A Taste of "Stout, the Dog Whose Heart Was as Big as His Head"--Opening Passages with the Rivers Answer Moons band
Near 700 Years Ago in Angland's Region of LushLeVold, the Fabled Stout Padded Off to War
Photos of Stout, La and Spark by Gina Jacupke.
Soon after Stout’s passing in Winter 2003, I wrote a Children’s Story to honor this dog.
Stout was a most marvelous companion. Gina and I had added him to La and Spark (see above, recumbent with Stout’s “anvil-on-his-shoudlers” head in my first-floor flat at 1852 Stockton, North Beach Francisco, circa the year 2000) in Fort Bragg, from the Mendocino County’s SPCA, because the three of them “hit it off” like a geyser of gladness—as if they were born to bond and play together.
Stout is the only. dog, or other. creature, that I’ve seen try to fetch a telephone=pole. Not. a WHOLE telephone-pole, mind, but a section of such at least four feet long and bobbing sideways in San Francisco’s Bay beside the Yacht Club and Promenade where we went to run La, Spark, and Stout.
Stout was always dutiful beyond reproach. Few accomplishments made his eyes shine more than bringing back a stick—the larger the stick the more gratifying its carriage in his mouth. “Fetch, Stout!” I then said, spying the section of telephone-pole. (sawn apart as waste in the East Bay and escaped Pacific-ward, we later learned) about 20 yards offshore from the Promenade’s beach. Out he bounded into the Bay—out he dog-paddled furiously after his heavy game. His was was wide, but not equal to the circumference of a telephone-pole. Therefore Stout had to butt this strange, dark, bobbing, cylindrical “stick” with his snout.
“Oh my goodness—he’s trying to do it!” Gina exclaimed. “Look at him! Look at you, Stout!”
He progressed. He bumped the section of telephone-pole some feet inland. His intention was so perfect and his body so frenetic that it looked like maybe …
But the Bay current’s outward pull was too strong. Stout could butt the section of telephone-pole only so far before it and he went West in that cold, green water. Nonetheless his quest persisted, minute after minute, with the shine in his eyes undiminished. “Call him in, Don!” Gina said/ “Call him in! He’ll drown himself!”
You may see how Stout became so dear and admired a friend. His passing in January 2003—from “congestive heart-failure”, only age six, despite two months of desperate medications—rocked me profoundly. Stout deserved, I felt, a tribute that was out-sized and extravagant like his courage and loyalty. Music came into the writing of this Legend, something that in its form might be like Profikiev’s “symphonic tale for children.”
18 years and a move to New Orleans later, the very great band Rivers Answer Moons Roger Lewis, Herlin Riley, Kirk Joseph, and—though missing here, Michael Torregano Jr.) undertook to record with me the beginning few pages of “Stout, the Dog Whose Heart Was as Big as His Head” as “a sample” of what it might be in theatrical production.
Photo by Maryse Phillipe Déjean.
We had fun, August 1, 2021, in Rick G. Nelson’s Marigny Studio, this part of the day’s session that also gave us “Carrying The Saxophones”, “Bobee (What A Spirit Walks That Way”), and “Maybe You See Horses” for Roger’s #1-Jazz-Album-across-North-America-in-July-and-August-2022, ALRIGHT!
Photo by Jake Ricke.
A Taste of “Stout, the Dog ….” up to Brittany and Spearz in Franksez.