![]() Since Polk returned to his collegiate headquarters in 1987 after a decadelong, Grammy-nominated run with Charles (1930-2004), his appreciation as an elder statesman of Austin's stout musical history continues on a need-to-know basis. You've got a guy where more people probably know him in Europe than Austin." "I'm an 84-year-old man from the South, and this is still Texas. "Don't sanitize it," says Bradford when asked about his friend and peer's musical accomplishments vs. Trumpet/cornet legend Bobby Bradford of free jazz provocateur Ornette Coleman fame emphasizes that same "hard line." Once a roommate of Polk's at Huston-Tillotson College (now University), he recalls Austin's racial exclusion with candor and clarity. "Because on Sundays, in particular, what used to be the Jade Room on Guadalupe was made available for swinging jazz played by black performers. ![]() We rarely went across the highway – unless it was on Sunday," says Polk, 78, during the second week of January. "You have to remember this was the Sixties. The literal key(s) to native saxophonist Elias Haslanger's Church on Monday residency above the vaunted Continental Club on South Congress recalls invisible borders occasionally traversed. James Polk, Austin's esteemed multi-instrumentalist, world-class organist, and former arranger for the great Ray Charles, speaks in these measured hues. 14 (Photo by Shelley Hiam)Ĭogent and considered recollections of older black men from Texas and the broadly American South below the Mason-Dixon line generally bear a sobering universality. ![]() James Polk at the Continental Club Gallery on Jan.
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