I played trumpet in junior high school, high school and college. I never got very good but I was better than a some hapless trumpeters. Let’s say I was a lukewarm player on a good day. Some years ago I wrote this essay. Jeez, 2017. I didn’t think it was that long ago. The Schilke I mention was eventually loaned to my brother in law and later moved on to youthful embouchures unknown, likely to one or more of his grandchildren. I loaned it at my late-sister’s request. I didn’t much care having given up playing decades earlier but once it changed hands I admit to not wanting it back. I knew each one of the trumpet’s minute flaws and didn’t really care to see what additional character might have been added by someone else’s carelessness. I remain trumpet-less to this day and life has gone on.

For a while, a few years ago, I had the idea of playing again. This was before tennis but after golf began to fade away. I had given away all of my mouthpieces by then, even an Irv Bush I bought from the man himself back in the late 1970s. At first, I thought to buy something old and cool so considered an Olds Recording, made in Fullerton back in the days when they made stuff like musical instruments in SoCal. But then I thought about it, it being how brass instruments are made and just how much progress must have been made in materials science and manufacture since the 1940s-60s. Sure, there is still a lot of hand-work done when it comes to making a brass instrument but overall fitment and consistency has to be miles better these days at all price points. Once I got my head around this fact, I came to believe that a trumpet equivalent of a Stradivarius likely does not exist. My guess is trumpets made in the last few decades outperform older instruments. I could be wrong of course but I tend to doubt it.

The trumpet flame gradually cooled and finally went out altogether. I realized that my desire to play again and to own a trumpet was largely fueled by nostalgia rather than an actual passion for playing. Still, I used to play and I used to own a really good trumpet. What’s more I took lessons from one amazing teacher, Tony Plog, who is now retired from playing trumpet but relentlessly active as a composer. The most recent of his operas, Theramin, just came out and it’s fantastic. I was thirteen when I started to study trumpet with Tony. It was an easy RTD bus ride (no transfers) right to his apartment. That was back in the early 1970s and I can only assume people were a lot more patient back then. Otherwise, it’s hard figure out why Tony wasn’t evicted. If you told me a neighbor in the house next door planned on giving trumpet lessons I’d be on the phone to my HOA. Trumpet lessons in an apartment? Maybe those really were better days. Tony Plog was relentlessly positive, but always in a way I could believe. If I had problems doing something (like playing the trumpet) Tony always managed to see and hear the positive in what I was doing and knew a good path toward improvement. Plus, Tony was just a nice guy, very easy to talk to and very easy to like. He still is.

It was a huge disappointment when Tony told me that he would be leaving Los Angeles to play with with the Utah Symphony. Tony had been a studio cat in Los Angeles since he got out of college, even before, actually. So, who could blame him for grabbing the opportunity for a real gig with a real symphony? Not me. For a while I just played on without an instructor. It’s funny but one of the worst feelings is of reaching a plateau. At times like that, it’s easy to feel struck after losing a mentor like Tony. Off days somehow felt more off and on days became fewer. One of my directors finally told me to reach out to Zeke Zarchy, an old-school studio guy who was big back in the day. It was as difficult to get to Zeke’s as it had been easy to get to Tony’s. Zeke lived way up in the hills above Studio City so my mom drove me to my first lesson so I could figure out the transfers and timing once I was taking the bus. Zeke lived in a dark, wooded ranch style house and had a dedicated room for lessons. He only took one student at a time which made me feel special but also more than a little on the spot. Zeke was friendly toward my mom but quite formal to me, which was fine. Before we started my first lesson asked my mom if she liked trumpet music. When she said she did he asked her to name her favorite song. My mom thought for a minute and said, “I always loved Tennessee Waltz.” Zeke bowed his head for a minute, mentally flipping through the thousands of charts strewn about his memory, amid the decades of music he had played. Then he played Tennessee Waltz from start to finish in a full and lovely tone.

“Like that?”

Zeke was cool, but a little odd. I have nothing against odd and like Tony Plog told me, “Strange dudes are sometimes the most interesting!” Tony’s right and I got better studying with Zeke but there was something subtly bitter about him. Maybe it was a feeling of declining relevance, the sense of the world slipping away from him while he still wanted and needed to be part of things. It made me wonder if maybe he only took one student at a time because there wasn’t exactly a long line of players who wanted to work with Zeke. I don’t know. I do know, and it may have been the first time I had ever had the experience, that Zeke seemed more comfortable in the past than the present and that created a strange vibe for me. The room we played in was full of photos but I never had the nerve to get up and look at any of them carefully. The photos were all black and white. Zeke might have been disappointed I wasn’t more interested in who he had been rather than who he was to me. That, as they say, was then.

A few months ago I Googled good, old Zeke. The Guardian had a nice obit about him.

Here’s their lead back in 2009:

Zeke Zarchy, who has died aged 93, found fame and fortune as a lead trumpeter in the swing era and was celebrated for his long-term association with the bandleader Glenn Miller. He was very possibly the last survivor of Miller’s 1940s orchestra. Zarchy also performed with Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Boyd Raeburn and Woody Herman. Once the big-band era was over, he recorded film soundtracks (including The Glenn Miller Story in 1953) and album sessions for Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and Judy Garland, among others.

Born in New York, the son of Russian immigrants, Zarchy was encouraged by his housepainter father, an amateur mandolin player, to learn the violin but soon switched to the trumpet. A professional from his teens, he joined the Joe Haymes Orchestra, aged 20, and made his recording debut in 1935. Recalling Goodman’s invitation to join his band, Zarchy said, “I almost fainted.”

The Zeke who almost fainted at Goodman’s invite was looking toward the future. The Zeke I knew was looking for the past but it was gone, as it always is. I didn’t realize what an important lesson that was at the time. On the other hand maybe the lesson was something I only felt in my bones. I think a lot about the difference between pure nostalgia and a genuine belief things were better in the past. Now, having more days behind me than ahead makes that an easy question to ask but not so easy to answer. We all know where each of our futures inevitably lead. Still, it has been interesting to learn a little more about who Zeke had been and who he’d known and played with and I’m glad to have a slight but real connection to such an illustrious past. I’ve been lucky — in a lot of ways. I was lucky to have my Schilke when I needed it and two fine, if very different, trumpet masters.