Aaron Dodd

[brianf]

There are two tubists with the Chicago Symphony, the one who plays inside Symphony Center and Aaron Dodd, the one who plays outside Symphony Center. Arnold Jacobs brought Aaron up to his studio for lessons. Gene Pokorny and the trombone section pitched in to buy Aaron a new tuba. In today's Chicago Tribune is this story about Aaron!



Tuba softens hard life
Performer's affection for his music keeps him going
August 7, 2008
The tuba is scratched and dented, worn from use. The man looks similarly battered, wheezing for breath, stiff from arthritis, barely able to walk. They seem a peculiar pair, the feeble man and his hefty tuba.

But after four decades of performing, Aaron Dodd isn't about to give up his music, even if his instrument of choice happens to be the size of a small refrigerator, made of brass, and—weighing roughly 35 pounds—about as easy to carry around as a sack of rocks.

Three days a week, come rain or shine, 60-year-old Dodd straps his hulking instrument to the back of his wheelchair, boards a city bus and, arriving downtown, rollshimself to the corner of Michigan Avenue and East Erie Street, where he plays for coins and crumpled dollar bills.

Lips pursed and cheeks puffed, he belts out deep melodies, from the peppy chim-chiminey chim-chim-cher-ee of the Mary Poppins' chimney sweep song to the breezy bossa nova strains of "Girl From Ipanema." His brow furrowed, his foot tapping, Dodd sways back and forth, letting the music move him, as it always has.



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Tuba softens hard life Photos "The music is the way I exist," he says, arms wrapped around the tuba, as if he is grasping a life preserver. "I get pleasure from playing, especially at night. People will walk and hold hands. They seem happy. Some people dance, some people sing along. Some people like it enough to give me something. Most people give change. Once in a while they'll give me a dollar or a five-dollar bill."

On a good day, he might make $30 over several hours, on a bad day less than $1. Pedestrians bustle past talking on their cell phones and hauling their shopping bags. No one recognizes Dodd, who gets by on Social Security disability payments. His moment in the spotlight has long since passed. Few beyond Chicago's jazz community know the story behind the wheelchair tuba player who spends his days serenading the city.

But Mwata Bowden remembers. "He was a respected musician," said Bowden, 60, a prominent Chicago reedist and bandleader. In the 1970s, Bowden said, "Aaron was really rewriting the book on the capacity of the tuba."

Dodd's playing is not what it once was. His thoughts sometimes drift like the echo of a fading note.

On the sidewalk, he plays a bit of "I've Been Working on the Railroad." When the sky darkens and it starts to rain, he seamlessly launches into "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head." His wheelchair is patched with duct tape, hung with several canvas bags and festooned with a long bicycle chain, used to attach the tuba case. At his feet, he keeps a black plastic garbage pail for tips. The pail is tied to the chair with a rope, to discourage thieves.

When someone drops a few coins in the pail, Dodd calls, in his raspy voice, "Thaaank yoouu!" Mid-performance, he'll point to a passerby and call, "I'm playing this one for you!" It's a glimpse of the showman he once was.

A native of Chicago's South Side, the son of a public school teacher and a stockyard worker, Dodd fell in love with the tuba in high school. It was an unexpected passion. His first choice had been the saxophone, his second choice the clarinet. But the band needed someone to play the tuba.

Dodd didn't like the instrument, finding it lumbering and clumsy. He wanted to play jazz, and at the time the instrument hadn't been prominently used by jazz ensembles since the 1920s, when it was replaced by the upright bass. But playing along with the radio and working with a series of teachers, he learned to riff on R&B melodies and perform freewheeling jazz solos.

By the early '70s, Dodd had carved a place for himself in Chicago's jazz and R&B scene, recording on at least a dozen albums. In 1970, he recorded on a Donny Hathaway album, "Everything Is Everything." During the late 1980s, he toured the world with the band 8 Bold Souls, traveling through Europe, the Middle East and Asia.And in 1995, he was cited in the prestigious Down Beat Critics Poll for "talent deserving wider recognition."

"When he played, you didn't feel like he had valves—you felt that he was expressing something," said Edward Wilkerson Jr., 55, a Chicago saxophone player. "He made it his voice."

"When I went to different countries and different states, I'd play and take a solo," Dodd said, singing to demonstrate, "da, ba, da, ba, ba, da, ba, da ba.

"The whole audience would stand up and clap. How do you think that felt?" he said. Then he smiled wide and burst out laughing.

Years of hard living—including, Dodd says, a struggle with alcoholism—sent him into a tailspin. He went through a bitter divorce and a deep depression, and by the late 1990s was teetering on the brink of homelessness, living at a North Side YMCA.

Dodd hung on to the tuba, the one constant in his life, finding a stage and an audience on the street. He took up playing outside Symphony Center, on South Michigan Avenue, where a frequent listener turned out to be Gene Pokorny, principal tuba player for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

"You have to have a lot of respect for a person who loves what they do that much," Pokorny said.

In 1999, Pokorny and several CSO brass musicians bought Dodd a new tuba. And few months ago, when two valves were stolen from Dodd's instrument, Pokorny stepped in again and had the parts replaced.

"Aaron's got a lot of people rooting for him," Pokorny said.

Dodd's daughter, Naomi Dodd, 31, believes the music sustains her father. "It is the one thing that has kept him alive," she said. "He wakes up, and that's what he's looking forward to, his music."

Sunday night, Dodd wheeled himself into the dim light of the Velvet Lounge, an avant-garde jazz club on the city's Near South Side. Friends from the Great Black Music Ensemble had invited him to perform during their gig.

"I've known Aaron since the '70s," said saxophonist Ernest Dawkins, 54, who was bandleader for the night. "He was such a nice guy when I was coming up. He can come out and play with us any time."

Dodd hadn't been on a Chicago stage in years, but he would later say it "felt like I was home."

As the music filled the room—the rhythm of the bass guitar, the rattle of the tambourine, Dodd picked up his tuba. His foot tapping, his head bobbing to the music, he placed his fingers on the valves, took a breath and—holding the instrument as if he would never let it go—began to play.

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[Alex F]

Brian,

Thanks for sharing that great story. Aaron Dodd is a Chicago Treasure. My office is just up the street from Symphony Center (aka Orchestra Hall) and, many a late night, I've sat at my desk with the dulcet sounds of tuba music resonating from the street 17 floors below.

[Chris]

Everytime I go hear Chicago I bring and extra $10.00 for that guy..I had no idea of his story.

Thanks Brian.

--Chris