September 9, 1972, was the first time I spoke to Pat Martino on Folk City’s stage while he packing up after his last set. (I had seen him there many times that summer, one perk of having FC’s Mike Porco as a friend of the family).
Exactly 23 years later, a fellow fan took a picture of him, Gloria, and me in Blue Note’s second-floor dressing room. This was directly across the street (that is, West Third Street) from where Folk City once was. (These music venues were never contemporaries.)
I’ve published this picture before, but not the copy Pat signed almost 14 years later on March 15, 2009 at the Rubin Museum of Art (150 West 17th Street). The occasion was the premiere of Unstrung!, a documentary about Pat’s recovery from brain surgery and amnesia. (Free download of medical journal article on Pat’s case.) Gloria couldn’t make the event, but Mom, who’s the reason I got into jazz, did. A few months earlier, her friend had played Pat’s Strings! album on his turntable, thereby altering the course of my musical life.
My diary for September 9, 1972 shows that I was equally excited about meeting another fan of Pat’s:
Was I knocked out when Mom came over to me [at my Folk City table in the main music room] and told me that George Benson was there diggin’ on the music! I went over to his lovely wife to ask if that was truly him and then introduced myself and asked him a few questions. He’s coming out with a book by which student of various levels can progress and “get more serious.” What a surprise that was! Pat M. came over and and rapped about guitar makes (George has an 1898 Gibson) and other things. Ornette Coleman was sitting at the bar. . . . I talked to Pat about little things. He’s really at peace with himself. He went for a walk after his set. Mom was sitting at the bar and stopped him to talk. He’s so gracious. Mom and I hung around to be driven home [in the Bronx] by Mike [whom, in my diary, I cluelessly surnamed “Gerde”!].
As 1994 was the last year I kept a diary, I have only that photo to stir my memory of that 1995 meeting (of whose significance as the anniversary of our first chat I was not then cognizant). The following summer (June 30, 1973, to be exact) I’d see both Pat and George (and a half-dozen other jazz guitar greats) in the Wollman Amphitheater in Central Park at the Newport Jazz Festival. The concert was aptly named “Guitar Explosion.”
Happy to share with those who care and remember that September.
