Playing the old folks' home

I hear there are only about 50 Golden Age of Jazz buffs in the world today. This music has always appealed deeply to me. Over the years, I’ve built a respectable collection. As the people who were in their heyday during the 20s and 30s fade away, I find myself desperately wanting to connect with them for greater insights into the music. So I got this idea: I’d become an old folks’ DJ of sorts, taking my laptop into care homes and playing this music for the people who’d lived through its prime. It would be great. I imagined their faces lighting up, them singing along, nodding as the words came back to them. Annette Hanshaw! They’d swoon. They’d be dazzled as I recounted how Ruth Etting’s gangster boyfriend had edged her out of the number one spot in the popular jazz scene. After a little while, they’d start requesting singers, and songs. Things might get boisterous between the Helen Kane fans and detractors. There might even be a little mistiness when I slowed us down a bit, into the romantic ballads. Afterward, they’d tell me how wonderful it was to hear these old favorites again, how they triggered memories from their lives, and we’d fall into rich conversations about the prewar atmosphere. I would learn so much from them, and grasp the soul of the music in a way I never could have before.

So I just got back from my first gig at the old folks’ home and am writing it down to really capture the experience while it’s fresh. They were finishing up making beaded bracelets when I started playing. The first song I played was "We'll smile again" - Flanagan and Allen. Everyone went silent. Then I introduced myself and started bridging the songs with brief narration. No one spoke. Many closed their eyes. No one smiled, and no one responded to me when I tried to get them involved, trying to solicit preferences and requests. After 15 minutes of this, one little old lady in a wheelchair, wearing a pink blouse and a long string of fake pearls, holllered "How long can you stand it? Don't you get tired of listening to that?" Seven minutes later, I got my second comment from the lady sitting next to her. "Too loud!" More people got wheeled in, preparing for lunch, for the next 15 minutes. They too got silent, and most closed their eyes. One woman fell asleep. I have played all kinds of crowds in my theater days, and this was one of the roughest I'd ever had. The last five minutes, I was actually starting to sweat. I abandoned the narration and just led one song into the next. Finally I finished with a Lew Stone medley. Deanna, the activities director, came over and started talking to me, smiling, assuring me that "this is how they are." She said everyone she'd asked said they were enjoying it. Ten minutes into our conversation, a Korean woman shouted, "Play some Western." I scurried for Patsy Montana. She said she liked all Western, even modern.

Deanna is going to work me into the regular schedule, and agreed to store my sound system so I wouldn't have to carry it back and forth. This is going to be great. After all, I know things weren't easy during the Golden Age of Jazz.