I HAD ONE more place to be that afternoon, and I asked Sampson to drop me off.
One of Washington’s favorite sons, and one of my favorite people too, Hilton Felton, had died a while back, way too young at the age of sixty. I’d spent countless nights listening to Hilton play at Kinkead’s in Foggy Bottom, where he’d been the house pianist since 1993. That’s where they were having a memorial concert for him.
Something like a hundred and fifty people squeezed in to celebrate Hilton’s life, and, of course, hear some great music from his friends. It was all very beautiful and relaxed and wonderful in its own way. The music could only have been better if Hilton had been there to play it himself.
When Andrew White got up and played one of Hilton’s original compositions, it made me feel incredibly lucky to have known the man behind that music, but also deeply sorry to know that I’d never hear him play it again in the way that only Hilton could.
I missed him terribly, and all the while I was there, I couldn’t stop thinking about Nana Mama too. She was the one who first took me to hear Hilton.