So, who’s left now that Dave Brubeck is dead?

In the jazz world, no one that I care about. Miles died years ago. Paul Desmond, too. Gene Ammons has been gone for decades.

As for other musical genres, well, Dylan lives, but I haven’t liked any of his recent work.

Brubeck, though, was special. He was my introduction to jazz, thanks to Judi Thomas who, at 15 to my 16, was light years ahead of me in many ways and owning the “Time Out” album was just one of them.

I can still remember the first time I heard it: We were in Judi’s parents’ den that she could close off completely from the outside world with red drapes, and we were drinking coffee laced with Nestle’s Quik, God knows why, and she told me to sit, shut up and listen and she put on the “Time Out” album and my reaction to the opening piece, “Blue Rondo ala Turk” was immediate:

“What the heck is that?”

It was fantastic but the next piece, “Strange Meadowlark,” has been my favorite piece of music ever since then and that’s more than 50 years.

A bit more than 30 years ago, just before Brubeck played Alice Tully Hall in New York in what would be Paul Desmond’s last concert before his death, I did a phone interview with Brubeck. He was home in Connecticut, I was home in Tenafly, N.J., and before I called, I put on “Time Out” (the vinyl) and listed to “Strange Meadowlark” and when I got him on the phone, I told him how much that piece meant to me. He was very gracious about it.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised: Last week, on WGBH television, George Wein, who invented the Newport Jazz Festival, talked about Brubeck and what a gracious person he was, how he always respected the people with whom he worked – producers, promoters, musicians – and his audience.

I don’t remember the conversation with Brubeck and I have no copy of the story, but I do remember being glad I’d had the opportunity to speak with him.

My friend Steven had the “Time Out” album, too, in 1963, and I remember him talking about the rumors that Brubeck and Desmond and Joe Morello and Gene Wright smoked (gasp) marijuana. Steven said this:

“Who cares? If they can make music like that, let ‘em smoke anything they want.”

I only saw Brubeck play that one time, at Alice Tully Hall, and I remember how Desmond had trouble standing, how he leaned against the piano and you could tell he wasn’t well, or I could tell because Brubeck had spoken about it when we talked, but maybe nobody else could, I don’t know.

Years later, in a book called “Meet me at Jim and Andy’s,” a book about a music club in New York in the ‘50s, I read an interesting piece about Desmond and what a cosmopolitan guy he was and it made me wish I had met him, or at least interviewed him.

And all of this reminds me of two Charlie Mingus stories I’ve never told you:

The first involves the New York City Jazzmobile which no longer exists and probably hasn’t for decades.

I was working at the Herald News in Passaic, writing a daily column, and I read about the Jazzmobile and its trips around the city bearing musicians who would play from a platform on wheels when the ‘mobile stopped at street corners.

I found it just outside Washington Square Park and playing that day was Mingus and his group and standing next to me was this pretty drunk guy – it was about noon – who couldn’t believe that was Mingus right in front of him and I swear the conversation went like this, between the pretty drunk cat and Mingus:

PRETTY DRUNK CAT: Hey! You Charlie Mingus.

MINGUS: Uh uh.

PRETTY DRUNK CAT: Oh, yeah, you Charlie Mingus.

MINGUS: Nope.

PRETTY DRUNK CAT: Man, don’t tell me. I know you Charlie Mingus.

MINGUS: Uh uh.

Then Mingus played and the pretty drunk guy hung around and dug it, like we all did, until the Jazzmobile moved away.

PRETTY DRUNK GUY (to me): That’s Charlie Mingus.

ME: Uh uh.

A few years before that, I was in an apartment somewhere in Manhattan with my friends Robert and Pam and they said Mingus was living in an apartment across the courtyard, right on the same floor, and I wanted to go over and knock on his door but they didn’t think that was such a hot idea, so we decided to just turn out all the lights and look out the window and see if we could see Mingus in his place.

And we did! The problem was, he saw us seeing him because we weren’t too careful about remaining circumspect – something tells me alcohol was involved, but who knows – and within seconds, Mingus had opened the window and was pointing a rifle our way. We got the message: Mingus wanted to be left alone.

Good thing I didn’t knock on his door, right?

Mingus is dead. And Monk. All the greats. And they’re missed, of course.

But for me, Brubeck is the saddest death because he was my first jazz guy, the first musical cat who made me say:

“What the heck is that?”

I don’t expect to ever say it again.

Michael Cleveland can be found at 673-3100 and at this writing he is listening to Brubeck stuff that he stashed on his computer at The Cabinet.