NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

cordings to his childhood friend Allen Farmelo, no
w a music producer in New York. His question: Is t
his any good?
What Mr. Farmelo heard were snippets from the ongo
ing composition of a black man who was born poor i
n Winston-Salem and raised poor on Buffalo’s East
Side. Whose mother cleaned houses and whose father
is mostly clean from memory. Whose younger brothe
r, Frankie, would become a world-famous jazz drumm
er whose work is featured in more than 100 recordi
ngs.
Young Boyd found his own calling in a discarded pi
ano in a neighbor’s backyard (“I got to play you!”
he remembers thinking). He learned his chords fro
m a Czerny guide and took five lessons from a loca
l teacher. By 15 he was playing in church and in a
downtown nightclub, where crowds came to listen a
nd prostitutes chipped in to buy him a new suit.
He was cocky, but then the great, lightning-fast A
rt Tatum stopped at the house while passing throug
h Buffalo to hear the kid, drink some beer, and pl
ay a little. “So many keys being sounded off at on
e time,” Mr. Dunlop recalls, awed still, partly be
cause Tatum could play with a beer bottle in one h
and.
Mr. Dunlop played in the Army, he played in long-g
one Buffalo nightclubs, he played after his shift
at Bethlehem Steel, the soot coming off his hands
to stain the ivory. Then, after a gut-check moment
— “What am I doing here?” — he decided to play fu
ll-time, traveling to New York, Chicago, Los Angel
es.
“Mr. Boyd, you have to get your insulin,” interrup
ts a young nurse, Portia Pratt, who jokes that she
loves to hear him play because it means he’s stil
l alive.