When Tisdale was 'ho(t)'

College Hall of Famer and veteran NBA player Wayman Tisdale died today, May 15, 2009.

I heard about Tisdale's death as I listened to a Web-stream broadcast of WBGO, a New Jersey public radio station that plays jazz. The station had former Yankees star Bernie Williams on live. Williams, who plays jazz guitar, was talking about his new album, Moving Forward, and mentioned that one of the players on the album was Tisdale and that he had just learned that the 44-year-old had died of cancer.

Tisdale and Williams played on the album together via overdub. They were never in the studio together and had not met. Williams, who is heading out on a musical tour to promote his album, said he had been looking forward to meeting the former power forward.

I met Tisdale back in 1995. It was a broiling June day in Arizona, and I was invited to check out his band, The Fifth Quarter, which was rehearsing in his home studio in northeast Phoenix.

When one of his band members complained that it was hot, Tisdale smiled and said that it wasn't just "hot" but that it was "ho" (pronounced "ha"). The player asked Tisdale what he meant, and Tisdale said that it was so hot that it took too much effort to pronounce the "t."

Tisdale, then 30, played five-string electric bass guitar and had been signed by Motown Records' smooth-jazz subsidiary, MoJazz. He was excited about the imminent release of his first album, Power Forward.

That was only one of the dreams that had come true for him in the previous year. After years of playing in "purgatory," as he called his 1989-1994 stint with then-perennial losers the Sacramento Kings, he had signed at well below his market value with the Phoenix Suns in September 1994.

The Suns, with Charles Barkley as power forward, had battled to the sixth game of the NBA finals to cap their 1992-1993 season, and had made it to second round of the playoffs in the 1993-1994 season. The team lost that year to the Houston Rockets in a toughly fought seven-game series, in which Barkley, suffering a groin injury, was not able to deliver his clutch heroics.

What the Suns got in Tisdale was someone to spell Barkley -- who contemplated retirement after the Rockets series -- during the 1994-1995 season, so that Barkley would be fresher when crunch time came in the postseason.

What Tisdale got was to hitch his wagon to a star. Although he knew Barkley would be the full-time power forward, he also knew that the team would be playoff-bound.

So he smiled his umbrella smile through the games and went to the playoffs for the first time in 1995.

Adding Tisdale was not a magic potion for the Suns. They suffered the same fate, losing to the Houston Rockets in a tough seven-game series, which came down to a 1-point loss in Game 7.

But for Tisdale that was not a disappointment.

He told me about his days with the Sacramento Kings: "I had so much time! I used to look at the end of the schedule and say, 'Oh, April 23? That's when we'll be finished.'"

With the Suns, he wasn't sure when the season would be over till it was over.

Tisdale, born June 9, 1964, in Fort Worth, Texas, grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he picked up the bass guitar and basketball.

As a junior at Booker T. Washington High School, he led his team, the Hornets, to a 1981 state championship. As an Oklahoma Sooner, his career was similarly full of achievement -- he was a three-time All-American and became the Sooners' career leader in scoring and rebounds.

Then, he played on the gold-winning U.S. basketball team in the 1984 Olympics and went on to play 12 years in the NBA. He retired in 1997 from the NBA, as a member of the Suns. Soon after, he became the first Sooner in any sport to have his number retired. Just this April, Tisdale was named to the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.

It was late, about 11 p.m., when Tisdale's band finished practicing that June evening in Phoenix. His wife Regina, cradling their 4-month-old daughter, Gabrielle, sat watching the practice. She confessed that his music schedule in the off-season was making it tougher for the family to see him than the intense NBA season schedule did, because when Tisdale was in town for home games he did not work on his music career, preferring to spend his off hours with the family.

They had three other kids, Danielle, then 11; Tiffany, then 7; and Wayman Jr., then 4.

As the practice wrapped up, there was some talk of a late-night session to tune some things up, but one player said he was bushed.

"You can't hang! You can't hang!" Tisdale taunted through his broad smile.

When he finally sat down to talk, Tisdale said, the band was "something to keep me going during the summer, instead of sitting around."

He sure wasn't sitting around. "Now, I've got a record deal, and I'm traveling just as much" as during the NBA season, he said.

Then, he paused.

"With four kids!"

Tisdale started playing music for his father's church when he was in fifth grade: "I just started picking it up. I never had a lesson. I just play by ear."

Why the bass, which he played more like a lead guitar than a traditional bass?

"I've always loved the bass. I thought the bass always carried the groove and the personality of the band. I didn't want to play the drums, I never wanted to play the guitar; I've always wanted to play bass," he said.

Tisdale wrote songs to get his own feelings out. "Instead of writing it out or writing a book about it, I was able to put it in music."

The inspirations came in spare moments, "like first thing in the morning when I wake up, I hear a tune, I go straight to my studio," he said. "When I'm in my music world, it takes me all the way away from things that are going around."

The music served him well.

After Power Forward, he released seven more albums. Four of them landed in the Top 10 of Billboard's Contemporary Jazz chart, and his 2001 album, Face to Face, went to Number 1.

His last album, Rebound, was released last year, and beyond the obvious allusion to his role as a basketball forward, it referred to his hope that he would rebound from the cancer that was discovered in 2007. (It was in his leg, which was amputated below the knee during his treatment.)

The Tulsa World reports that Tisdale started a national tour last month, after a chemotherapy treatment.

The paper also reports that he told a Tulsa crowd gathered to confer the "Legacy Award" on him in April: "In my mind, I've already beaten it."

Even though some would say he lost his battle, I think he really won because it sounds as though he never lost his umbrella smile.

We all die, but how many go out smiling?

Copyright © 2009, Salvatore Caputo

Jeff Buckley: Son traced father's footsteps to life's edge

I posted this blog July 30, 1997, on Compuserve. I wanted a wider audience to see it, so I posted here. (The review at right was published Monday, Nov. 24, 1994. Click on the image to make it large enough to read. It is copyright © 1994 by The Arizona Republic.)

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A certain yearning, ghostly quality in Chris Isaak's voice reminded me of Tim Buckley, so I asked Isaak if he was a fan. He said, "No." (So much for some of those theories "critics" espouse.)

However, Isaak offered that he'd heard Buckley's son Jeff and that he was a mean guitar player. I filed that info away mentally. Even though I was a big fan, I hadn't realized that Tim Buckley had any kids.

After Jeff Buckley made a little bit of a stir in subterranean New York, he signed a record contract in 1993. He soon put out an ep, Live at Sin-E, and followed up with his full-length album, Grace, in 1994. I was struck by how much he looked and sounded like his dad.

Jeff Buckley's voice had that yearning, ghostly quality in spades. When I interviewed him in advance of his visit to Tempe's Mill Avenue Theater in November 1994, it became clear that he was not a fan of his dad's. Why should he be? Tim abandoned Jeff's mother, Mary, before the boy was born.

His own man

Jeff wasn't exactly resentful. He said he liked his father's music, but that he liked other music much more. He covered Leonard Cohen on his album.

After interviewing Jeff Buckley, all I had were questions. Was his musical talent hard-wired into his genes, a present from his long-dead dad? Even though Jeff was not a fan of his dad's music, there was a similar exotic bent to their vocals and choice of chords. Is destiny a product more of nature than nurture?

Jeff Buckley admitted that he wasn't happy in school, that there was no job track for him, that he lived and breathed being a musician. Just like his dad! Now that he was performing and recording he said, "I'm the luckiest boy in the world."

The news of Jeff Buckley's death at age 30 on May 29 left me breathless, like a blow to the stomach. "Not again! He was so young!"

Not again? Jeff Buckley only died once, drowning in the Mississippi on the edge of Memphis. Yet it did seem like a deja vu. His dad died of a toxic combination of heroin and alcohol at age 28 in June of 1975. Jeff said he had met Tim only once, just a few weeks before the overdose.

Outrunning demons

When I talked to him, the son seemed determined to be stable; to outrun the demons that plagued his dad. Now, there are unresolved questions about why he drowned in the Mississippi. Some say he was a smack user.

I can't imagine his mother's sadness. To lose a child at all is tough, but to lose him in a way that dredges up the long-dead past must be painful beyond belief.

Jeff Buckley's career got off the ground in Greenwich Village, a place that loomed large in Tim Buckley's career development as well. Jeff's first major appearance was at a tribute to his father. He sang Tim's Once I Was, a song that asks, "Sometimes I wonder, just for a while, will you ever remember me?"

Some of us will remember them for a long time and wonder if sons are always doomed to walk in their fathers' footsteps.

Copyright © 1997, Salvatore Caputo

Dog days of summer bite snakes

I posted this blog about the Arizona Diamondbacks on July 10, 1999, on Compuserve's personal pages. I find it interesting to read again in light of what's going on with this team a decade later.

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When the Arizona Diamondbacks went on a tear through the National League in the first two months of the season, the question in the back of everyone's mind was, "Are they contenders or pretenders?" When they kept winning through the middle of June, the Diamondbacks seemed to have completely shed the losing skin of 1998. They looked like they were for real.

Just like that, though, the questions have resurfaced. The Diamondbacks have gone from a four-game lead in the National League West to three games behind the division-leading San Francisco Giants since mid-June.

To win the division or a wild-card seat in the postseason, the Diamondbacks have to buck nearly 40 years of expansion-era baseball history. The Los Angeles Angels, baseball's first expansion team, is the only one (so far) to have a winning record in its second year. (The Angels also set a 70-win record for a debut season.) The general rule has been that expansion teams need to suffer years of losing before breaking through. That rule has been broken in the '90s, though. The Colorado Rockies made it to the postseason in their third year, and the Florida Marlins won the World Series in their fifth season.

Despite a spending spree on free agents, last year's Diamondbacks came nowhere close to challenging the Angels' debut-year record. The off-season spending on free agents for 1999, including pitcher Randy Johnson, argues that the team is determined not to let last year's poor performance get in the way of their determination to go to the postseason this year.

Energized by the resurgent offense of Matt Williams and Jay Bell and a career year by Luis Gonzalez (all of whom are All Stars this year), the Diamondbacks, after a 0-4 start, became the hottest team in the National League through the middle of June. Then, the Braves, superhot Reds and Cardinals came to Bank One Ballpark, and the team started losing. Sports Illustrated predicted that the homestand would be a reality check for the snakes, and it was.

A phantom offense?

The blame for the sudden downturn was laid on the bullpen. Blown saves, after all, had been the main reason for the team's bad start. When the team was winning, the offense overcame a number of blown saves. The team clearly needed a better bullpen to reach the postseason. However, if the problem was just in the bullpen, pitcher Randy Johnson, the team's other All Star, would not have been shut out while pitching four strong games in a row. The Diamondbacks have racked up only seven hits in those Johnson starts. Aside from a few nights when they scored in double-digits, the offense has been in a terrible slump since the Braves series, a fact that doesn't help the bullpen or starting pitching.

To state the obvious, even though pitchers get the credit for wins and losses, the best they can do is give their teams the chance to win. To win, the offense has to score.

The Diamondbacks look as prepared as anyone else in the National League West (except for the amazingly resilient San Francisco Giants) to make it to the postseason, at least on paper. They've got the toughest pitcher in the league in Johnson, one of the leading base stealers in leadoff man Tony Womack, and one of the most potent offenses. They've also made moves to shore up the bullpen -- including a deal that brought steely-eyed closer Matt Mantei over from the Florida Marlins.

However, one of those factors -- the potent offense -- was not expected to be there as the season began. Could it be a phantom? The math is against the aging Williams. Even though he was unlikely to have as bad a year as last year, Williams can only expect his numbers to go down from his peak years. Bell, on the other hand, seems to be benefiting from batting No. 2 behind the fleet-footed Womack. Seeing more fastballs from pitchers interested in trying to keep Womack off second base, Bell has set a career record in home runs by the halfway point of this season. Can he keep up that pace, or has he returned to his considerably more mortal pace of previous years?

The evidence so far points more toward the "contender" side of the equation, but that's not a foregone conclusion. The second half should be interesting. Fans certainly have to hope that it's a coincidence that the team started losing just as the hot weather started.

Summer lasts a long time in Phoenix.

Copyright © 1999, Salvatore Caputo

I hate the Web

I used to write a print column about pop culture for a living before weblogs, aka blogs, existed.

Blogs are pretty much like my column was, except of course that I was edited by people who had my back when it came to spelling, grammar and just plain making sense.

The Web has irrevocably changed the entire culture (insert "no duh" comment here, you know you want to), not just pop culture. Presumably smaller and smaller enterprises can succeed because the Web lowers the bar to entry. This blog, for instance, is a free product. It doesn't cost me anything, except time, to put up. This free content is somehow monetized by the company that gives me the opportunity to put it up.

The big change is that whatever money is made is disconnected from the work that went into providing this content.

That wasn't the case when I did it in print. I was an employee and the monetization of content - essentially the advertising revenue - was passed on to me in the form of a salary, so I was monetizing, too.

The Web is killing print, so that model I used to work under is working for fewer and fewer people at my end of the spectrum. Stars of whatever medium will always be well-rewarded (well, maybe not the stars of poetry in the Western world), but the paying opportunities that used to exist for thousands upon thousands of good writers are rapidly diminishing because the Web is, well, worldwide and creates a downward income curve that seems counterintuitive.

As print-media outlets drastically cut the size of their staffs or fold into oblivion, the Web does not offer localized information sources that have an income model that can support anything like the staffs that had been employed at newspapers and magazines.

The Web detaches place from the business equation.

Oh sure, if you have a business that can only work by being in a brick-and-mortar location, like a restaurant or a bar, you're golden in the age of the Web, and you can actually cut your advertising costs by putting up your own Web site and incorporating the right keywords to drive search-engine users to your local establishment.

But Amazon.com is an example of just the opposite. With modern delivery systems, including real-world services like FedEx and virtual delivery via Kindle, there's no need for a brick-and-mortar location to sell from. All you need is a site that's a glorified mail-order catalog, continuously updated and with a virtually unlimited inventory accessible at a moment's notice. Whether you're searching for an obscure or a popular book, the process is fairly easy and almost the same, and you don't have to go to the store. It's right there at the end of your fingertips.

City magazines and newspapers are place-oriented, and to date they've offered the only viable opportunity to underwrite the cost of gathering news information through primarily local advertising. But now that viability is gone because advertisers - whether Mom-and-Pop businesses, big-bucks corporations or some guy who's trying to sell his old truck - are fleeing to the Web, where results are more immediate, more apparent and less costly.

So while there are plenty of entrepreneurial types who are putting up local Web sites that provide local information, none of them (at least, that I know of) is able to provide more than a few writing jobs and those at relatively low pay.

As Will Dana, managing editor of Rolling Stone, recently wrote in his "Editor's Notes" column: "Maybe Homeland Security should be helping to keep the print media alive. A few years from now, there's a good chance there won't be many newspapers left - if any. So what happens when some cyber-terrorist zaps the Internet or takes out a couple of satellites, and suddenly there's no communications infrastructure? This is not such an outlandish thought - deep in the Pentagon, there are people who do nothing but worry about these things. Aren't you going to wish someone was throwing the paper on your doorstep?"

Copyright © 2009, Salvatore Caputo