Barrett Kalellis
Sunday, Dec. 8, 2002

Fred was dead, that's for sure – and had been for at least 20 years. His name was in the deceased classmates column in the booklet that was sent to me back in 1982 by the people who keep track of such things.

This unwelcome news was a shocker because Fred Hess and I were good friends all through high school. We were both musicians and spent a lot of time in school music events and countless hours in our bedrooms listening to hi-fis and trying to learn jazz music.

Back then, Fred was a student of what was called "progressive" jazz, an unusual passion for a teenager in the 1950s. Almost every cent he had went toward building an extensive jazz LP collection. It was at his house that I first heard Stan Kenton's music, along with many, many others: Shorty Rogers, the Adderley brothers, Gil Evans, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, Conte Candoli, Maynard Ferguson, Cat Anderson and on and on.

After high school graduation in 1962, the last I heard from Fred was when he was majoring in music at Trenton State College in New Jersey and had switched instruments from trombone to saxophone. But by then, I had moved out to Ann Arbor to major in music at the U of M and very quickly lost track of him.

Upon learning of his death, I made some phone calls to people who could fill in the details, but to no avail. All I heard was that he indeed had passed away, but no one was sure how or when. I tried to find out where his family was, but they had moved out of the area and left no forwarding address. With no leads, the case turned cold, so I gave up.

Twenty years passed. Fred was now just a fond memory who wouldn't be coming to last month's 40th reunion. This one I made an effort to attend, since the way people seemed to be dropping, I was sure the 50th would be held in a phone booth.

Sure enough, the deceased list had expanded to 10 persons, and a moment of silence was written into the after-dinner program. Fred was listed, along with some of my other close friends.

Still curious about his passing, I talked to a classmate who had lived across the street from him. He told me that Fred had not only been dead for 20 years but that he had taken his own life. I asked where he had heard this, and he answered that he didn't recall but that he had heard it from several sources. Fred was on drugs in the '70s, he had learned.

Another classmate wondered about this and recalled that he had talked to Fred back in 1981 and that he had just written some music for a Sam Shepard play out in Boulder, Colo.

Intrigued by the contradiction, I was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. When I came back from Jersey, I let my mouse do the walking with the Internet search engines, Googling onto the screen two Web addresses that listed "Fred Hess – saxophonist."

Clicking on the link, now came a photo of a Dr. Fred Hess, a professor of music at Metropolitan State College of Denver, looking pretty much like the guy I knew in high school, albeit with glasses now and gray hair.

After lo these 40 years, I called this Dr. Hess on the phone and asked him if he were the Fred Hess who died 20 years ago and by his own hand, no less.

After laughing non-stop for about five minutes, Fred backfilled his life for me. In addition to being on a college faculty, Fred had gained a national reputation as a tenor saxophonist and jazz composer, specializing in improvisatory experimental jazz, and was the founder of the Boulder Creative Music Ensemble. He has produced numerous jazz recordings over the past two decades and is now planning a regional performance tour.

If a case study of Mark Twain's famous remark, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated," would serve, this is certainly it. I suspect that false rumors of classmate deaths are probably legion, given that people tend to be spread out geographically and out of touch with each other since school days

So we have moved Fred's name off the deceased list into that amorphous group of those still living. For the 50th reunion, I suggested that I could wheel him surreptitiously into the gathering sealed in a coffin, where at the right moment, he can pop up with gusto, back from the dead. A riotous idea, no doubt, if only he can stay alive for another 10 years.

Barrett Kalellis is a columnist and writer whose articles appear regularly in various local and national print and online publications.

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