When I first went through imaging what the story would be about, I had imagined a young white woman with an unwanted pregnancy, a saxophone and a young black man who played that instrument.
The Hays Code specifically proscribed relationships between men and women who are of different races, so of course, I wanted to put that in the book. (It also proscribes homosexuality. There is a character in the book who is gay and there is one instance where that is indicated but I may have been too oblique, so people reading the book might not get it.)
In the book Connie is seventeen. I don't mention Jordan's age but I envision him as being about twenty-five. His first name, Jordan, comes from Saxophone player Louis Jordan, who, in my opinion still rocks. As he tells it his grandfather didn't like having a slave owner's name for his last name so he changed it to what he did, which was share cropping.
Jordan lives in Harlem with his parents and works part time as a janitor. For reasons unknown his family had a saxophone and Jordan took to it, teaching himself how to play it. In that regard I envision of him as being up there with Louis Armstrong and Art Tatum in his ability to pay his instrument, improvise with it and to take ownership of the music he plays.
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