Jade Visions: The Life and Music of Scott LaFaro

Chapter 11. Last Days

147 •฀ ChapTer 11 • last daYs It was July 3 and Scotty was determined to take care of business for Mom back in our hometown.We talked to him in the morning the day after he’d played at the jazz festival in Newport, Rhode Island and he mentioned he felt happy about the way things had gone. He remarked that George Shearing was on the bill that night and wouldn’t that have been something to Dad, who was a great Shearing fan? He wondered if we had any news about the sale of our family home in Geneva.We hadn’t.We had tenants whose lease option was expiring and Mom was getting anxious, since she needed to sell the house.There had been only a small insurance policy and since our dad’s death, things were pretty difficult for Mom financially, who had our three younger sisters to care for. Scotty and I had been helping to keep the family afloat as well. Scotty thought it might be a good idea to drive there and talk to the tenants to see if he could get them to make a decision sooner rather than later. And so it was decided. He planned to hear a couple of musicians that day, then head out after the Fourth of July when things wound down at the Festival, swinging by Geneva before returning to Long Island where he was living with Gloria and her family. Leaving Rhode Island at a very early hour on July 5,he drove for about eight hours, reaching our Aunt Elsie’s home on Seneca Lake just outside Geneva, in the late morning.While Scotty was 148  JadeVisions:The Life and Music of Scott LaFaro taking some of his gear out of the car, an old friend from high school, Frank Ottley, now married and living about five houses away, stopped to see him. Frank was excited to run into Scotty. They had discovered a mutual interest in Gran Prix car racing and jazz in high school while I was dating Frank,and the two had sometimes encountered each other when Frank visited a mutual buddy in Ithaca during their college days.They chatted for some time and agreed to do some serious swimming in the afternoon. After dinner with the family, Scotty excused himself to spend the evening with Frank. Their first thought was to drop by the home of a friend, Lon Flanigan, to listen to records. Lon had long been a jazz fan and had done some playing around town with Scotty and Dad when Scotty was in high school. Frank said Lon had a great sound system .When they dropped by,Lon was deep into a bridge game and suggested they come back much later that night.They headed for Sam’s Bar and Grill, which is still a little out-of-the-way place on Tilman Street in Geneva.Though the sign says “Sam’s,” everyone knows it as Cosie’s. Cosmo Fospero, the owner, just never bothered with the expense of changing the sign when he bought it.In the fifties it became a hip hangout for college kids. After a few drinks—Cosie said Scotty had a couple of beers— sometime around eight that evening, Scotty and Frank decided it was time to hear some good music. Frank called a friend of his, Judy FuchsWeislow,who was inWarsaw,NewYork,taking care of the children of friends who were away on vacation.They decided to drive the eighty or so miles to visit since there was a good stereo there. Gap Mangione, the pianist and brother of Chuck Mangione, recalls that night: Last Days  149 There was a knock at the door and when we answered, there was, to my complete disbelief, Scott and some guy that I didn’t know. It seemed that the two of them had been hanging out in Geneva, had had a few and at Frank’s suggestion, drove over to Warsaw to visit Judy. I had never met Scott but had heard him often on recordings and in person and we quickly took to talking about mutual friends and listening to and talking about music.The other two had gone off to another part of the large house. We listened and talked at least a couple or three hours … Chet Baker, some Bartok: Miraculous Mandarin —le Mandarin Merveilleux—and Scott’s first magical...