Tuesday 12 August 2014
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樂手研究室》專訪鼓手黃偉勳（阿勳）
專題報導 SVHK消息 special feature 樂手研究室
文：奧利佛
很榮幸這次樂手研究室訪問到香港鼓手阿勳，從小十幾二十歲認識阿勳，以前一起玩團已經覺得他強到爆炸，從以前的小 band 仔到現在公認的鼓王一直看著他的轉變（其實他才三十出頭他...）。阿勳是我本人遇過最強的香港鼓手，沒有之一。他的強是能駕馭眾多不同曲風，不只「會打」，而且是要成為最強的那個。不說 Rock／Pop 那麼籠統的層次，Blues、Jazz、Funk、Emo、Hardcore、Reggae、電音，你說得出他都會。而他的「會」不是自己隨便會打個幾首就算，他是真的組了該曲風的創作樂團，而處於該領域的頂尖地位。你看他參與過的樂團，看他的履歷，你會嚇到尿褲子（很納悶他怎麼有時間打那麼多團...），從 Hardcore 班霸 King Ly Chee，Emo 傳奇 Whence He Came、藍調名牌 Helter Skelter，到 K 歌之王陳奕迅、容祖兒、黃耀明、黃家強，甚至最近他玩的是 Reggae，還當DJ 打碟......你永遠不知道阿勳的極限在哪裏。我想很多人有興趣知道他的成長之路以及鼓件的需求配置。
阿勳@容祖兒演唱會
先來看一下阿勳的背景：
黃偉勳 (Stephane S. Wong)，又名阿勳／阿 Funn，畢業於演藝學院繪景系。自8歲開始學習鼓擊至今，並於中學時代開始學習吉他、口琴、貝斯及組織樂團。曾參與之樂團有：大頭佛、King Ly Chee、Whence he came、Charisma、Helter Skelter、野仔、Tuesday Morning Surfing Club 等。阿勳於1998年蒲窩青少年樂隊比賽及2000年黃金蒙馬特音樂節中奪得「最佳鼓手」的獎項。現活躍於流行音樂樂壇，擔任音樂會鼓手一職及錄音製作，曾參與陳奕迅、容祖兒、何韻詩、麥浚龍、林一峰、At 17、黃家強及楊千嬅等歌手合作。其他合作的歌手或音樂人單位有：劉德華、草蜢、林憶蓮、達明一派、鄭秀文、香港小交響樂團、謝霆鋒、PixelToy、拜金小姐、人山人海、青山大樂隊、藍奕邦、范曉萱、蔡健雅、Eric Kwok等等。更經常與不同的音樂單位到美加、澳洲、中國和亞洲等地演出。阿勳現為盧凱彤 Ellen and the Ripples Band 成員，香港雷鬼樂團 Sensi Lion 與大頭佛的鼓手，最近常為參與歌手容祖兒、藍奕邦、何韻詩、黃耀明、黃家強、草蜢等等的巡演與錄音工作。一直熱愛 Reggae 及 Drum n Bass 音樂的阿勳，於2006年與志同道合的 DJ 朋友組成了 Heavy Hong Kong，並以此兩種音樂為骨幹，作不定期的打碟演出，分身 DJ Stef:funn 從此誕生。2011年，阿勳更創辦了活動團體 Trenchtown Music HK， 為香港本地和外地邀請到港的音樂人、樂團和 DJ，舉辦大大小小不同形式的音樂會和活動。阿勳早於2006開始，被國際品牌 Zildjian 選為香港區其中一位代言人。
問：從甚麼時候開始聽音樂與學習打鼓，以及後來開始玩樂團？音樂路上重要的啓蒙導師有哪幾位？
勳：我大概3歲開始聽音樂。因為爸爸很愛聽音樂，常在家播放，所以小時候也是聽 Santana、Michael Jackson、The Beatles、Carpenters、Bee Gees 等等和70－80 年代的音樂。說到我音樂路上重要的啓蒙導師，第一位一定是我爸爸，他除了喜歡聽音樂，年青時還有打鼓！順理成章，他便是我第一位老師，然後在我10－18歲時，便跟了兩位老師正式學鼓，其中一位是何日君（80年代香港知名樂團小島樂隊的鼓手），而他對我的影響亦比較大。
我從8歲開始學鼓，原因是在電視看到Beyond，看到鼓和鼓手（葉世榮）很酷，然後便請求爸爸教我打鼓，最初只是在家用筷子敲打放玩具的箱子，由於當時我天天也一邊聽 Beyond的歌一邊瘋狂地打著「鼓」，於是在我九歲那年，爸媽便把我送到一家叫「嘉林琴行」的地方正式開始學鼓和學看樂譜了，哈哈！值得一題的是因為爸爸看到我整天在打箱子，後來有一次帶我去玩具反斗城買了一套玩具鼓給我。本來他以為我只是玩玩而已，但我整天都在打那套玩具鼓，而後來到我11歲那年，有天我回家，發現家裡放了一套鼓！原來爸爸看到我那麼認真，買了一套二手的 Yamaha 鼓組給我！（可想當時候對我有多震撼～）這便是我人生第一套鼓，直到現在我也有好好收藏它。同樣是11歲那年，因為媽媽教會舉辦一個音樂會，媽媽便叫我跟那隊菲律賓人樂隊一起表演幾首歌（我媽媽是菲律賓人），這便是我第一次跟樂隊演奏！在那好幾年，我想是因為年紀比較小，所以就只能偶爾跟這教會樂團玩音樂，當然，這班叔叔也教會了我一些音樂。就這樣一直到我16歲的時候，因中學有一個晚會要找一組樂團表演，於是我跟幾位同學組了一隊臨時樂團在這個晚會中表演，雖然在表演後我們也沒有再一起玩了......但因為這晚會，有幾位學長問我有沒有興趣加入他們的樂團，因為他們找不到鼓手，於是我答應了，而這就是大頭佛樂團的誕生！已經是1997年的事了！
問：你常用的鼓組配件有哪些？現場演出與錄音用的配件會有很大差別嗎？你自己有沒有甚麼特別的收藏品？
勳：常用的鼓組配件是一套70s 的橘色透明 LUDWIG “VISTALITE” 鼓（因為我喜歡橘色和 Jon Bonham）
(22” Bass Drum, 13” Tom, 16” Floor Tom, 18” Floor Tom)
阿勳的 LUDWIG “VISTALITE”
Snare:
Ludwig 14x6.5 Black Magic,
Tama 14x6.5 Bubinga Snare,
Ludwig Keystone Series 14x8 Snare,
OCDP Maple Shell 14x6.5 Snare,
Tama StarClassic 14x6.5 Maple Snare,
Canopus Custom Shop “Rasta Snare” 14x6.5
阿勳常用的 Snare
Cymbals: (with Zildjian Endorsement)
15” K Light Hi-hat,
19” K Hybrid Trash Smash,
20” A Custom EFX,
20” K Crash Ride,
19" A Zildjian Armand "Beautiful Baby" Ride with 3 Rivets,
19” K Custom Hybrid China,
16” A Custom Rezo Crash,
22” K Custom Dark Complex Ride,
22” K Light Ride,
6” Zil-bel.
Electric Drum Pads:
1.Alesis Control Pad with Ableton Live
2. Nord Drums
阿勳的 Alesis Control Pad with Ableton Live 擺放位置（左上）
DrumHeads:
Evans:
Snare:
-ST for Ludwig Black Magic, Tama Bubinga / OCDP Maple Snare
-EC Snare for Ludwig Keystone Series 14x8 Snare / TamaStarClassic 14x6.5 Maple Snare (For my special “soft and low” tuning)
-Hydraulic for Canopus Rasta Snare
Toms: EC2 clear
Bassdrum: Emad Clear
Drumsticks: Ludwig 5B or Vater 5B
特別收藏品是有：
1.Ludwig Black Magic 14x6.5 100th year anniversary special edition snare.
2.Canopus Custom Shop 'Rasta' Transparent 14x6 Snare
阿勳的 Ludwig Black Magic 14x6.5 100th year anniversary special edition snare
阿勳的 Canopus Custom Shop 'Rasta' Transparent 14x6 Snare
錄音跟現場演出其實會有點分別，因為現場演出的時候要處理不同風格的歌，Set up 會比較多。但錄音的時候會比較簡單，還喜歡用另外的 Yamaha Recording Custom 去錄！
阿勳錄音時的 Setting
問：你玩過那麼多不同風格的樂團，器材需求上會有很大差別嗎？可否簡述？你自己其實最喜歡哪種曲風？你認為自己的風格是屬於哪一類鼓手？
勳：器材需求上沒有太大分別，因為平常也會用真鼓加電鼓。但每次跟人山人海和黃耀明合作也會用上很多電鼓的部分，最近一次就把 Alesis Control Pad 代替13”tomtom 的位置。
阿勳的 Setting（黃耀明及人山人海）
音樂風格上我最喜歡 Funk 跟 Emo rock 的類型， 而我自己覺得我的風格大概是 Rock 吧。而我最喜歡的鼓手有 Red Hot Chili Peppers 的 Chad Smith、Foo Fighters 的 Taylor Hawkins、Dave Grohl 和 Led Zeppelin 的 Jon Bonham。
阿勳的演唱會 Setting
問：平常會做甚麼鼓技練習？
練習方面，我自己很喜歡做16分音的練習，拿著鼓棒打大腿、枕頭，不一定是需要真的打鼓，這個練習主要是左右手的平衡，與手腕力量，比較是一個機械性的練習，讓手部 Warm up。除此以外我也會聽著節拍器，練習的內容是聽著拍子去自由 Fill in，創作一些 Beats 一些 Pattern。因為工作原故，常常也是跟樂團、歌手或自己的樂隊一起排練， 所以會比較喜歡多留意怎樣去創作和配合其他樂手，因為我覺得去當一位Musical 和動聽的鼓手，會比較有趣。
在 Fringe Club 演出的阿勳
問：你一路從玩樂團的 band 仔，後來成為職業樂手，成為各流行藝人的演奏班底。這其實是很夢幻的經歷，也是很多學鼓的人的夢想。請簡述你當中轉變的經歷；要成為職業樂手需要甚麼條件？
勳：我覺得我最幸福和令我意外的，就是在2003年黃家強先生帶我「入行」。我小時候是因為 Beyond 才去學鼓，沒有想過長大後會幫 Beyond 成員弄音樂和工作！以前玩自己的樂團跟後來成為職業樂手，分別真的很大。因為自己的團，是弄自己的音樂，比較自由。但當了樂手後，會有很多東西需要配合：除了反應要快，也要用最短的時間去表達自己的想法和打法來令 Band leader 和歌手滿意。同時也要用自己的 Beats 和技能，令歌手和其他樂手覺得安穩和舒服，但同一時間，也要投放自己的元素和特色，當中的平衡並不容易。
阿勳的演唱會 Setting
問：可否給年輕樂手一些建議？
勳：多練習！多聽不同年代、不同風格的歌，甚麼都要聽（這很重要！），然後從聽到的，學習其他人的打法和處理手法......漸漸就會成為自己的 Library 和風格。
阿勳的網址：https://www.facebook.com/Steffunn
Like Repost Like：0 View：294 2014年8月12日 專題報導 SVHK消息 special feature 樂手研究室 Stef:funn Stephane S. Wong SVHK 樂手研究室 阿勳 音樂 香港 香港獨立音樂 黃偉勳
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Sunday 10 August 2014
The Brazilian Bus Magnate Who’s Buying Up All the World’s Vinyl Records
Paul Mawhinney, a former music-store owner in Pittsburgh, spent more than 40 years amassing a collection of some three million LPs and 45s, many of them bargain-bin rejects that had been thoroughly forgotten. The world’s indifference, he believed, made even the most neglected records precious: music that hadn’t been transferred to digital files would vanish forever unless someone bought his collection and preserved it.
Mawhinney spent about two decades trying to find someone who agreed. He struck a deal for $28.5 million in the late 1990s with the Internet retailer CDNow, he says, but the sale of his collection fell through when the dot-com bubble started to quiver. He contacted the Library of Congress, but negotiations fizzled. In 2008 he auctioned the collection on eBay for $3,002,150, but the winning bidder turned out to be an unsuspecting Irishman who said his account had been hacked.
Then last year, a friend of Mawhinney’s pointed him toward a classified ad in the back of Billboard magazine:
Freitas is a wealthy businessman who, since he was a child, has been unable to stop buying records. ‘I’ve gone to therapy for 40 years to try to explain this to myself.’
RECORD COLLECTIONS. We BUY any record collection. Any style of music. We pay HIGHER prices than anyone else.
That fall, eight empty semitrailers, each 53 feet long, arrived outside Mawhinney’s warehouse in Pittsburgh. The convoy left, heavy with vinyl. Mawhinney never met the buyer.
“I don’t know a thing about him — nothing,” Mawhinney told me. “I just know all the records were shipped to Brazil.”
Just weeks before, Murray Gershenz, one of the most celebrated collectors on the West Coast and owner of the Music Man Murray record store in Los Angeles, died at 91. For years, he, too, had been shopping his collection around, hoping it might end up in a museum or a public library. “That hasn’t worked out,” The Los Angeles Times reported in 2010, “so his next stop could be the Dumpster.” But in his final months, Gershenz agreed to sell his entire collection to an anonymous buyer. “A man came in with money, enough money,” his son, Irving, told The New York Times. “And it seemed like he was going to give it a good home.”
Those records, too, were shipped to Brazil. So were the inventories of several iconic music stores, including Colony Records, that glorious mess of LP bins and sheet-music racks that was a Times Square landmark for 64 years. The store closed its doors for good in the fall of 2012, but every single record left in the building — about 200,000 in all — ended up with a single collector, a man driven to get his hands on all the records in the world.
In an office near the back of his 25,000-square-foot warehouse in São Paolo, Zero Freitas, 62, slipped into a chair, grabbed one of the LPs stacked on a table and examined its track list. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, khaki shorts and a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt; his gray hair was thin on top but curled along his collar in the back. Studying the song list, he appeared vaguely professorial. In truth, Freitas is a wealthy businessman who, since he was a child, has been unable to stop buying records. “I’ve gone to therapy for 40 years to try to explain this to myself,” he said.
His compulsion to buy records, he says, is tied up in childhood memories: a hi-fi stereo his father bought when Freitas was 5 and the 200 albums the seller threw in as part of the deal. Freitas was an adolescent in December 1964 when he bought his first record, a new release: “Roberto Carlos Sings to the Children,” by a singer who would go on to become one of Brazil’s most popular recording stars. By the time he finished high school, Freitas owned roughly 3,000 records.
After studying music composition in college, he took over the family business, a private bus line that serves the São Paulo suburbs. By age 30, he had about 30,000 records. About 10 years later, his bus company expanded, making him rich. Not long after that, he split up with his wife, and the pace of his buying exploded. “Maybe it’s because I was alone,” Freitas said. “I don’t know.” He soon had a collection in the six figures; his best guess at a current total is several million albums.
Recently, Freitas hired a dozen college interns to help him bring some logic to his obsession. In the warehouse office, seven of them were busy at individual workstations; one reached into a crate of LPs marked “PW #1,425” and fished out a record. She removed the disc from its sleeve and cleaned the vinyl with a soft cloth before handing the album to the young man next to her. He ducked into a black-curtained booth and snapped a picture of the cover. Eventually the record made its way through the assembly line of interns, and its information was logged into a computer database. An intern typed the name of the artist (the Animals), the title (“Animalism”), year of release (1966), record label (MGM) and — referencing the tag on the crate the record was pulled from — noted that it once belonged to Paulette Weiss, a New York music critic whose collection of 4,000 albums Freitas recently purchased.
For the truly compulsive hobbyist, there comes a time when a collection gathers weight — metaphysical, existential weight.
The interns can collectively catalog about 500 records per day — a Sisyphean rate, as it happens, because Freitas has been burying them with new acquisitions. Between June and November of last year, more than a dozen 40-foot-long shipping containers arrived, each holding more than 100,000 newly purchased records. Though the warehouse was originally the home of his second business — a company that provides sound and lighting systems for rock concerts and other big events — these days the sound boards and light booms are far outnumbered by the vinyl.
Many of the records come from a team of international scouts Freitas employs to negotiate his deals. They’re scattered across the globe — New York, Mexico City, South Africa, Nigeria, Cairo. The brassy jazz the interns were listening to on the office turntable was from his man in Havana, who so far has shipped him about 100,000 Cuban albums — close to everything ever recorded there, Freitas estimated. He and the interns joke that the island is rising in the Caribbean because of all the weight Freitas has hauled away.
Allan Bastos, who for years has served as Freitas’s New York buyer, was visiting São Paulo and joined us that afternoon in the warehouse office. Bastos, a Brazilian who studied business at the University of Michigan, used to collect records himself, often posting them for sale on eBay. In 2006, he noticed that a single buyer — Freitas — was snapping up virtually every record he listed. He has been buying records for him ever since, focusing on U.S. collections. He has purchased stockpiles from aging record executives and retired music critics, as well as from the occasional celebrity (he bought the record collection of Bob Hope from his daughter about 10 years after Hope died). This summer Bastos moved to Paris, where he’ll buy European records for Freitas.
Bastos looked over the shoulder of an intern, who was entering the information from another album into the computer.
“This will take years and years,” Bastos said of the cataloging effort. “Probably 20 years, I guess.”
Twenty years — if Freitas stops buying records.
Collecting has always been a solitary pursuit for Freitas, and one he keeps to himself. When he bought the remaining stock of the legendary Modern Sound record store in Rio de Janeiro a couple of years ago, a Brazilian newspaper reported that the buyer was a Japanese collector — an identity Bastos invented to protect Freitas’s anonymity. His collection hasn’t been publicized, even within Brazil. Few of his fellow vinyl enthusiasts are aware of the extent of his holdings, partly because Freitas never listed any of his records for sale.
But in 2012, Bob George, a music archivist in New York, traveled with Bastos to São Paulo to prepare for Brazilian World Music Day, a celebration that George organized, and together they visited Freitas’s home and warehouse; the breadth of the collection astonished George. He was reminded of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate who lusted after seemingly every piece of art on the world market and then kept expanding his private castle to house all of it.
“What’s the good of having it,” George remembers telling Freitas, “if you can’t do something with it or share it?”
The question nagged at Freitas. For the truly compulsive hobbyist, there comes a time when a collection gathers weight — metaphysical, existential weight. It becomes as much a source of anxiety as of joy. Freitas in recent years had become increasingly attracted to mystic traditions — Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist. In his house, he and his second wife created a meditation room, and they began taking spiritual vacations to India and Egypt. But the teachings he admired didn’t always jibe with his life as a collector — acquiring, possessing, never letting go. Every new record he bought seemed to whisper in his ear: What, ultimately, do you want to do with all this stuff?
He found a possible model in George, who in 1985 converted his private collection of some 47,000 records into a publicly accessible resource called the ARChive of Contemporary Music. That collection has grown to include roughly 2.2 million tapes, records and compact discs. Musicologists, record companies and filmmakers regularly consult the nonprofit archive seeking hard-to-find songs. In 2009 George entered into a partnership with Columbia University, and his archive has attracted support from many musicians, who donate recordings, money or both. The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has provided funding for the archive’s collection of early blues recordings. David Bowie, Paul Simon, Nile Rodgers, Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme all sit on its board.
Freitas has recently begun preparing his warehouse for his own venture, which he has dubbed Emporium Musical. Last year, he got federal authorization to import used records — an activity that hadn’t been explicitly allowed by Brazilian trade officials until now. Once the archive is registered as a nonprofit, Freitas will shift his collection over to the Emporium. Eventually he envisions it as a sort of library, with listening stations set up among the thousands of shelves. If he has duplicate copies of records, patrons will be able to check out copies to take home.
Some of those records are highly valuable. In Freitas’s living room, a coffee table was covered with recently acquired rarities. On top of a stack of 45s sat “Barbie,” a 1962 single by Kenny and the Cadets, a short-lived group featuring the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson on lead vocals and, as backup singers, Wilson’s brother Carl and their mother, Audree. In the same stack was another single — “Heartache Souvenirs"/"Chicken Shack,” by William Powell — that has fetched as much as $5,000 on eBay. Nearby sat a Cuban album by Ivette Hernandez, a pianist who left Cuba after Fidel Castro took power; Hernandez’s likeness on the cover was emblazoned with a bold black stamp that read, in Spanish, “Traitor to the Cuban Revolution.”
While Freitas thumbed through those records, Bastos was warning of a future in which some music might disappear unnoticed. Most of the American and British records Freitas has collected have already been digitally preserved. But in countries like Brazil, Cuba and Nigeria, Bastos estimated, up to 80 percent of recorded music from the mid-20th century has never been transferred. In many places, he said, vinyl is it, and it’s increasingly hard to find. Freitas slumped, then covered his face with his hands and emitted a low, rumbling groan. “It’s very important to save this,” he said. “Very important.”
Freitas is negotiating a deal to purchase and digitize thousands of Brazilian 78 r.p.m. recordings, many of which date to the early 1900s, and he expects to digitize some of the rarest records in his collection shortly thereafter. But he said he could more effectively save the music by protecting the existing vinyl originals in a secure, fireproof facility. “Vinyl is very durable,” he said. “If you store them vertically, out of the sun, in a temperature-controlled environment, they can pretty much last forever. They aren’t like compact discs, which are actually very fragile.”
In his quest to save obscure music, Bastos told me, Freitas sometimes buys records he doesn’t realize he already owns. This spring he finally acquiesced to Bastos’s pleas to sell some of his duplicate records, which make up as much as 30 percent of his total collection, online.
“I said, ‘Come on, you have 10 copies of the same album — let’s sell four or five!’ ” Bastos said.
Freitas smiled and shrugged. “Yes, but all of those 10 copies are different,” he countered. Then he chuckled, as if recognizing how illogical his position might sound.
Freitas and the interns joke that the island is rising in the Caribbean because of all the weight he has hauled away.
In March, he began boxing up 10,000 copies of Brazilian LPs to send to George in an exchange between the emerging public archive and its inspirational model. It was a modest first step, but significant. Freitas had begun to let go.
Earlier this year, Freitas and Bastos stopped into Eric Discos, a used-record store in São Paulo that Freitas frequents. “I put some things aside for you,” the owner, Eric Crauford, told him. The men walked next door, where Crauford lives. Hundreds of records and dozens of CDs teetered in precarious stacks — jazz, heavy metal, pop, easy listening — all for Freitas.
Sometimes Freitas seems ashamed of his own eclecticism. “A real collector,” he told me, is someone who targets specific records, or sticks to a particular genre. But Freitas hates to filter his purchases. Bastos once stumbled upon an appealing collection that came with 15,000 polka albums. He called Freitas to see if it was a deal breaker. “Zero was asking me about specific polka artists, whether they were in the collection or not,” Bastos remembered. “He has this amazing knowledge of every kind of music.”
That afternoon, Freitas purchased Crauford’s selections without inspecting them, as he always does. He told Crauford he’d send someone later in the week to pick them up and deliver them to his house. Bastos listened to the exchange without comment but noted the destination of the records — Freitas’s residence, not the archive’s warehouse. He was worried that the collector’s compulsions might be getting in the way of the archiving efforts. “Zero isn’t taking too many of the records to his house, is he?” Bastos had asked a woman who helps Freitas manage his cataloging operation.
No, she told him. But almost every time Freitas picked up a record at the archive, he’d tell a whole story about it. Often, she said, he’d become overwhelmed with emotion. “It’s like he almost cries with every record he sees,” she told him.
Freitas’s desire to own all the music in the world is clearly tangled up in something that, even after all these years, remains tender and raw. Maybe it’s the nostalgia triggered by the songs on that first Roberto Carlos album he bought, or perhaps it stretches back to the 200 albums his parents kept when he was small — a microcollection that was damaged in a flood long ago but that, as an adult, he painstakingly recreated, album by album.
After the trip to Eric Discos, I descended into Freitas’s basement, where he keeps a few thousand cherry-picked records, a private stash he doesn’t share with the archive. Aside from a little area reserved for a half-assembled drum kit, a couple of guitars, keyboards and amps, the room was a labyrinth of floor-to-ceiling shelving units filled with records.
He walked deep into an aisle in search of the first LP he ever bought, the 1964 Roberto Carlos record. He pulled it from the shelf, turning it slowly in his hands, staring at the cover as if it were an irreplaceable artifact — as if he did not, in fact, own 1,793 additional copies of albums by Roberto Carlos, the artist who always has, and always will, occupy more space in his collection than anyone else.
Nearby sat a box of records he hadn’t shelved yet. They came from the collection of a man named Paulo Santos, a Brazilian jazz critic and D.J. who lived in Washington during the 1950s and who was friendly with some of the giants of jazz and modern classical music. Freitas thumbed through one album after another — Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Leonard Bernstein, Dave Brubeck. The records were signed, and not with simple autographs; the artists had written affectionate messages to Santos, a man they obviously respected.
“These dedications are so personal,” Freitas said, almost whispering.
He held the Ellington record for an extended moment, reading the inscription, then scanning the liner notes. Behind his glasses, his eyes looked slightly red and watery, as if something was irritating them. Dust, maybe. But the record was perfectly clean.
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