Unk always has a good story to tell over bourbon. I was in Baltimore and he was glad to see me, so one thing led to another. There are few things so satisfying as hanging out with grumpy old men with nothing to prove, and it's even better when they are not fools. Unk is all that and then some.
As we sat and talked over the hours in a kind of spontaneous back and forth, we got around to history and his old college days. It turned out that he and my father went to UConn Stearns Storrs back when it was about hmm, let me do the math 1/4 of 1% black. This is one of the reasons I didn't know much about black fraternities and sororities growing up. Theirs was not. In fact, they pledged Beta Sig which was purposefully the first integrated fraternity at the university. The Beta Sigs became a big hit socially and they had the ultimate parties.
Have you ever asked somebody who the greatest jazz players were and they started off with Stan Getz? Nothing wrong with Getz of course, he is a great. But when the list gets into Gerry Mulligan ahead of Miles Davis, then you are clearly dealing with white jazz. You know the drill. Bill Evans, Chet Baker, Bix Biederbeck, Cal Tjader - like the guy you are asking is making a studied effort to avoid naming the first black jazz musician. It may be that they're gaming you, or it might turn out that they are on the cutting edge for a dude their age. You see, the Beta Sigs had the greatest parties because halfway between Boston and NY was UConn, and one of the Beta Sigs was some of these white jazz musicians' manager. So every once in a while they found themselves crashing at the Beta Sig house with all the booze they could handle, provided they play a short set.
This moment in the history of integration is brought to you by the Bowen Family Trust.
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