The day was Friday, October 14, 1960.  I had been living in Paris for a month and had settled in a cozy little hotel on the Rue Jacob just behind the Eglise de St. Germain Des-Pres on the Left Bank, where I found a room and breakfast for $40.00 per month (the Hotel des Deux Continents now charges $80.00 per night!) The skies were gray and it was pouring, but it was still beautiful--as only Paris can be in the rain.

I was at the Theatre des Champs Elysees which had been rented for a special marathon event.  Oscar Pettiford, the wonderful but temperamental bassist who had taken up residence in Copenhagen, had tragically died there at the young age of 38 on September 8th, a month earlier.  Due to circumstances that were not clear, his survivors had been left penniless, so this Memorial Concert had been set up to raise money for his second wife and her children.  It had been hastily organized and was chaotic from the beginning.  No-one knew exactly who was going to be playing, but there were rumors that some of the great expatriate jazzmen would be there.

The concert was due to begin at 5:00 p.m. and continue into the late hours.  But by 6:00 nothing was happening yet and the small but enthusiastic crowd was stirring both in annoyance and anticipation.  While waiting for things to start I struck up an acquaintance with a Frenchman named Paul who was sitting next to me.  Paul was a kind of impresario for jazz musicians in Paris and filled me in on the current jazz scene there.  Among other things, he told me that as much as American jazz musicians were adored in Paris, they still didn't get paid very well. Bud Powell, who was playing at one of the top jazz clubs in Paris, was earning 120 nouveaux francs per night ($24.00), and that was at the top end. Paul also said that, sadly, Powell was spending l30 francs a day on drugs and would be lucky to live another 12 months (actually he lived five more years!).  French jazz artists, according to Paul, were really paid poorly. For example the quintet that played every weekend at the "Cave" called the "Slow Club" on Rue de Rivoli was earning a grand total of $30.00  per night ($6.00  per man) for 3 sets.

In the midst of this interesting conversation, at about 6:15, things began stirring on stage.  For the next two hours we witnessed a variety of strange acts by musicians who made the Ted Mack Amateur Hour look good. There was a tap dancer who kept falling down, and there was an American singer named Anita Oglethorpe who was so bad that when she sang "Bewitched," she started in one key and ended in another.  She was practically hooted (actually whistled) off the stage (French audiences are not known for their compassion!)

By 9:00 p.m. it looked like the night was going to be a total bust. But then a couple of good French groups (whose names I don't recall) played 2 or 3 excellent sets.  And then...about 10:30...those of us who had stayed  through all this were rewarded for our patience. There was a lot of scurrying about on and around the stage, a kind of electricity in the air, and it was clear that something good was about to happen. And indeed it did: slowly walking up the aisle toward the stage, instruments still in their cases, were Stan Getz and Lucky Thompson (who was then living in Paris) and awaiting them on stage were Bud Powell and Kenny Clarke (and a bassist whose name I don't recall).  

For the next 90 minutes we were treated to some of the greatest jazz I've ever heard.  It was unfortunate that there were only about 150 people left in the 1000-seat theatre to hear it.  I had heard that Powell had lost a lot of the spark from his earlier U.S. days, but he was ON that night.  Thompson and Getz, in their contrasting styles, were dueling, each solo building to a slightly greater crescendo than the one before.  I thought how ironic it was that having grown up in L.A., where Getz played  frequently, I had to come to Paris to see him live for the first time.  But most important was that this was the first and only time I was to see the great Bud Powell, and I saw him at (or near)his best.

I hope Ms. Pettiford was pleased with this Memorial to her late great husband. I know that I, and the others who stuck around through the tap dancer and Anita Oglethorpe and all the other strange acts that preceded this magnificent finale were rewarded with one of the greatest jazz sets we would ever hear on that rainy night in Paris, contradicting, and yet also ecapsulating Verlaine's memorable poem:

"Il pleut sur la ville comme il pleure dans mon coeur"   ("It rains on the city like it cries in my heart.")