Kenny Dorham!

I hope we all have friends like this. He seldom raises his voice. He never interrupts, even when you break into his conversation. He always says something interesting, and usually profound. He’s smarter than you are, but he never lets you know it. And without condescending he speaks your language, even if that means no words over two syllables.
I just listened to my first Kenny Dorham CD (I would say album but that dates me even more). Dorham has joined my morbid collection of dead trumpet players, and may have walked quickly and quietly to the head of the line.
He doesn’t dazzle with technique, but I would put him up against anyone but Clifford Brown and Clark Terry. His range will never garner attention from fans of Jon Faddis and Arturo Sandoval. Like my friend, though, he speaks to me in a language I can understand.
I put my horn away in, oh, 1976 or so. Picked it up again two years ago to learn that I have no chops. Even when I was good enough to play the occasional church gig, my range extended to high C at best. And that was from pressing the horn to my lips, not forcing air like I was taught.
So here comes Kenny Dorham. He says as much to me between C below the staff an G above as anyone ever has done. I get him. He doesn’t shout at me. He doesn’t quote dead Latin scholars. I don’t need to wonder what it would be like to play the “high C’s” like Severinsen or Sandoval or even Jon Birks.
So thanks, Mr. Dorham. Enjoy that gig in the sky with the giants you played with while you were here. You encourage me. I will pick that horn up again.