NOW, A JAZZ MOMENT… MUSIC: Down Tempo  (Donald Byrd)                         CD: The Very Best Of                          Master Classics Records 2010 THERE’S A GREAT LINNEAGE OF MENTORSHIP IN JAZZ… ELDER MUSICIANS HELPING THE YOUNGER ONES LEARN WHAT’S WHAT.  NEA JAZZ MASTER JIMMY OWENS REMEMBERS MEETING HIS FIRST GREAT MENTOR, TRUMPETER DONALD BYRD… Jimmy Owens:  I’d gone to the Thelonious Monk Town Hall Concert and heard him play and I said, wow, man, I’d sure like to study with that guy.  And a friend that I was with says, Oh, he lives in the Bronx, right near us.  I’ll take you over to his house.  So about the next week he took me over to Donald’s house.  And Donald asked me to play something.  And I put in my mute and got into my stance and played something.  And he says, What is all that about?  You know? (laughs)  Why you standin like that?  And why do you have to have the mute in the horn?  You know, let me hear your sound.  Take your mute out.  And when I played he said, Well it don’t sound too different than having the mute IN the horn. (laughs)  So that was my beginning of studying with Donald Byrd.  And I thought I was gonna study JAZZ, that’s what I wanted to do.  And he made me study to become a better TRUMPET player.  5 dollars a lesson and got a WORLD of education.  MUSIC: punctuation THIS JAZZ MOMENT WITH TRUMPETER JIMMY OWENS WAS CREATED BY THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS.