always got to the bookstore early on Friday nights to make sure I got a parking spot out back by the dumpster. Parking was at a premium on Friday nights at The Know. Friday nights were the jam session, long blowing sessions to well past midnight. I fancied it was a throwback to the old days in Harlem or 42^nd Street.

To be honest, I didn’t really feel like being here. I never did. At first. I would have preferred to stay home in the quiet and watch Netflix or read a book. Crowded rooms weren’t my jam. Except when they were an actual jam, and The Know had become my spot. But still, it took discipline to get out of the car and walk to the front door. If it had been any other session I would have made my excuses but The Know was something special. I could show up any kind of way in any kind of state and they’d be there nodding along.

I pulled my sax out of the back seat and slammed the door. Quick brisk walk around to the door on the front corner. The Know Bookstore wasn’t much to look at. A one-story, windowless concrete building south of NC Central University on a fairly desolate stretch of Fayetteville Road in Durham, NC. The interior a single room with a partition down the middle. On the right side the bookstore, crowded with shelves, somewhat disheveled with books and publications scattered about and boxes towards the back. On the left was the restaurant, a Halal kitchen that served the best fried catfish and bean pies in town. It was long and narrow with booths and tables opposite a counter with stools. These were being shifted around to make room for the evening’s activities.

Bruce was always there smiling and greeted me when I came in. Tall, thin, bearded proprietor of the only Black-owned bookstore in North Carolina. He stood by the cash register on the bookstore side. I walked towards the back, between the rows of books on Black history, culture, and politics, to where I could set my case down and assemble my horn.

Weldon was already there pacing back and forth warming up on his trombone.

“Heeey, Eric, how you doing?” He asked in his low, gravelly voice with a shy smile.

“I’m good. Go anywhere interesting this week?” I asked. Weldon was a long-haul trucker. He owned his own flatbed rig and took loads up and down the east coast, always being sure to get back to Durham for Friday nights at The Know.

“Yeah, got up to Albany and Buffalo, but had to come back here empty this time. There was a big snowstorm coming and I didn’t want to get caught.”

“Glad you made it!”

I unfolded the sax stand and zipped open my case to go through the ritual of assembly: pop the reed in my mouth to soak, set the body on the stand, pull out the Link mouthpiece and slide the reed under the ligature, scoot the mouthpiece onto the cork on the neck, readjust the reed, insert the neck into the body. Pick up the horn and hook on the neck strap. Click the keys to check for sticking pads. That G-sharp was always a problem. Blow a B-flat arpeggio, high and low register. Feels good. Run through a chromatic warmup exercise: no sticking keys, reed is responsive, a little husky resistance – feeling like ballads tonight. Muscle memory still good, agile, sharp. Rip off a couple of bebop licks. Try a couple different keys. Yeah. Alright.

Weldon is talking me through some music theory pointers as Ramadan walks in with his guitar case. I don’t have as much of a head for theory but I follow along.

“Hey Rev! How you doing? I’ve got something to ask you!” Ramadan said. Uh oh, I thought. Ramadan was short, elderly, a Black Muslim with a cap and long gray beard. And when he spoke with that trickster twinkle in his eye it usually meant he was going to try to bait me into some kind of theological or political argument. I acquired the moniker “Rev” by virtue of my recent Masters of Divinity degree. Not that I saw my faith exclusively, and my politics were pretty far left at that point, so Ramadan and I found more common ground than not.

Bakru and Bill arrived next. I jumped up to help Bakru load his drums in, but he refused, as always. He had his own ritual of assembly. He was middle-aged, big and tall (not as tall as me), from Suriname, and he’d taught me about the Kaseko music of his homeland. His energy was full of generosity and warmth, someone who loved people and loved connecting with people through music.

Bill, our piano player, was the glue. He was young and blind, but his disability put no damper on his zest for life and music. He was the one who kept the community alive a little longer after The Know closed its doors the following year. He would string together gigs and host jam sessions around the grand piano in his basement. A teacher and professor, in many ways he carried the torch from Brother Yusuf.

This had all started with Brother Yusuf. Yusuf Salim. The piano player. A cat from the old generation of jazz musicians who had played with everybody back in the day. I only got to meet him once, on stage at a celebratory jam session for his birthday. I remember Joe Chambers was on drums when I took my solo.

Brother Yusuf, by all accounts, was a gentle, generous soul who derived life from helping other players grow and feel safe and welcome on the bandstand. Not like a lot of spaces I’ve been in. Sink or swim kind of spaces. Spaces like Emminem rapped about – you get one shot so don’t fuck it up kind of spaces. I always fucked it up under pressure. Yusuf was gone by the time I got the time and the nerve to go down to the The Know with my horn. I had just finished divinity school and needed some kind of community beyond the confines of academia and church.

So I had been coming here for a few months, almost a year, almost every week feeling like staying home, but showing up anyways. I didn’t want to lose this gift, the ability to play music. It was a part of my identity, and it was such a rare thing to have a welcoming place to play outside of academia.

The jam session happened on the restaurant side, with the rhythm section crammed together on the far end of the counter from the entrance, near the kitchen. The horn players, however many there were any given week, gathered in front of the rhythm section. The audience would sit at any available tables or just stand if it was a bigger night. Bruce was always the MC, standing by the door with a microphone and making commentary between solos.

We gathered, Bakru looking up at Bill and Weldon and me. “What do you want to play,” his eyes said.

“Well I don’t know…” Weldon mumbled, glancing at me. “You want to start with something easy, like a blues?” That’s usually how it went.

“Yeah, let’s do Billie’s Bounce,” I replied, snapping my fingers, 2 and 4, counting it off.

We hit. Me and Weldon play the head, another kid joining in on the second chorus on trumpet. Nice medium swing. Feeling the ideas like pent-up energy and when we hit the last measure the rhythm section breaks and I pour a torrent of notes into the silence. Then I back off when they hit again, giving them some space to talk back. I relax into the changes, playing with ideas, picking one up, putting it down, following another thread, letting my sound wind and float and fill the room. That’s the thing about the blues – it is easy or as hard as you make it, and people relate. I could play a sermon or a lament or a rant or complaint or flirt or play around. I play around, searching for mood and focus, give myself four choruses this time, enough space to play with space and build up the intensity into the turnaround and I turn around and hand it off to Weldon as I wind it down.

Weldon steps to the front, mind working, turning the changes inside out and backwards. Ripping off short phrases of eighths, sixteenths, then long flowing rapid-fire lines. Slide flashing back and forth. His style was old-school hard bop. Reminded me of Curtis Fuller even though he said he didn’t listen to Curtis as much as JJ Johnson. This was where he found his people and his flow after long days and nights on endless lonely highways. Intricate solos, long talks after hours. He made his ‘bone talk for his own four choruses, then we sat back while Ramadan took his turn on the guitar.

Ramadan had been a working musician once, but age had made playing a guitar difficult. I don’t remember whether it was arthritis or a stroke, but his fingers weren’t as nimble as they’d once been. As he plays I can hear his intention, what he wants to play – it lurches out in little phrases and snatches of lines. After a chorus he strums chords – a more manageable motion for his hands. He is not distressed by his difficulty. His face is lit up with that impish smile as he feels the music, and he ends his solo with a chaotic shred and a laugh.

“You never know at The Know,” Bruce would always say with a knowing smile. Anything could happen. Some cat wanted to take it on a 10-minute trip to outer space? Cool. We were all about that. It was a jam session for people who hadn’t gotten their shit together or whose shit had seen better days. It was a space where old heads who once made their bread on the bandstand could just relax. It was a space to come and figure shit out. To mess up. To shine. To be at the top of your form, as long as you didn’t let it go to your head. To express yourself. Everyone was there with you, nodding along, encouraging you. No side eye need apply at The Know. So we had 12-year-old kids taking their first solos alongside local legends and, occasionally, international legends.

Like our bass player that night, Aaron Mills. You know, the bass player for Cameo and OutKast. That Aaron Mills. Aaron really loved jazz, so he cut his teeth here at The Know and gigged with his own group, the Aaron Mills Project, on other nights. I did a couple of gigs with them, sat in on others. His crew had the rough look of dudes who’d been hardworking musicians their whole lives and lived on the road. I never got to know Aaron much – he was quiet, at least around me, but he was laid back and we played well together.

As the trumpet player started his last chorus Weldon and I looked at each other and back at Bakru. “Trade?” Weldon asked with his eyes. Bakru nodded. The kid finished his solo, and everything stopped as Bakru leaned over his snare, triplets in his left hand while the hi-hat on autopilot hit 2 and 4, a counterpoint from the bass drum while his right hand explored the cymbals and tom. Four bars, and he set me up for my 4, another cascade of notes that I tossed back to Bakru, who brought it back down to a low boil and handed it to Weldon. And so we went, trading fours, until a long crescendo on the snare launched us back to the head.

We finish to applause. Bruce hyping us from the mic at the other end of the room, introducing us by name to the small crowd. An unnecessary formality – we all knew each other here, this little jazz family squeezed into that little restaurant in The Know. Musicians and devotees.

This night at The Know we ran through all kinds of tunes, all the old standards, bebop and show tunes. Aaron called something funky. Weldon taught us something knew. Bill played a slow ballad with the trio, then Weldon and I took a chorus each. Catfish sizzled in the fryer in the back and the aroma of French fries teased our noses as we blew.

Then I called Little Sunflower. That one was for late night, deep into the second set. A Know staple for when it was time to get real. If there was any tune that was going to take The Know to outer space, it was Little Sunflower, the way we played it. It was a modal-style tune, the kind that didn’t have a lot of chord changes, that let you stretch out and build and layer rhythms and emotions on top of the churning Brazilian beat.

Bill counts off the straight 1-2-3-4 Bossa and the rhythm section plays an eight-bar intro. Then the horns come in with the haunting, yearning melody. I add harmony over the top. When the key changes for the bridge Weldon plays the long, sustained call while I add the response and Bill’s keys shimmer over Bakru’s polyrhythms, Aaron laying down the ostinato that holds us all aloft.

I don’t want to solo yet. I want to soak in the rhythm for a while, listen to the others, catch their energy, feel the room. Friends call out from the tables as Weldon’s slide flashes in the low light. Bakru smiles with joy, lifting us aloft with loving rhythms that dance and whirl. Bill cannot see, but his body moves with the sounds that blend together into one living breathing force of love and life.

I step to the mic and the music takes a breath and drops down low. I start slow. Relax into the stream of it, letting the current steer. It is placid, smooth. I play in it, watching the ripples spread away over the surface towards the distant shore. Then dimples where it passes over smooth stones just beneath the surface: signs of rapids ahead.

The bridge: key changes one after another, churning the water, breaking my reverie, propelling me forward. I draw energy up from the earth through my feet and feel the heat on my forehead. I close my eyes, the sounds a kaleidoscope of bright colors and flashes of light. My notes shimmer and dance. I am outside my body when the rapids come. I find every corner of my range. Every note, every note hiding between the notes, doubling the notes when one wasn’t enough, searching the stratosphere and the substrate, cascading sheets of sound. When I reach the end I open my eyes back to the dim room, bashful to the applause. Several minutes had passed. I step back away from the mic, at peace.

“You never know at The Know,” Bruce said laughing when the tune ended and the people were shouting and clapping. We’d had a little trip to outer space, after all. Or inner space, I suppose. That’s what Coltrane called it.

It was past midnight, and it was time to pack up. I was tired and eager to get home, but I lingered. Listened to Ramadan’s stories from his days in Motown and Weldon’s astute reviews of old jazz recordings and talked with Bill about a possible gig and practiced a Kaseko rhythm with Bakru. Some of the audience members lingered, too, and we caught up on our lives from the past week and looked forward to when we’d be back here again.

I’ve never played better than that year I was a regular at The Know, up until Bruce lost the lease to gentrification and the bookstore closed. It had been a safe place to try things and mess up without judgment. I learned tunes and developed my ear and grew in confidence. I started showing up at the other jam session across town at the Mary Lou Williams Center – one of those where you did indeed have to have your shit together. That year, and that year alone, I could hang with the Mary Lou crowd and not feel the pressure. But that’s because of that little community Brother Yusuf had created where people ate fried catfish and loved each other with notes.

I think that’s the thing I loved the most about The Know: the love. It was the music that drew us together from all walks of life, and each person there was fascinating to know in their own right. They all had interesting stories to tell, experiences to share, and musical wisdom and beauty to impart. The year I was at The Know happened to have been the most grief-filled year of my life, and they gave me a bandstand where I could share all of the sorrow and rage and love though a wordless language that only they understood. They heard it, accepted it, played with it and in it, and reflected it back to me. They held me with their eyes and notes when I walked back in there to play two weeks after we buried our son.

Jazz is a collective lineage. Sure, it is about taking solos, but soloists are never solo. To play jazz is to engage in collective improvisation, language without words, a familiar lick or a nod or a look of the eyes speaking volumes. It is collective care, holding emotions, springing from roots of mutual aid: the famous rent parties of the ‘30’s and ‘40’s where New York musicians would stop an eviction by coming to your place for a jam session fueled by down-home cooking sold by the plate. Musical in-person GoFundMe.

We have all scattered now, and I’m no longer in touch with the folks from The Know Bookstore community. I live hours away in another state. Without a community to hold it I am no longer playing sax much at all. There isn’t much use for a saxophone in this folk-oriented town in the Shenandoah Valley. I’m not complaining. I am in another era of life and my energy and focus is on something else. Someday that, too, will come to an end, and if the time and opportunity aligns, I still have my horn in the closet. I still take it out every now and then to remind myself.