John Barry: The mistress of this trailer home is music. The blue and white trailer has no living room or dining room, really. It has music studios. Shelves of music scores and framed images of men in tuxedos, hands full of brass, overtake what could have been a living room. What might have been a dining room belongs to a keyboard and more shelves of scores.
One man lives here with three saxophones. He represents a half-century of jazz virtuosity and also what talent and single-minded passion often lead to — to a life broke and alone.
"Out on a cliff," he says.
He spreads out on the couch each evening, by himself, with a pencil, music charts and a cigarette and a beer. He tunes in Cops, and begins to write jazz arrangements — long, beautiful scores on folds and folds of paper.
It's the first music he has written since a series of life earthquakes spread silence for five years.
Now, at 67, beneath the sirens and squealing tires of Cops, Butch Evans is writing again. Go figure that.
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