What began as a routine night of music at Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley today escalated into a medical emergency when Sonny “Fatso” Jones, saxophonist of the Clayton Powell Trio, found himself trapped in an extended solo.
“I became concerned around the 37-minute mark,” recalled the audience member who phoned 911 on behalf of the struggling musician. “Initially, we were enjoying being challenged by his bold musical concepts. But when our server brought the check and we were still hearing a faint melodic bleating, I knew something was wrong.”
By the time paramedics arrived on the scene, Jones had abandoned all existing chord progressions and was now helplessly inventing a highly dissonant new form of avant-garde experimental free jazz.
“We see this a lot,” explained one of the EMTs at the scene. “These cats are full of confidence when they start improvising, but then they get lost in some alternate musical dimension. Our job is to carefully reintroduce the original melody to give them something to latch onto. In this case, the song was ‘My Funny Valentine’—a personal favorite of mine. By softly humming the tune in Jones’ ear, I was able to help him gradually emerge from the atonal abyss and cue the other players back in. He was still in a state of shock, but the crowd did reward his solo with a cordial round of applause, so that’s always nice.”
Following the incident, Jones was taken to Virginia Mason Medical Center for further examination. The audience, however, remained seated at the club helplessly watching another wave of paramedics arrive to extricate the drummer from his solo.
