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

“There’s my girlfriend,” Mr. Dunlop shouts. “Stick
it in!”
Seattle, with Big Jay McNeely. Green Bay, Wis., wh
ere he won a $500 bet with a customer who said he
couldn’t play 50 songs the customer named. Above a
nd below the Mason-Dixon line, where he didn’t tak
e kindly to being called the n-word. Outside Jones
ville, N.C., where Adelaide worked as a waitress:
“The way she walked, the way she moved. She glided
! ‘Oh God, can I glide with you?’ ”
All this was in the music Mr. Farmelo heard. The d
aughters. The broken marriage. The gunshot wound i
nflicted by a nephew. Church. Diabetes. Old age. “
Come Back to Sorrento.”
“I was pretty blown away,” Mr. Farmelo says.
So, in late February, Mr. Bannon and Mr. Farmelo r
ented a recording studio and hired two first-rate
musicians: the drummer Virgil Day and the bassist
Sabu Adeyola, who knew Mr. Dunlop from the still-o
pen Colored Musicians Club in downtown Buffalo. Wh
en Mr. Dunlop arrived for the session, he didn’t e
ven take off his coat. He went right to the Steinw
ay, and started to play a riff that would become p
art of the CD, called “Boyd’s Blues.”
“What I remember is how happy he was,” Mr. Adeyola
says. “How extremely happy he was.”
At the nursing home the other day, the remains of
another chicken lunch were scraped from plastic pl
ates, and another round of bingo was played. But n
ot for Boyd Lee Dunlop.
He put on a black winter coat over the shirt and s
weatpants he’s been wearing for days, walked past
an honor guard of wheelchairs, and headed for the
door. He had to get to rehearsal, for that gig he’
s got Saturday night.