Don the Musician
There are many stories of Don and his trumpet playing. On the back flap of Don’s children’s books is often the phrase: “With the loss of his trumpet on a subway train, Mr. Freeman turned his talents to art full-time.” This is of course true, but Don never stopped playing the cornet (although the trumpet and cornet are virtually the same instrument, there is a slight difference in the way the tubing of the instrument flares: a cornet is more cone shaped than a trumpet. The cornet has more bore, giving it a slightly gentler, and mellower sound.) Don played often, as in this photograph, with a mute.
This photograph of Don was taken years after the famous subway incidence, so he must have sold some sketches and picked up a cornet in a pawn shop somewhere! It shows Don playing the very same cornet he played in the 1941 Broadway play The Beautiful People (click here to see Don on Broadway). In fact, he could have been practicing for his part when this photograph was taken!
As he writes in Come One Come All! he learned by “playing with the greatest.” He meant of course, that he learned by playing along with the radio or old 78 records of great horn players. In the photograph you see an old radio behind Don, which actually may have been playing at the moment the photograph was taken. When I was growing up, our most prized possession was a collection of 78 records of Bix Beiderbeck, Don’s idol of cornet players. In San Diego and later in New York, Don made his living playing the cornet in jazz and dance bands. Don was friends with Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. (Don of course as an artist not a musician! Don thought extremely highly of Satchmo as a musician and person). For the music to his magical Chalk Talks, he used jazz music by Jimmy Giuffre. Jimmy played a very melodious saxophone and he and Don admired each other. I have a letter by Jimmy to Don.
You can see and hear Don playing his cornet on the documentary film “Storymaker” available from Clearvue/SVE. … and I still have his last cornet!
