Page 9 - The Jazzsipper Novel

8

THE JAZZ SIPPER

His mother was cool like that, some of the best memories he had of his
mother was their jazz jam sessions. His mother introduced him to the lives,the
souls and the idiosyncrasies of the jazz greats. The pass and present, through
their musical sounds and style, his senses took on a life of their own. He
remembered when she passed that he wanted to keep something of his
mothers, so he took two books out of her draw. He had seen her read them
from time to time. One was the Bible and the other was The Skilled Helper,
by Gerard Egan. He also kept his mother’s complete Jazz Collection. These
two books and his early education in Jazz became the learning foundations
of his life. This was what he used to build his understanding and principles
about life, love, human nature and spirituality.

The one common dominator of all three areas of his learning foundations
was that Vance felt that all three when put together gave him a feeling of inner
strength, like he was always in the know, like he was hip. Vance remembered
hearing this cat that called himself an etymologist’s, state that he believed the
terms hip, hep, hepcat and "hip cat" derived from the West African Wolof
language word hepicat. This means “one who has his eyes open”. And Vance
felt exactly that way; his eyes were open when he put his learning foundations
together. Vance was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the fall of 1961
September 25th. He got his nickname “Jazz” when he was only 13 years old.
A friend of his name Babu, who was two years older than he was, gave him
the name during one of their many conversations. Vance had told him all he
knew about Jazz and his desires to one day own a Jazz Club.

He met Babu in youth camp. Babu was a South Asian term of respect
(meaning 'boss') or endearment ('brother') his name was given to him by his
father, whom met his mother while in the Army during Vietnam and after the