-
Preface
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
vii PREFACE This is the story of a child who dreamed of becoming a cartoonist but became a musician; of a musician who started on a clarinet but first performed on a tenor sax; of a young tenor player who became a legendary alto player; and of a passionate combo player who became internationally known for his work in a big band. Perhaps, then, it’s part of a larger pattern that this “autobiography”of Gabe Baltazar Jr. began as a“biography.” IstartedworkingonabookaboutGabeinthefallof2004.SinceIhadworked with him regularly between 1987 and 1998 (as a bassist and guitarist), and since I knew that there was no full-length biography of Gabe, even though the contexts and accomplishments of this important American musician pleaded for one, I called him and asked if he’d like to work with me on a biography. He agreed immediately, enthusiastically, and so began, with Gabe’s permission and frequent help, the biographical fieldwork that culminated in this book. Fact and Voice This work has been guided by two ideas that obtain in the best biography. The first is from Virginia Woolf, who stresses that biography “must be based on fact” (225). In her essay “The Art of Biography,”Woolf speaks first of “authentic information ,”the kind of information that allows readers to get a sense of the subject and his life:“When and where did the real man live; how did he look . . . who were his aunts, and his friends . . . whom did he love, and how”(227). She then writes of the “creative fact; the fertile fact”—that perhaps overlooked observation which might, when brought to the fore at the right moment, reveal to readers some essence of the subject (228). To find this creative fact, however, the onus is on biographers, who must thus acquire an extraordinary amount of information in order that they not only structure a credible narrative of a life but also make apt and even inspired choices throughout that textual life. If these things are done well, Woolf claims,“the biographer does more to stimulate the imagination than any poet or novelist save the very greatest”(227–228). viii • P R E F A C E The other notion comes from leon Edel, the iconic biographer of Henry James, who posits that the“voice,”or syntactic style, of the biographer should be the central voice of the work. Bringing in too many others too often, he argues, interrupts the narrative flow of the story. The biographer, says Edel,“is primarily a storyteller”(218). We’ll come back to Edel’s idea in a minute. Fieldwork Basics: Gabeology My first task was to find the authentic information and the creative facts. I requested transcripts from Gabe’s schools and colleges:Washington Intermediate and McKinley High in Honolulu, the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore , los Angeles City College, los Angeles State College. In short order documents arrived showing his courses and grades, who his teachers were, where he lived, when he and his family went to Japan (1936), how much he paid in tuition at Peabody in 1948, and more. I studied Gabe’s personal and family records: birth, marriage, and death certificates, records of his honorable military discharge . Wayne oshima, personnel manager for the Royal Hawaiian Band, kindly gave me Gabe’s employment file for his career with the band, which began when he was in high school (1948) and finished with his retirement in 1985. This file documents his civil-service status, salaries, and the exact dates he took a leave of absence to work on his jazz club, Gabe’s. Wayne also gave me a list of musicians who played in the Royal Hawaiian Stage Band that Gabe formed when he returned from los Angeles in 1969. From an old and tattered brown leather suitcase that Gabe loaned me, I digitally copied his collection of family photographs, along with souvenirs from his career: concert programs, a Playboy jazz poll award, a thank-you letter from President Clinton. Gabe’s brother norman, briefly a trumpeter with Stan Kenton’s band, lent many of the photographs he took while he was with Kenton. At Hamilton library’s Hawaiian Collection, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa, I consulted more than twenty tomes of the Polk and Husted Directory of the City of Honolulu and found several of the addresses at which Gabe’s family lived from 1930 to 1960; these informative entries also list who lived in the various households. I copied the...