CORRECTION: The caption for the story should have said Charlie Parker played the saxophone.
The sounds that defined music of the past can be heard echoing off East Lansing buildings and allies, filling the air with an American art form - jazz.
The music comes from 82-year-old saxophone player George Howard, who has been playing at Green River Café, 211 M.A.C. Ave., three to five times each week since October.
He began playing at age 55 as a way to feed a lifelong love of jazz.
"I was really doing this because I wanted to find something to do after I retired - something I really wanted to do and never really had the chance to," he said.
After leaving the Army in 1946, Howard moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. There, he witnessed bebop, a movement that emphasized quick syncopated rhythms and new harmonic variations, as it caught the ears of the jazz world.
"That's where I really got my baptism of fire, as far as seeing the great jazz artists like Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans and all those guys," he said, adding that he never considered playing an instrument until later in life.
"I still wasn't interested in trying to play anything. I was really just 22 years old, and I was just having fun listening to good music and dancing, drinking - the usual things a young man does."
Howard saw jazz greats Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington perform, among others.
Coming of age during the bebop era, Howard knew he was witnessing something special.
"I can't explain it, it was just something that was happening all the time," he said.
That influential music stirred something inside Howard.
"I didn't know I wanted even to try and play, I was just enjoying the music," he said. "Deep down inside, I wished I could play, but you have that idea that is just seems so difficult. To see people playing this beautiful music effortlessly. … I just didn't think I could do it."
Howard met his future wife, Cora, at the Savoy Ballroom, the famous Harlem dance hall where many legendary jazz musicians played from 1926-58. They married and moved to Newark, N.J., for the next four years. The couple eventually relocated to Lansing in 1959, where Howard became the manager of a YMCA, as well as a masseur.
In 1962, he got a job as a massage therapist for the now Ingham Regional Medical Center, where he remained until he retired in 1989.
Even moving to Lansing, Howard surrounded himself with music.
He befriended a number of local musicians who encouraged him to play. He did not play while he raised his family, but things changed when he turned 55, in 1980.
"I picked up an old alto that wouldn't stay in tune, but it had a nice sound," he said.
Howard has been playing ever since, driven by an inner desire to make something sound beautiful.
"Basically, I'm a romanticist. That's what I think of myself as," he said. "I love beautiful, meaningful songs."
A self-taught musician, Howard gained experience by playing in different groups around Lansing.
"I stuck with it, but I got lot of, 'Oh, jeez man, you're supposed to start that when you're 5 years old, you're an old man ready for the graveyard,' from my friends," he said. "I'd say, 'That's all right, I'm going to get it.'
"I used to drive down to Detroit every Thursday night for five years to BoMac's jazz club, and sit in with some great people, like Marcus Belgrave, and I learned by getting up there and making my mistakes."
Although he's honed his ability to play, Howard still is learning when he picks up his saxophone.
"I'm still making (mistakes), but I got a lot of encouragement and I found out that I could play halfway decent if I played what I knew," he joked. "Gradually, I had enough nerve to where somebody was playing a tune in a different key, I tried to listen to it and play on that, and so basically, that's how I began my craft."
Howard's passion brought him to Green River Café, where owner Jim Jabara was first approached by Howard after hearing some of MSU jazz students play one night.
"George came in to hear these young jazz cats and some of the professors we sometimes get," Jabara said.
Howard eventually asked Jabara if he could come in and play. Jabara agreed, and Howard has been playing at Green River Café ever since.
"He's been a nice asset to the community," Jabara said. "People have come up and said, 'We really like that.'"
Ashley Nalett, 19, of Williamston, said she comes to East Lansing almost every day, listening to Howard's music as she relaxes during the summer.
"He gets so into the music, and you can tell he's so passionate about it," she said. "I love how he just sits there and jams. He gives the block a better flow."
Ryan Beene can be reached at beenerya@msu.edu.
