THE last time he pressed his lips together to play that special song, Paul Hawthorne was a trombone player in a US Army band.
His uniform was pressed.
His shoes had a high gloss.
His instrument was shining like the summer sun itself.
But there he was yesterday, on Lenox Avenue and 135th Street, in the shadow of Harlem Hospital, playing that song again.
His clothes were a little worn.
His shoes could have used a brush.
He even missed a couple of notes.
But to the audience dropping dollars at his feet, it was sweet music to their ears.
“Dum-dum-de-dum, dum-de-dum-de dum-de-dum dum.”
“Hail to the chief we have chosen for the nation / Hail to the chief! We salute him, one and all.”
“I haven’t seen this much excitement in Harlem over an election since JFK was elected,” Hawthorne said. “People are greeting me that I don’t even know.”
The Barack Obama party started early on the streets of Harlem. By the time voters returned home from their polling places, the celebration had already begun.
Change was in the air – whether it was Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions blaring from a parked car’s stereo: “We’re a winner / And never let anybody say / Boy, you can’t make it / ‘Cause a feeble mind is in your way or Obama’s favorite, Stevie Wonder: “Here I am baby / You’ve got the future in your hand.”
Hawthorne couldn’t be happier.
Hawthorne, 68, had been drafted the last time America was this deep in a war that was so unpopular.
Like so many black men his age, oppressed by the scourge of racism in America, Hawthorne had been plucked from the streets of Harlem to go on the other side of the world and fight an enemy who hadn’t done a thing to him.
“McCain was in the service the same time I was,” Hawthorne said.
After a couple of years in Saigon, Hawthorne made it back home, where his time abroad earned him no dispensation from the inequality in America.
The war at home was just as bad as the battle abroad, only here his enemies were using the law as its weapon.
Hawthorne managed to rise above with a little help from a few friends along the way: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Art Blakely, Dizzy Gillespie.
Jazz has been the soundtrack of his life, but this day called for a little pomp and pageantry.
Hawthorne realizes that the next president will have more on his plate than just what happens in America.
“This is global,” the trombone player said. “It takes time. You can’t undo eight years in four.”
Hawthorne said he would love to play his new favorite song for Obama one day, but only if he can play it the way he plays it now, in Harlem, on the corner, with all the people walking by.