Ella Fitzgerald
Despite Diana's magnificent performances of so many works in the classical repertoire, her true love in music was jazz. While at Eastman School of Mucus (as everyone half-jokingly called it), she and others would often go to NY City on the weekends to hear some of the new "up and coming" performers including Nat King Cole, Fats Waller, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner and others.
In 1942-43, Eastman began to offer a courses in jazz. Writing an essay about why the topic was of interest was a requirement for consideration to attend this course. Among the souvenirs Diana kept from her days at ESM is the rough (pencil) draft of her essay.
Over the course of the 41 years we were married, jazz was one subject we’d occasionally discuss. In 2004 we happened upon some performances of the newer Loussier Trio. The review i submitted to Leonardo was the result of many of our discussions.
One quick personal note on Garner. By autumn of 1975, Diana and I went to lunch at the Beverly Hills (Rodeo Drive) Brown Derby with Aunt Selma.
Not too long after we we’d ordered, Diana noticed a guy being seated a few tables away and said, “Look, the gentleman seated behind Richard over there in the gray suit. That’s Erroll Garner.” When Aunt Selma drew a blank Diana explained how she met him years earlier in NYC and how she always loved his music. Aunt Selma finally seemed to remember the song “Misty.”
When Aunt Selma suggested Diana go over and tell him how much she enjoyed his music, something told her otherwise. Instead she told Aunt Selma that, as much as she wanted to tell him how much she admired him, she knew he probably wanted privacy so she never said anything to him.
In mid-2002, Diana found a biography from the local library about Garner with a chronology showing that, just a few weeks before we saw him, he was told by his doctors that he had inoperable tumors. Diana’s instinct was correct. He most likely did not want to have his own personal thoughts intruded upon by anyone talking about music.
A few years later, again in Beverly Hills, Diana and Winnie went to pick up a few items at Thrifty Drugs on our way back from dinner at the Magic Pan (located a block or two away from there). They were waiting second in line in the only check-out line open at the time and some non-descript elderly lady ahead of them — they did not get a good look at her and thought, at first, she was someone’s maid — was fumbling through her change purse to pay for a few bottles of wine. She had handed the clerk a pair of $50 bills but the total came to an extra few cents; well under a dollar.
When Winnie and Diana scrounged up the additional change, the lady was so grateful that she turned to them and, thanking them profusely, said, “Give this young lady your name and address so I can have one of my albums sent to you.”
Diana was about to say, “No, give YOUR name and address to her and I’ll have one of MY albums sent to YOU” but, before she could get the words out, Winnie stopped her and whispered, “Di, that’s Ella Fitzgerald … and I really would like to have one of her albums!”
Had I not witnessed the scene, I would not have believed the tale.
Even up to the last few weeks before her stroke, Diana enjoyed listening to all genres of music including the 2005 tribute by Hiromi Uehara to one of her “heroes,” Oscar Peterson who had died some months earlier.