I wanted to listen, over and over again.

I was a sophomore in college, and a film major. I had spent the last year doing sound for friends and for class assignments. I had stayed in an audio editing suite for more than 24 hours. I wanted to be a sound engineer when I grew up, and I was finally getting a chance to explore that. I didn’t know that the job market was shit for sound engineers; I doubt I would have cared.

Anyway, I don’t remember the context, but the TA for the class had played a few seconds of this mournful, lonesome trumpet in class, and afterwards I rushed her to ask what that was. Who? What? How? She laughed and gave me the name.

It was a French soundtrack, so I knew Dr Wax wouldn’t have it, so I stopped by Chicago Compact Disc (RIP). The older brother behind the counter greeted me in his empty store, and I heard the absolute smoothest composition playing. I told him that I was loving what he was playing, but did he happen to have…? He pointed me to the back of the store, under IMPORTS.

It was there. It was also $30. And to someone on work study money, that was a LOT.

But I also had to have the album that was playing. I’d never heard anything like that before, and it was completely new to me. And that CD was $20.

Needless to say, I bought them both, and then survived on chicken cutlets from my cafeteria meal plan for the next good while.

I shoehorned Miles’ trumpet into a short film I made, which the professor recognized right off. I didn’t use Dexter for anything, but it is one of the first things I play for people who want to know jazz.

So, here’s to Miles Davis’ Ascenseur pour L’echafaud and Dexter Gordon’s Go. A lifetime of good music, only remembered; it has to start somewhere.