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This piece is about what Cal Collins meant to me; about how he saved not my life, but my mind. I grew up in Cincinnati; and in particular, the lily white burbs of this town. This was during the dark ages when there were only five television channels and one kind of Captain Crunch. A world comprised of middle-class two story homes on postage stamp lots, where everyone was German Catholic, kept beautiful lawns, believed in Jesus Christ and the 10 commandments.
We didn’t have to think hard in those days. We cherished terms like justice and held fast in the rule of law, and the word of God. This was before it became abundantly clear that society is largely a corrupt and inchoate whorehouse where men’s destinies, desires and rights, are bought and sold according to their social rank and the color of their skin.
There was only one problem with this idyllic world: It was fatally sterile. Everyone I knew — including myself — was slowly asphyxiating in the vice of Catholic suburban vapidity, our souls steamrolled under the crushing weight of inertia and intolerance. Culture in those days was Happy Days.
Milwaukee was fucking exotic.
If not for sports, and a few select people and their influence, I have no doubt I would have fallen asleep one night in 1979, and never awakened, for lack of a reason to awake. Cal Collins was one of the few who saved my mind.
Cal Collins got to me early, although I can’t tell you the exact date. I do, however, have absolute recall of the first time I ever heard him. It was in the living room of Al’s house. Al was my best friend and we had a stack of records from somewhere. I’m sure they weren’t from the library. Jazz was not so much banned in White Oak at that time: It simply did not exist.
So we had records — from somewhere, maybe from Al’s older brothers. At any rate, we put the Cal Collins album on the console stereo, without having a clue as to who the hell Cal Collins was — we were dorky 16-year-old suburban rock-&-rollers. We listened, were puzzled, and then, transfixed. In time, Al’s stepfather came walking down the stairs, drawn by the music. He stopped, listened and then stood with us a moment. He took the album cover and perused the back.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked. “Do you have any idea how old this music is, how old those songs are?”
He was baffled. He had, heretofore, only heard us play Top 40 dreck. All we knew in those days was Wolf Man Jack, Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert and Jim Scott on WSAI.
“These songs,” he said, “they’re twice as old as you.” I know, in retrospect, he was pleased, though shocked.
We didn’t know. We didn’t know Jazz from Swing, from Bop, from Be Bop, from Free Jazz, from Fusion from, well, from anything. But I knew right then, at that moment, that I had heard something outside of my pedestrian, cloistered world. I knew I had started on a road that led to nothing less than the destruction of my limited perception of the universe. I had started down a path that led, not just to Coltrane, Bird, Mingus and Hawes, but to mountains, coastal islands, Paris and any number of dives full of beautiful women and men who refused to toe the line. All that destruction from that sweet, silky, graceful, precise and passionate sound, like round fat rain falling upon granite.
I stayed in town long enough to suffer through high school and then, for some ungodly stupid reason, hung around to do a four-year degree (in six years) at UC. By then I had crystallized my hatred for this town and everything it represented. And yet, there were a few places, a few people, that made the Big Nasty bearable, who made the stultifying pain palatable.
Cal Collins led me to Oscar Treadwell. Oscar and his radio show, of course, led me to everyone.
I saw Cal Collins a number of times during college. It was the same every time, which is to say, he made me happy. I can’t say anything better about the man. I don’t know that it’s possible to say more. Every time I heard him, I felt less like a desperate man in the final stages of emphysema, less like a kid gasping for freedom. His music, to me, was lush and sweet without being cloy and sentimental. To say more would be saying too much. The few times I met him, just to say hello, he seemed genuinely kind.
I finally had the brains to leave Cinsinnasty. I married, went to Atlanta and my small quiet passion for Jazz blossomed into a full blown Jones. I spent entire days cooking spaghetti dinners from scratch just to have people by on Saturday night, to eat pasta and drink wine in the near dark, while listening to Jazz shows on the radio. African-American hosts with voices that sounded of scotch and cigarettes taught me Tatum and Evans, Trane and Peterson, Young and Armstrong. They confirmed my deep-seated lurking suspicion that life was large, colorful and worth living without apology.
One last image. After a time, I moved back to Cinsinnasty. Circumstances compelled my presence, and even though I hated this place, I came home. There were, at least, people here whom I loved. A few places as well. In time, I met a few new friends who showed me more things to appreciate about this place.
One night, not long after I came back, Cal Collins played Kaldi’s, for free. He did a duet with Kenny Poole. I got there hours early to get the table next to the corner where they played. They played for a long time, trading chords, riffs, leads, galloping off in two different directions simultaneously, only to meet improbably, perfectly, seamlessly back at the crossroads. I left that night thinking that there was a chance I could be happy, even in this town.
Cal Collins didn’t save my life. He didn’t know me from Adam. He did, however, lead me to the music, those people. He told me, without saying a word, that there was life beyond the empty, soulless world of my youth and that there are things in this world which are unknown, unpredictable and worth exploring and that some of those things worth chasing might even be here.
You pointed me down the path — thanks, Cal.
MICHAEL KEARNS is a Cincinnati native, attorney and eternal Jazz lover. Cal Collins died on Aug. 23.
This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2001.