Sweet Home Alabama

Why I was almost (and maybe should have been) thrown out of a jazz band during a wedding.

With the exception of the last song on the last day we ever played together - which we'll come to - my experience of being in a jazz band was a parade of humiliations.

My musical problem - one of my musical problems - is that I can only remember four bars at any one time. Once I learn the next four bars of that same song or any other, the musical buffer of the last four bars disappears.

In my audition for my jazz band, I must have played and soloed over whatever four bars I was working on at the time, and they let me in.

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With me on rhythm guitar, the bandleader filled a gap in his dream for his band. He had found a guitar player to orchestrate. I was supplied with charts with 13ths and 9s and minus signs and plus signs and tablature finger patterns. There were more prime numbers than I'd ever seen on a single piece of paper.

By the third month of practice I was like the guy on the team batting .189 that nobody wants to sit next to in the dugout. Practice by practice, music stands gradu…