Editorials

It’s May Day today, a traditional holiday in a wide spectrum of traditions. For the Old Left and much of the rest of the world, it’s a Labor Day, a day for assertive marching and waving red flags. The ILWU and friends are honoring the old-school customs by trying to shut down shipping on the Left Coast to protest the war in Iraq. Pre-left traditions from Olde England were celebrated by gathering baskets of spring flowers to hang anonymously on the doorknobs of sweethearts and friends. Even in my innocent college days first year students left May baskets for favorite seniors—do they still do that, I wonder? 

At the offices of the Planet, we’re having our own celebration, of surviving five years of publication and of our new format: now actually daily on the Internet, with print issues in expanded length now once a week on Thursdays. Naysayers thought we wouldn’t last a year. We’re still here, and happy to be here. 

But in the words of the Book of Common Prayer, “in the midst of life we are in death.”  

This year’s celebration is touched with sadness, since we learned on Tuesday of the death on Sunday of someone who made a major contribution to our ability to succeed in what we were trying to accomplish. That’s not the kind of thing people usually say about the landlord, but Bob Sugimoto, who lived upstairs from our office for most of our five years here, was a very special guy. 

He was a proud veteran of World War II. The exploits of Japanese-Americans in Europe in that era are well known, but Bob served in the Pacific. He worked in radio communications, and loved to tell the story of getting out of the service in Los Angeles entitled to educational benefits under the G.I. Bill, seeing a sign somewhere about that new thing, television, and signing up for training. He said he’d had the first television repair business in Berkeley—our building, which he had built, had been his shop, and his family lived in the upstairs apartment. When we moved in, a storage building in the back yard was packed with vintage TVs which he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of.  

The first couple of years his beloved wife Keiko lived upstairs too, but she died, quickly and unexpectedly, and Bob missed her sorely. He told us he’d always planned to be the first to go—she was 10 years younger—so it was a shock to be left alone. 

But he was tough and independent, so he went on living here alone, walking to the Berkeley Bowl and neighborhood Japanese restaurants. Every year he grew a few vegetables in the neat raised beds in the back yard, mostly tomatoes and beans, which he generously shared with the Planet staff. He said he’d grown up on a California farm, like many Japanese-Americans in the pre-war generation, and agriculture was in his blood. At Christmas and on our anniversaries he’d deliver a nice box of See’s chocolates, contents hand-selected first by Keiko and then by a younger family member. His devoted children and grandchildren came around frequently to check on him, but he enjoyed life on his own until close to the end.  

He liked chatting with us, and we liked hearing his stories. He personally took excellent care of our offices. We’ll miss him. 

And the same day we got the sad news about Bob we also learned of the death of another good friend of the O’Malley family, someone who was admired and loved both in the Bay Area and around the world. Hal Stein was a terrific saxophone player who’d played with most of the greats in his long career. Friends and fans will be surprised to hear that he was almost eighty, since he always had a lively youthful attitude. 

His training was originally classical—he went to Julliard and the Manhattan School of Music—but when he tuned into jazz it became his passion. He was very much a part of the first exciting era of the bebop revolution in New York in the forties, while he was still in high school. He enjoyed a stint in Japan as part of the U.S. Army band during the Korean War. His re-issued records were still big sellers there a few years back, and he did a return tour not too long ago.  

He worked in Las Vegas during the heyday of live jazz in night clubs, and when that scene cooled off in the early seventies he moved to the Bay Area. Gigs for jazz musicians here and elsewhere have been shrinking in the last couple of decades, but Hal and his groups played most of the major venues most of the time, and he had occasional tours in Europe, where jazz is still appreciated. In these years he also tapped his great skill as a teacher, launching a number of performers who became major successes.  

One of them, vocalist Kim Nalley, is now the proprietor of Jazz at Pearl’s in San Francisco. In an email this week she called Hal Stein “the amazing tenor saxophonist with the most lyrical bebop lines.” She described him as “a handsome man with a winning smile” and said that “he also was a gifted mentor and teacher. As a young girl he would give me lessons for almost nothing and spend hours with me teaching me music.” Hal played at Pearl’s many times in recent years. 

When he suspected that lung cancer was finally going to do him in, he organized some house concerts for old friends, featuring musicians he thought had been a bit neglected. He gave his guest artists one set alone, and played a set himself, accompanied by what he called a “brief, homey lecture” on how to listen to jazz. 

We went to see him at home during his final illness. He was still making jokes, but was clearly sad because he couldn’t blow any longer, and making music was his life. We asked if he wanted us to do anything for him. 

“Well, could you see that the boys in my band get work?” he said. That’s a very tall order, given the parlous condition of jazz venues these days, but we said we’d try our best. His “boys” are some very fine jazz musicians in their own right.  

Lee Bloom told us that “Hal was a charming, passionate musician; a gifted improviser and a dedicated teacher who made lots of great jazz and mentored many younger players during his long career. I feel privileged to have been his friend, pianist and collaborator for the past seven-plus years and will miss him terribly.” Others in the Hal Stein Quartet in recent years were John Wiitala on bass and Danny Spencer on drums.  

They’re all well worth seeking out. The best tribute to the many wonderful evenings Hal Stein gave the music world would be to carry on his tradition with some of the excellent talent he nurtured in his last decades. Jazz fans and promoters, are you listening?