Mondays with Mike: When I learned to swing

In August of 1978, I was newly returned to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from an internship in Washington, D.C. And, for the first time in my life, I was a little cocky. I’d lived outside of the Chicago area! I knew stuff that you didn’t’! I’d lived in Washington, D.C. dammit!

I held hopes that I’d land a job back in D.C. as the result of that internship, but I had one year plus a summer of college to go.  And let’s say I wasn’t the most serious student for my senior year + a summer.  U of I had something called “new student week” back then. It was a full week of orientation in August. In its time, that meant a lot of debauchery, so old students came down to enjoy, too.

I learned a new club was opening on Green Street in Campustown, which was the main campus drag. The place was called Mabel’s. A university bigwig who handled its money decided Champaign-Urbana could use a New York-style jazz club. And Mabel’s was born. He’d  bought a bunch of antiques and curios at an estate sale for someone named Mabel, and the club was strewn with those relics.

It was a long flight of stairs up to the first floor of the club. And another shorter flight up to a balcony seating area.

I took a job there as a cocktail waiter. I didn’t care much about jazz, but well, it looked fun. Being a male server at a campus bar was sort of earth shaking back then, when just down the block young women servers dressed in skin tight Danskins. (Which all seems quaint in these times.)

Mabel’s first floor near the stage was quite the hip deal: It was big pillows on the floor. People laid on the floor propped up by those pillows. So I’d bring drinks out and set them on little weighted “tables” in the midst of the pillows. Back then, all you needed was a university ID to get into a bar, so we got lots of 18-year-olds on dates drinking strawberry daiquiris. At closing, some couples would be in oblivious liplocks. The manager would pump out the 1812 Overture as loud as it could go and that was that.

I digress. What I didn’t realize was that I was already a jazz fan, but didn’t know it. My favorite band at the time was Steely Dan, and the album Aja was hot as a firecracker. And my favorite part? The title song, and a solo by jazz great Wayne Shorter. Wayne was my gateway drug.

The University of Illinois has always had a vibrant jazz program in its music department, but perhaps never more vibrant then back then. There was UI Jazz Band #5, #4, #3, #2, and the vaunted #1. They were all good but #1 had ringers who were down from Chicago or other places as adjuncts.

The program was led by John Garvey, a character who regularly rode a mo-ped around campus while smoking a pipe. He had a thing for all kinds of music, including Russian folk, and he founded a Russian folk group as well as leading the jazz program.

The first time I heard #1’s horns crank it up, powerful, in complete synchronization, I was floored—and hooked. You can feel that shit, and it ain’t electrified like, say, The Who. It’s humans moving air.

The Mabel’s owner had done his homework and was a true jazz lover. He managed to book greats like the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra (if you have to ask, you can’t afford it). And Gary Burton on the vibes. All this in a college town in East Central Illinois.

Tonight we went to Jazz Showcase to see the Chicago Jazz Orchestra, an umpteen-piece band that took me back, and reminded me why I love a big jazz band. If you’ve never experienced a jazz big band, try it out. The arrangements, the musicianship, in my view, are unequalled.

1978 turned into 1979. Mabel’s waitresses didn’t need Danskins, they were just gorgeous. I fell in love with one of them; it was the first time I felt that way. (Not the last.) We had a sultry, carefree summer. I moved back to D.C. to take that job in August.

Oh, also, because I was out of sync with the Journalism calendar, I took basic reporting late. A young woman named Beth was in that class. We became friends.

On my last night working at Mabel’s on the day I handed in my graduating paper  (I was bartending by then), Beth came to help me celebrate. I gave her what would be my work number in D.C. should she ever be in town.

So yeah, I love a big jazz band.