Air Show

In some hip nightclubs on the East and West Coasts, customers line up to pay $12 for a shot of flavored, 99.9 percent-pure oxygen. If the designer-air fad ever catches on here, Ed Berger might be the hippest guy in town. Berger brings his own air supply. Tucked under his chair on the Artist’s Quarter bandstand is a Puritan Bennett portable liquid oxygen unit. It’s small enough to fit in a saxophone case. Clear plastic tubes carry the supplementary oxygen to his nostrils. Berger relies on it 24 hours a day. There’s a six-hour supply in the tank, more than enough to carry him through a night’s gig.

Over the course of his five-decade career as a musician, Berger has sparred with and survived two of the trade’s occupational hazards—booze (he got sober back in the late 70s) and tobacco (he quit smoking about 15 years ago, but not before some damage had been done). He survived colon cancer in 1991. After a heart attack about four years ago, he underwent triple coronary bypass surgery and was fitted with a cardiac pacemaker. Doctors also discovered he was suffering from bronchitis and emphysema. Hence his current reliance on oxygen. There’s no cure for emphysema, but the stamina Berger developed blowing sax helps him cope.

The long, flowing phrases that marked Berger as a master improviser don’t come as easily, or as often as they used to. He still has a ready flow of musical ideas, but putting them through the horn is another matter. He’d play out more often except for the hassles of getting to the gig and back. “I can only walk about 15 steps and I’m out of breath,” he said the other day. “And the mental preparation it takes to put on a show for the people, with all this other stuff happening, makes it five times as hard to play a concert.”

A recent Artist’s Quarter gig marked Berger’s first time out in months. It also happened to be his 70th birthday. Helping him celebrate was a quintet led by Minneapolis trombonist Brad Bellows, and a roomful of friends and fans. The AQ is a stereotypical jazz club—a dark and cozy basement space as seen in a zillion clichéd movies and TV shows. Except one thing was missing: the smoky haze. Berger’s gig was a non-smoking event in honor of the birthday guy. Plus, lighting up around pure oxygen isn’t generally advised.

For several decades, Berger has been acknowledged as the dean of Twin Cities beboppers. In the late 40s, when Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell ruled 52nd Street, Berger was a kid playing society gigs in his native Philadelphia, where he heard talk of the new music in New York City. Berger first saw the Midwest at 18, playing ballrooms with an obscure polka band, Fats Carlson and His Cats. When that job fizzled after 70 stands, Berger took a detour into radio announcing classes at Brown Institute, and spent a fish-out-of-water year as a DJ in rural Hutchinson. Then he heard about steady playing jobs in Hennepin Avenue strip clubs.

From the 40s well into the 60s, some of the best jazzmen in town could be heard nightly on the strip, backing the dancers in clubs like Augies and the Roaring 20s. The players knew that if you wanted to work on your chops, the strip clubs weren’t a bad place to do it. After all, nobody was going to walk out if the solos got too long or complicated. While the customers were focusing on undulating flesh, Berger was thinking about Charlie Parker, Johnny Hodges, and the 2-5-1 change—most of the time.

Today, there’s a decent scene in reputable joints like the AQ, the Dakota, and Arnellia’s. Berger has survived to what look like pretty good times, but is there enough of him left to enjoy it? At his birthday show, he didn’t waste much time before taking the audience on a wild ride through the hairpin turns of Charlie Parker’s bop burner “Steeplechase.” The question that had been hanging in the air was answered. Yes, Berger still has his familiar, well-rounded alto tone, betraying no sign of physical debility. Smiles of recognition replaced his band-mates’ usual poker faces. Eddie can still play. Next, Berger eased into the ballad “I Can’t Get Started.” He’s always been a masterful ballad player, and his recent travails seem to have added a certain bluesy gravitas. Berger said he’s playing better than ever—“more defined, more musical”—than in his speed-burner days. After three sets at the Artist’s Quarter, and the better part of a portable bottle of oxygen, the audience enthusiastically agreed.