Ex-sax player's book details years with Parker, other jazz greats

“When it happens in your life, it's easy to remember”

When Joe Evans smiles, you can almost see the air around him turn brighter.

At 91, Evans is a spirited reminder of the halcyon days of jazz, when Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Charlie 'Bird' Parker headlined dark, smoky clubs.

Those days were also a time of segregation in the South, particularly around Alabama and Pensacola, Fla., where Evans first picked up the saxophone as a teen, paying 50 cents a lesson.

His career likely would have remained a secret to the public _ stories of nights spent on stage with Parker, Holiday, Lionel Hampton, Dinah Washington and an endless list of luminaries _ had he never decided to sit in on Christopher Brooks' African-American music class at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1994. Read more