"It's not going to be super protective," he said "but there are pockets for mouthpieces and music, and this should make your life a little easier."
It did make my life easier, and when I started showing up at Eastman to take summer festival auditions alongside the big bad conservatory kids I felt a little better about my chances when I pulled my trumpets out of a passably-professional looking gig bag. That bag traveled many miles over the next few years. When I'd ride the train back and forth to Chicago I would pack it full of clothes and toiletries so that I wouldn't have to lug around a suitcase. The strap broke more than once, and the inner cloth tore apart where my third valve ring dug into it, opening up big gashes where yellow foam padding could crumble out onto my rolled-up dress shirts.
At some point in graduate school Charlie noticed. Charlie was simultaneously one of the kindest and bluntest people I'd ever met. He would ask if I'd eaten lunch, and when I inevitably said I hadn't gotten around to it yet, he'd give me a $20 and tell me to get some proper food in my stomach. Then he'd tell me my sound was ugly and I needed to play in tune. I imagine that he saw snowdrops of stale yellow bag-foam falling out of my bell in some lesson, and he asked me about my gig bag.
"How old is that thing?"
"Uh, I've had it for a few years now."
"It looks terrible. There's no way your horns can be safe in there. Plus, you must be really embarrassed to carry it around."
"Well, I have had to have a couple of dents taken out."
"Have you looked at getting a Marcus Bona bag? Or a torpedo? You could get a quad and then you wouldn't need to carry around multiple cases all the time."
"Oh, I know. I really like those Brass Bags. They're a little out of my price range, though."
"I see."
Next week, Charlie had his trumpets in a brand now snazzy looking red leather bag. His old gray bag was sitting empty by my chair.
"Well, there you go. Larry Black and I made that bag together back in the early sixties. Barbara wanted to get me a new bag for Christmas anyway, she thinks my old one is ugly. So, there you go."
"Are you serious? This is a triple!"
"Yup, and it's a good bag. It'll fit above or below an airline seat and I never get dings in my horns. It's pretty old, but I put in a couple of cans of spray paint so you can match the color if you want."
"Charlie, I don't even know what to say...thank you so much."
"Not a problem. Now, let's talk about all those high notes you missed in solo class earlier..."
And suddenly, I had not only a great sturdy triple bag, but an actual historical artifact; a bag that had played second trumpet to Bud Herseth's gig bag in Chicago, a bag that hundreds of professional trumpeters across the country would recognize from when Charlie perched above their toes with a hammer to keep them from tapping while they played.
The next week, Charlie caught me in the hall.
"Well, I told Barbara that I gave you my old bag, and she says you have to give it back."
"Oh..what?"
"Yes, she's right that we can't just give things away free to some students and not to others. And, this bag was worth a lot of money."
"Oh, well...okay. Do you know how much she thinks it's worth?"
"No, we didn't talk about that. But here's what I think--why don't you pay me $1 for the bag and don't say anything about it, and now you've bought it from me, right?"
"That sounds like a deal."
I showed it to J the next time I was home in Rochester.
"That is seriously ugly. It looks like somebody stitched together a dead elephant hide."
"Right, but it's very protective."
"How? The zippers don't even work. Doesn't look safe to me."
"It is. And it's a historical artifact."
"...it is definitely old."
And so, we got married and the gig bag entered our marriage. It turned out that it wasn't perfectly safe. The insides began to rip after a while, and my trumpets did occasionally get dinged up, although not nearly with the frequency as my other gig bag experiences. I brought the elephant bag onstage with me to dozens of gigs, and got various reactions, all of which are true:
"Hey, that looks like one of Larry Black's bags!"
"Geez, that bag looks like it could disintegrate at any moment."
"So, your wife is still letting you carry that around, eh?"
"The photographer has asked that you move your bag backstage so that it doesn't end up in the pictures."
"I really think it's time you got a new gig bag."
"Did you just come from the gym or something? Oh, that's a gig bag!"
J in particular has worked long and hard to get me to make a switch, and this year she finally won out. For my birthday we ordered a beautiful Brass Bags quad case. It shipped from the UK and came in this afternoon. Everything about it is pristine, and it's going to be the first non-hardshell case I've stored my beautiful new C trumpet in. Apparently J was scheming about this as far back as July, when I bought the new trumpet. I was testing it out with Paul, and he kept on asking me about whether I liked his roller case or not, and what sorts of bags I liked. At the time, I thought to myself "I'm about to drop $2500 on a new trumpet, why do you keep on showing me the zippers on your bag?"
But now I know--my lovely scheming wife was coming up with a present. And she, finally, after all these years, has succeeded in getting me to stop lugging an elephant bag through airports, churches, and symphony halls. Time for the Charlie bag to retire to a glass case displayed prominently in our living room.
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