As I write, a record dealer I’ve never met is combing through boxes of my lifelong collection of Long Playing (LP) records. About 2000 LP’s total.

This morning I remembered one LP I want to keep. It is Mel Lewis’s Mel Lewis and Friends LP. Mel autographed it for me when I interviewed him for Modern Drummer. Mel was, I believe, my second feature MD interview.

But that day was also a landmark, a radical, monumental shift in my life. Everything, e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g, I believed about becoming a successful professional drummer exploded. Gone without a trace. Dust.

I’ll explain in another blog entry.

Mel was a drum hero, one of the best players, and a great, generous man. Mel was also, I learned much later, born on the same day as my Uncle Bob, the one person in my life who started me on my lifelong love of drums.

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