A Tribute to Brooks Kerr
Jo Jo White, Jazz, and a Cantor
[Author’s note: I am reworking some of my old pieces buried in the archive for the benefit of my newer subscribers.]
My most remarkable remembrance of Brooks Kerr is from a time when I was walking alone to summer camp on Martha’s Vineyard, Camp Aquinnah on West Chop in Vineyard Haven. I was on Tashmoo Avenue approaching Main Street. Just then he rode by going down the hill in front of me on Main, passing from right to left by himself on a tandem bicycle, looking straight ahead. My eyes immediately focused on the name of the manufacturer of the bike. “Brooks”, written in bold top to bottom on the vertical support bar under his seat. And I thought how in hell did he get his name on that bike? This was the summer before my sophomore year in high school. I wasn’t stupid, and I had seen other Brooks bikes before. But on that morning, at that moment when I saw him, my mind was working differently. He had a bicycle, and his name was fancifully and professionally printed on it. I took that impression the rest of the way to the camp that morning. I felt no impulse to reel my imagination in. It somehow seemed fitting, as if Brooks were a cut above, and I liked that.
Except that he wasn’t, in terms of his performance at the summer camp. The camp was a standard one, with sports, arts and crafts, and swimming. Brooks was not a cut above as a camper because he could barely see. He had crazy coke-bottle-bottom glasses. Years later when my interest in him grew, I learned that by the time of that summer he was legally blind. Because of that, though he was older and more physically developed than us, he was always the last one chosen for team play. You cannot dodge a ball that you cannot see.
The man who ran the camp was John L. McCauley. The word I received, admittedly far down on the totem pole, was that he was a trainer for the Boston Celtics. In the nineteen sixties and seventies in Massachusetts, that made him royalty. His obituary does not mention working with the Celtics, but he did coach football at Boston College for a while. Whether or not his having a job with the Celtics was true, he did have some connection with them, for on one bright summer day we arrived at the camp and there in the flesh, waiting for us on the basketball court, was none other than Jo Jo White. This was a few years after the Celtics drafted him. There we stood on the sideline, stomachs sucked-in and chests inflated with one thing in mind, a simple prayer to the Lord of the Court during warm-ups: “Please let my lay-up go in. Please!” None of us expected to make an impression on Jo Jo, but neither did we wish to make fools of ourselves. I knew how to make an easy layup during warm-ups. I did not know how to make one when the point guard for the perennial NBA champions Boston Celtics was standing at mid-court watching me.
I missed my lay-up, of course. It was pitiful. I made a big production with exaggerated body movements heading for the hoop, but the ball left my arms in some sort of feather toss that didn’t even reach the net. It took a few moments for my failure to register. There was snickering all around. My friends. Now I understand. It was their way of saying: “Better you than me!” My reaction was dismal. I played the clown, screwing up my face and emitting funny noises, hinting that I had just been goofing off, in an attempt to pass for someone who had missed the lay-up on purpose. That fell as flat as you are imagining it here as you read this.
Blood was in the water, and the shark that smelled it—a local bully--closed in for the kill. “Not bad, Billy.” he said loudly. “Better luck next time!” This made me angry on top of the embarrassment. Suddenly there was a whistle. Jo Jo said: “Give me the ball. Listen up gentlemen. You will miss lay-ups in your career. You will miss free-throws and other easy shots. The point is to not let it affect you. The next time you go to the hoop, release the ball with the confidence that it will go in the basket.” He had not singled me out, though everyone knew that my embarrassment was the occasion for his comments. But no one was thinking about that anymore. All it took was the phrase “your career.” We had “careers” ahead of us. We were not thinking NBA, but the simple fact was that careers are what adults have, and the way that he said it let us know that he was treating us as adults-in-training. I missed my next two lay-ups, but they were up there in the vicinity where hoop meets backboard, and I didn’t sweat it and just like Jo Jo said, I didn’t lose my confidence, and I made the rest of them. I had learned something about performance under duress.
After warming up, Mr. McCauley divided us into small groups, to practice different skills. Jo Jo walked between the groups, giving pointers. The groups rotated so that each camper would get time to practice all the skills. Center stage was the group practicing shooting baskets. It turned out that Jo Jo had another skill besides being a basketball star. He knew how to teach. He watched each camper throw two or three times, then stepped in and suggested minor adjustments, and he made shooters of us all. Let me put that into numbers for readers who know the game, using myself as an example and taking the distance of the shot as mid-range for our age group, about one-step closer to the basket than the foul line. On a good day, I could make an uncontested set shot from this distance 60-70% of the time. In game conditions, 15-25%. After just a few minutes with Jo Jo, those numbers became 85-90% and 35-40%. We didn’t know it then, but those changes became permanent. It was an hour of mass enablement. I remember my own session with Jo Jo. I was struggling, as I had been with the lay-ups. Jo Jo watched me miss three straight shots. Then he made eye-contact with me and looked towards the basket, encouraging me to follow with my eyes. He said: “Just arc it in.” And just like that, four swishes in a row. Everyone improved their shooting on that day. Even the hopeless. Basketball is much more fun when you know how to put the ball in the basket. Eventually I took those shooting skills with me all the way to the Israeli third league team Elitzur Gush Katif, having myself a basketball career, though minor, after all.
The hopeless succeeded on that day, but not the beyond-the-hopeless, of which there was one. We were not thinking of Brooks at all, and if we were, for a moment, then we were thinking that he didn’t belong at the camp. You cannot dodge a ball if you cannot see it coming at you. Shooting hoops? What’s the point? Full of ourselves, adrenaline rushing through our veins, you can imagine our surprise as we slowly quit practicing, quit dribbling, quit shooting, and stood transfixed by what we saw at mid-court. Two people stood there talking and laughing. Jo Jo and Brooks. They were not talking about basketball, but we could all see and feel that they were friends. How did that happen? What was going on? Jo Jo could see out of the corner of his eye that we had stopped practicing and were watching them. Jo Jo handed Brooks the ball. Brooks took it with one hand without thinking and continued talking with Jo Jo. Brooks did not realize that he had an audience. He stood there, back to us, holding the ball that was hanging from his hand. He was “palming” the ball. Without effort, with his long, elegant, and now clear to all, very strong hand. Jo Jo knew what he was doing. He was now teaching on a different level. He motioned for Brooks to return the ball. Brooks, not trusting himself to toss it, just raised his hand in front, palming the ball. Jo Jo palmed the ball from below and for a moment the two just stood there, connected by the basketball. We knew that we were not witnessing a simple transferal of an object between two humans. We would not have known to put into words what we were seeing, but we knew it was more than that.
That moment returned to me in an unlikely setting. About ten years later, I was in the study hall next to the synagogue at Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, learning Talmud with a friend. The Talmud is a huge project, divided into tomes of differing subject matter. The one we were learning dealt with the laws of the Sabbath. There are two general ways to study the Talmud. The first one is to move ahead as fast as possible, covering the entire Talmud. Millions take part in this type of learning today in the “daf-yomi” project, in which everyone partaking studies the same daf (both sides of a page) each day. At this speed it takes seven years to finish the Talmud. If the Talmud is the sea, then this approach is skimming the waves. The other approach is in-depth learning. Moving passage by passage, walking slowly into that same sea, carrying breathing apparatus in the form of more than a thousand years of commentary on those same passages, going deeper and deeper as time passes. That is how we studied. Once a week for about 4 hours for eight months until I left the kibbutz. When I left, we had covered about eight pages.
Here is how it begins:
The poor person stands outside, in the public domain, and the homeowner stands inside, in the private domain. The poor person lifted an object in the public domain, extended his hand into the private domain, and placed the object into the hand of the homeowner. In that case, the poor person performed the prohibited labor of carrying from the public domain into the private domain in its entirety. Or, the poor person reached his hand into the private domain, took an item from the hand of the homeowner, and carried it out into the public domain. In that case, the poor person performed the prohibited labor of carrying out from the private domain into the public domain in its entirety. In both of these cases, because the poor person performed the prohibited labor in its entirety, he is liable and the homeowner is exempt.
My partner had a yeshiva background, but more to the point, he had an MA in English Literature. He spoke my language. The discussion is about one of the prohibitions of the Sabbath and a description of the situations in which it may occur, and in order to have that discussion there are terms to be defined, such as the physical areas in which these situations are described. In the above quote that would be the public and private domains. We delved into this, with my partner taking the lead because of his yeshiva background and with me in the role of the excited novice. When you study the Bible and Talmud like this, your life changes. The things that you do, the things that you say, take on the color of your learning. The friendship with your study partner (called a “chavruta” in Hebrew) is like a jewel in your life. As consumed as we were with the subject matter, we came to the salient point only near the end. We came to it on our own, though commentators have dealt with it.
What was the point of having a homeowner and poor person acting out this situation? Talmud study is similar in some ways to algebra: you want to simplify the expression. It is complicated enough that they are standing in different domains, and that this one is doing the handing off or plucking, and the other is receiving or giving, why not make the actors equal? For example: two poor people standing together in the street on a weekday for starters? Once simplified to this extent, we are defining the terms to give and to take.
Having defined the terms describing the movement of an object between people, we move on to ponder on the nature of the relationship between parties to any transaction, anywhere, anytime, not just on the Sabbath. Moral sensibilities are engaged, and we feel as if we are dealing with the subject matter on a higher level. One thing we consider is that the homeowner is giving charity to the poor person. One has, one doesn’t, so the direction of the transaction is clear. Except that we have the cases in which the direction is reversed. Can there be a case in which the poor person is giving charity to a homeowner? There can be. The homeowner may be down on his luck, about to be evicted, needing funds for sustenance. The Rabbis took this further and spelled out an obligation that all are required to give charity, even those whose daily sustenance is based on charity. They receive charity in order to live, but from what they receive they must give to charity themselves. A social economic safety net is presumed, and if one finds oneself lying in that net, looking up to the sky, out of breath, out of ideas, one still must reach into one’s pocket for a penny and to place it into the hand of another needy person.
Moving ahead again, not all that is of value is a physical object. Perhaps the homeowner is a teacher, and the poor man is giving him something in return for teaching his children. Or the poor man is a teacher, and the homeowner is paying him for his service. Or both are teachers, and no object needs to be exchanged, just the value itself, one teaching the other’s children math while the other teaches the other’s children Bible. This last exchange would remove the discussion even further from that of the Talmud, which is centered on a physical object being transferred. One can see that from examining this simple activity between two parties, understanding different and more complex aspects of society and human interaction becomes possible. Charity stands apart, in that it is given freely with no expectation of compensation. The Jewish definition of “true charity” is that given with no possibility of reward, either when it is given anonymously or given to someone unable to react, such as one who has passed away. Charity given to the deceased being understood as charitable deeds done for them, such as involving oneself with the burial of the deceased.
What was the nature of the transaction between Jo Jo White and Brooks Kerr on West Chop? When Brooks returned the basketball to Jo Jo, at the point of contact, there was a moment when both were palming the ball together. There was neutrality in the moment. More than that, there was a unity between the men at that moment, and that is what was wondrous to us. What on Earth could they have had in common, besides being the only two people on the court that day who could palm a basketball? In hindsight it seems to me that it was an expression of mutual solidarity. Jo Jo was the only black person within ten miles of the camp, while Brooks was blind and something else not known to me at the time. There was mutual respect between the two, and that grated against our own ranking system, which held Jo Jo, though black, still high up on top, because he was a Boston Celtic. Brooks? As far down as could be imagined. Eventually Coach McCauley dismissed us, and we were left with the conundrum.
After that day, our attitude towards Brooks changed. He was still picked last for games, but he was one of us now, someone whose weaknesses were acknowledged and rectified in a friendly manner. We discovered that he was easy-going and quick to laugh, and I found him fun to be with. I was feeling friendly enough that I decided to ask him about Jo Jo. I was thinking about how to ask him on the morning he crossed my path on his tandem bicycle. Brooks, advertised on the bike that he rode. Was I thinking friendship? I’m not sure, but what may have drawn me to the “bike vision” was the empty seat on his tandem bike. A friend could sit on that. I was drawn towards Brooks, oblivious to a storm that was brewing.
It started with a fake sneeze. I was “puppy-dogging” around Brooks, waiting for the right moment to ask him about Jo Jo. He didn’t understand me but at least he wasn’t annoyed with me. He just didn’t understand why I was hanging around. My friends had a sense of what I was up to, for in their view there could be no other reason for me to attach myself to Brooks. They took the stance of wait and see because they wanted an answer too. Nobody chose me to ask Brooks, but nobody wanted to stop me either, except for one, driven by jealousy and an ancient hate. The conflict appeared when we went to the changing shack to put on our swimming trunks for a trip to State Beach. Once or twice a week a counselor would drive us to swim at State Beach between Oak Bluffs and Edgartown. State beach was sandier and calmer than the beach below the bluff where our camp on West Chop was located. State Beach was where the movie “Jaws” was filmed, a few years down the line. There were four of us in the shack: the bully and his friend, both a year ahead of me in school, Brooks, and myself. The bully “sneezed”.
“Ah-choo!”
The bully was making a point, but I didn’t get it. His friend did and said under his breath “cool it.”
“Ah-choo!”
Being afraid of bullies myself, I laughed at this second sneeze, knowing that it was expected of me, though still not understanding. Brooks understood, and he looked sharply at me, smelling treachery. He left quickly. The bully was laughing and I asked his friend: “what’s going on?”
“Just forget about it. You don’t want to know.”
But I did want to know. The bully was happy to clarify.
“Ah-choo, ah-choo. A Jew, A Jew. He’s a dirty Jew.”
I was flabbergasted. I had not known that Brooks was a Jew. I knew what a Jew was, but I did not know that a Jew was per se an object of derision. What had Brooks ever done to the bully? The answer was nothing. So why this? Brooks had known what the bully was getting at as he spat his “ah-choos” at him, which was why he looked at me in disappointment when I laughed. From where did the bully bring this “dirty Jew” thing? There were two Jews in the bully’s class in high school, but they were universally liked. There was one Jew in my class, one in the class below me, and that was it. The few Jews that we knew were just like us, except they divided their Christmas gifts up over eight days. Their parents ran modest businesses and were fully accepted members of the community. “Dirty Jew?” It didn’t come from his own personal experience, which means that it was handed down to him, or over to him. Whatever.
I walked towards the Jeep Wagoneer that was to take us to State Beach. Our counselor was behind the wheel, Brooks was next to him in the middle on that bench-like seat, and another older boy sat to the right of him. There were four of us in the back seat. I was second from the left, almost directly behind Brooks. The bully was sitting next to the window on the right side. Four or five younger boys were sitting in the back in the storage space. As soon as the car started moving, the bully began his assault.
“Jews are chicken shit.”
He said this to us matter-of-factly, as if he were describing the weather. The older boys were not comfortable with what they were hearing. I heard “Can it!” and “Enough already.” From where I was sitting, I could see Brook’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. I was surprised to see that there was no fear in those eyes. I was feeling fear and I wasn’t the one threatened. The bully started clucking.
“bach bach bach bach, chickee chickee chickee”
We had only started the trip and we all sensed that this was not going to be smoothed over. Brooks said:
“I’m not chicken.”
The bully said: “Prove it. Turn around.”
Without hesitation Brooks turned around. We were without seatbelts back in those days. Brooks did not look at the bully. He was looking straight towards the back window. It was as if he were presenting himself to us, or as if he were facing something in the world. Without fear. What he was actually seeing must have been a blur because of his blindness, but what he was facing was clear to him.
The bully hesitated. We all knew why. Brooks’ glasses. You never hit a guy with glasses. The bully said, “Let’s see you take those glasses off.” Brooks, without hesitation, did. Then, as the car was passing Tashmoo avenue, the site of my morning vision, the bully hit him hard. Brooks barely moved, but we all heard the sharp crack. Something, perhaps a bone, had broken. The bully laughed, surprised at the effect of his punch, looking around for confirmation that it was a really good punch. Brooks turned around quickly and covered his nose and mouth with his hands and said: “That hurt!”
That hurt. That’s all he said. We were fifty yards from my house. And I suddenly realized that we were, at the point of impact on his nose, fifty yards from Brooks’ house. Brooks did not ask the driver to stop, and I looked over to my left where I could see the long driveways leading to fine shaded homes overlooking Vineyard Haven harbor. The distance between my home and Brooks’ home was much farther than the one hundred yards between them.
Brooks lived in what my father called “Writers’ Row.” John Hershey, William Styron, Lillian Hellman, Art Buchwald, Norman Podhoretz. This stretch of main street between the public library and the turn to the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club on the east side of the road was mostly unknown to locals, except the service technicians and furniture movers. I would be one of the latter during summers in my last two years of high school and even then, I entered only one of the homes one time. It was a separate jurisdiction, not a “playground for the famous,” but a quiet place, maybe a place to recharge batteries. Most of them operated out of New York city, as far away from Writers’ Row as can be, but still being within a day’s drive if they had something urgent back in the city.
On the other side of the street was the domain of islanders, the year-round residents. Normal people. The parents of the passengers in the Wagoneer that day. It may be different today, but back then Writers’ Row was as far away from us as was New York City.
What followed was an endless ride of shame. Brooks left his hands over his nose. He had tears, but they were from the pain. He said a few more times “that hurt!” When the counselor driving the vehicle stupidly asked Brooks if he was “OK,” Brooks shot back at him: “No! I’m not OK!” We continued all the way to State Beach, silent in our shame, including the bully, who seemed to sense that he was on his own. When we arrived at the beach Brooks broke off on his own to the right of our group, to the bully’s delight. I went after him impulsively and was only three or four steps along when I had second thoughts. I was walking away from childhood friends. I continued walking after Brooks, but at a slower pace. Then he turned around. His nose was not bleeding and there were no signs of the punch that I could see.
“What do you want?”
I didn’t have an answer to that.
“Get the hell away from me.” he said.
I was not expecting that and stopped walking. He gave me a hard look and continued to his spot on the beach, a one-man exile. I did not want to go back to my friends. I sat where I was. I watched Brooks. He was the punched-out Jew who would not be denied. He had come for a swim, and he would have one. He went out until the water reached his shoulders and began to swim a sort of breaststroke with head above the water, as if he were nursing his nose and his glasses. Like elderly women who did not want to get their hair wet. Still, somehow he was graceful and here and there slipped into a front crawl. He knew what he was doing in the water.
I do not remember returning to the camp that day, and I do not remember the rest of my time at the camp that summer. I do remember the next time I saw Brooks. It was about a year later. I was at the house of a friend on—you guessed it—Tashmoo Avenue. My friend’s father called us over to the television. It was a color television but what we saw was being broadcast in black and white. There was a big band on a stage, and in the forefront were two grand pianos facing each other closely, fitting together like puzzle pieces. The pianists were trading musical phrases and having a wonderful time. This was Duke Ellington’s band on tour in the USSR. The camera moved from Duke to the other pianist. The same head that I had seen held high out of the water on State Beach, the same hands that had palmed a basketball on that morning in West Chop. Those long elegant fingers now playing note for note with one of the giants of jazz. This was a handshake, a human transaction of a different order. First Brooks with Jo Jo White, now Brooks with Duke Ellington. As we watched—opened-mouth as we had been when we saw him standing on the basketball court with Jo Jo White—his name appeared on the screen during a close-up. On that same street where I had imagined the brand name of his bicycle being embossed personally for himself, I was seeing his name again, this time designating the real person who bore it. “Cut above the rest of us?” That does not do justice to what we were seeing on the television. Brooks Kerr playing with Duke Ellington, touring the USSR on that fabled State Department sponsored tour.
Was it possible that this was the same face turned towards the back of the Wagoneer, clearly seeing what was to come? A year had passed. Meaning that at the time of the summer camp Brooks must have already been an accomplished musician. What need did he have for participating in a summer camp with, let’s face it, nothing more than a group of local hicks? The answer was obvious as soon as it formed in my mind. He was a teenager summering on Martha’s Vineyard looking for a little companionship and fun. We had denied him that. He had moved on. Oh, how he had moved on!
In time I came to view that morning vision of mine at the t-intersection of Tashmoo and Main as a seminal marker in my life, a buoy delineating the navigation channel: left, down the hill to low-life gratuitous violence, cowardice, and stark antisemitism, and right, an ascension to high culture, Writers’ Row with its many Jews, and Duke Ellington.
A year or so later I ran into Brooks again. I was at a terrible point in my life, nursing a self-inflicted wound of mistreating a dear girlfriend and receiving my just deserts for having done so, standing on Circuit Avenue in Oak Bluffs. I had a choice. Across the street to the left, downhill from where I was standing was the Ritz, the preferred bar for the Island working class at the time. Uphill, to the right, was the Lampost, the preferred bar for young coming-of-age Islanders. I would meet friends at the Lampost if I chose to go there, but I would be able to revel in my sorrow alone and for longer in the Ritz. Some choice. I crossed the street without deciding and when I reached the sidewalk, I heard piano music. Not to the right or to the left but directly in front of me. It was coming from the Rare Duck Lounge, a bar my friends and I never entered for two reasons. One, it was the realm of the “Yachties,” children of the rich summer people who inevitably were members of one of the island’s yacht clubs and with whom we did not mix, and two, it had a ten-dollar cover charge. Ten dollars was two and a half pitchers of beer at the Lampost. For us locals, it was an easy decision. The Yachties could keep their Rare Duck to themselves.
This time though, was different for me. I was standing near the entrance looking at the chalk-board sign in front of me. “Brooks Kerr at the Piano,” it said. I turned towards the entrance and met the bouncer who gave me a look that said: “You probably want to go left or right.” I had twelve dollars in my pocket. I showed the bouncer a ten and went in. The place was packed with yachties, and surprisingly, a few of my high-school friends. Brooks was at the piano. As I stood near the entrance—truly a fish out of water—the most striking thing to me was that absolutely no one was listening to the music. It is true that stride piano was not the music of my generation, neither black (Earth Wind and Fire, War) nor white (Allman Brothers, Cat Stevens), still, there was no avoiding the pure beauty of the sound of the piano in that room. With no one else listening, I took a seat at the bar and enjoyed my private concert.
He was without glasses, but it was clear that his eyesight had worsened. Even if he could have seen me, he would not have recognized me; I had grown and changed. I thought to introduce myself as a fellow summer-camper but quicky vanquished the thought. He would not have good memories of that time and I did not want to be associated with what had happened. I settled on asking him about his playing, and during his next break I did so. I discovered that he loved to talk about his playing and music in general. I was overwhelmed and tried dropping a few names of jazz musicians and styles in order to keep his interest. He smiled at me as if to say: “you don’t need to do that,” and I stopped, and was able to have a friendly conversation with him. I asked him: “What’s with the stride?” He laughed and said: “I got it from my teacher, Willy “The Lion” Smith. I learned with him. It’s the best bar music ever invented.”
He didn’t know it but that short conversation with him, and his playing amidst the yachties, and the single beer that I nursed until closing, and more than that, our shared experience at summer camp, helped me move onward to a life of significance. I had yet to turn right or left, and had met Brooks at the fulcrum, with my future in the balance, a future beyond life at the Ritz or the Lampost. He played his music; I dreamed of possibilities, of ascension, of being a cut above.
As for Jazz, “You who wonder where it came from, I can open up your eyes.”
Here is Brooks in Ellington mode.
Brooks’ teacher, Willy The Lion Smith, playing stride.
Lest one think that Willy the Lion Smith was African American and nothing else, listen to the following starting at minute 7:06. It is almost unbelievable but here it is, recorded for posterity. The entire video is fascinating.
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I fell into this story and forgot where I was. Transported.
Thank you for a wonderful and well told story. The musical interludes are a great touch, as are the life-lessons.