Joe

I first met Joe Baque in the summer of 2004 right before I turned 17. My family had just moved to Olympia after living in Malaysia. I’d fallen hard for jazz and when we asked around for recommendations for piano teachers, the same name came up time and again. “Joe’s the guy.”

After a brief and somewhat intimidating audition with the maestro, I started weekly lessons with him. He showed me how to walk bass lines, how to play block chords, how to sing with your solos to make them more lyrical, and how to comp behind a horn player in a way that makes them want to hire you again. Joe didn’t introduce me to jazz; he welcomed me into the fold. “This is a Real Book”, he said. And then, “these changes are better”. And when the music felt right, “Yes! You’re doing it! You’re swinging!”

“What are you doing on Tuesday?” he asked me at a lesson once. That next week, on a rainy Olympia night, he ushered me into the back of The Art House, an art gallery / frame shop downtown where he took me to my first session. He played a few tunes with the band and then had me take my seat at the keys. Clutching my precious Real Book, I gingerly played my way through a tune. I went back a lot.

I told him when I booked my first gig as a bandleader, at Pies & Pints, a now-closed restaurant up in Seattle. “When’s the next one?” he asked. And then Joe and Carol drove up to see me play. “You’re swinging’!” he said. He came to a lot of my gigs.

Sometimes when I hadn’t been down to Olympia in awhile, I’d call to see how he was doing. “Are you still playing?” he’d ask, and be elated to hear that yes, I still was. The next question would always follow, “and are you having fun?” It was so important to him that playing music was fun. Sometimes I would ask him back if he was still playing. He would quip, “Joshua, the day I stop playing is the day I die.”

I started making records and would always bring him a copy, which of course he always listened to. I put out a duo record with a trumpet player friend of mine earlier this year. I drove down in March to see him and to bring him a copy. He had just turned a hundred. He looked over the track listing and landed on the second tune. “Is this one yours?” And so Carol put it on and we listened to it. And the next tune, and the next. I told him we didn’t have to keep going but he wouldn’t hear of it. “You two really have a good thing,” he mused. And after a particularly delicious trumpet line, “he knows what he’s doing.” At one point I attempted some light conversation with Carol but Joe quickly interrupted, “I’m sorry, can you please rewind a bit? I missed that last part.” We finished the rest of the record.

I don’t know why I never asked him before, but after we finished the record, I asked to hear a composition of his. Carol fished out a chart and at a hundred years old, he laid out a beautiful ballad. It was the last time I heard him play.

Thank you, Joe, for loving music, and for your generosity in sharing it. For connecting me to this world, and for encouraging and believing in me, far past our weekly lessons.