I Always Think of You (for my son Justin)

One of the great joys of being self-employed and working from home is being able to listen to anything I want to during the day. Whether it is NPR, or some sermon podcast, or something in my iTunes, I get to choose and sometimes I listen to nothing at all. On Friday I was working and decided to look at my iTunes play list. I decided to play some music Justin got for me back in 2004. The artist is Earl Zindars, The music is some really beautiful jazz. The albums I have are And Then Some and The Return.

In early January 2005 a small package addressed to me arrived in the mail. Inside were the above named CDs with a post-it note attached. Justin told me the story; at the time he was working at the Masonic Avenue Good Guys in San Francisco. As part of his job and sometimes just to be helpful, he sometimes went to customer’s homes to help them with their audio and/or video systems. Earl and his wife Anne came into the store and bought a TV from Justin and he went to their home to set it up for them. While Justin was there, the topic of music came up and Earl asked Justin what kind of music he liked in the jazz genre. Justin mentioned his favorite, Bill Evans. Earl went on to mention that he had worked with Bill and that they had been friends over the years and that Bill was at his wedding. He gave Justin two CDs. Justin enjoyed the music and contacted Earl to see if he could buy another copy of the same recordings for me. That is how I came to receive the recordings and Earl’s note.



Friday as I was listening, I got to thinking about how I was introduced to Earl Zindar’s music through Justin. I did a google search and I saw that he had passed away in August 2005 just 8 months after sending me the CDs and the note.


Reading about his life was pretty neat and I felt a bit nostalgic about the whole thing. Although I like jazz, I am not a true aficionado but I know what I like and I like Earl Zindars. Be sure and check him out.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/19/BAGAREA6QJ1.DTL


http://www.zindars.com/