Trombonist Ronell Johnson pictured here at a performance at Preservation Hall.

(Title Context: The phrase “Dad went to get milk” comes from an internet meme popular in the early 2010s in which its punchline is based on the common trope of unfaithful fathers claiming to get groceries like milk or cigarettes and never coming back home.)

At times, the notes seemed to punch through the walls but the other notes that carried and softened those blows simply lilted and bounced in the air. Every note was played with rhythm and every rhythm played with purpose. Sometimes, Powell sang with the Preservation All-Stars, like Armstrong, warm and gravelly, and let his voice accompany the music, letting the notes carry.

The hall’s dimmed lights blurring everything into obscurity spotlight light up the performers and just enough of the peeling, exposed walls of mismatched materials and colors to transport you back to Preservation Hall in the 1960s and 70s, to a time where jazz was purely unfiltered and the plaster of the fabric of New Orleans. Dimming all of my senses except sound as the hall dimmed its lights, closing my eyes from all of the superfluous elements of the music posters and the wistful architecture, the music came alive, flowing directly to my ears. The music felt almost tangible, surrounding me, visualizing itself in bright, colorful swirls in my head. As the spotlight moved from the bassist to the trombonist to the cornetist, the decades-long rich history of New Orleans jazz, of the founding fathers of a generational tradition like Buddy Bolden, came alive in the dark room. Each song embodied jazz and all of the eccentricities of Bolden. Like Bolden and like the essence of New Orleans jazz, the Preservation All-Stars were unrestrained by technicality, unrestricted by formality, freeing and liberating everyone who plays and listens.

But as the cornet and trombone quiet, and the drums and bass soften to a low but firm guide of the music, laying down the blueprint for an emerging star, the pianist plays louder. Playing more intricate riffs and rhythms, the pianist unleashes the potential he quieted throughout the show to share the power of expression. But now that it’s his turn, he captures every space in the room, every attention, and tells a magnificently unforgettable story. For the next few minutes, a barrage of notes and chords, at times harmonious and at other times, discordant, the pianist with hair as dark as my father’s and his skin just as bronzed, starts to morph into the image of the man who had raised me and left without a word. Closing my eyes, I was brought back 10 years into the past to days of simplicity and scarcity as well as potential and unfettered hope for the future. I was brought back to memories of a house filled with incessant belting of arias and gospels, to mornings and nights of endless piano scales repeated to joyous madness. His slow, inevitable descent into mental illness, as his depression deepened and his temper worsened over lost dreams and failed potential, all remembrance of him had left as if the pain of his abandonment, the pain of a distance I’d never thought to be possible, had erased the entirety of his existence in my life. But, the memories of everything that I considered noise pricked the back of my throat and warmed my skin as I heard that noisy madness once again and as he revisited me in my thoughts.

Being graced with music that had been passed down for generations, with music that had enraptured every individual in the hall, as the image of my father was so intensely conjured, I also saw Buddy Bolden and his descent to both insanity and jazz. To have had the story of a man whose constant was music, whose natural expression was through music, personified through a personal parental figure during adolescence led to a naturally deeper understanding of Bolden and of my own father as well. To have not understood the necessity, why my father had to play everyday, why he had to sing everyday, and then to come to his understanding through the tragedy and success that is Buddy Bolden, I realized I had misunderstood him, couldn’t recognize him as more than a father.

Eun Joo and Jong Rack at Mary’s graduation

As a musician who played and sang for the love of music, despite so many similarities, I couldn’t see my father in Buddy until Preservation Hall. I mourned the father I first knew and my existence for sacrificing his dreams. I mourned the death of the potential of his talents, his unrewarded sacrifice for fame and acclaim. And what I saw everyday was the death of his lifelong passions for a daily cycle of wage labor and mere survival. But for Bolden, who left an unrecognized legacy, whose music and talents can never be truly actualized, recognized, heard or performed, simply his life, his present moments of performing was simply enough. Consciously or not, he found no value in the future’s worries, in permanence or in self-establishment. Recognizing the beauty of Bolden’s decision to remain present, it altered the perspective of my dad’s own story, changing the attitudes that defined a lack of fame as failed artistry. Learning Bolden’s story and seeing it represented at Preservation Hall, served as the empowerment and license to redefine what was conventionally viewed as failed potential for my dad, to give him the dignity and recognition he deserved for being brave enough to freely chase his passions – a success that goes beyond the traditional, conventional standards and markers of success. And for all of the musicians and artists who performed for their unadulterated love and passion for their art, for their music, for all of the artists who were OK with the invisibility and the lack of recognition, who did things for the joy of them, the Preservation All-Stars seemed to be playing for and in honor of them – the only difference was one happened to be on a stage.