Understanding oneself

Grief is an interesting thing. You can think you feel fine, but then you feel anything but. You can think you’re operating as per usual but then find you’re missing things. In the months after my father passed away in 2024, one of the things that went by the wayside – well, into a pile that I only recently discovered – was a copy of Chasing My Father by local Jewish community member and musician Dylan Cramer.

The book was sent to me by a reader of the Jewish Independent with a letter that, honestly, I could have just run as a review, so well written and passionate it was about Cramer and his story. She hoped I could introduce other readers to Cramer, and this is my long overdue effort to do that.

Cramer is a professional saxophonist. He performs with his eponymous jazz trio and teaches. He has recorded at least five albums and written several books: Alto Saxophone Mastery and Flute Artistry, about his musical crafts, the recently released Cold Spaghetti, a collection of poems/observations, and the memoir Chasing My Father.

Self-published in 2022, Chasing My Father is dedicated to “anyone who’s been lost and tried to find their way back….” It couldn’t be a more fitting dedication from a man who, at age 13, lost his father to suicide. But it’s more than that. While his father was the main provider of love for Cramer, his father also was the reason Cramer, then 9 years old, and his siblings grew up in a commune, to live surrounded by strangers who came and went, often going hungry because his food was eaten by others. His mother and sister joined the sexual freedom, “sharing the men who were around,” and they became, along with his brother, drug and alcohol users. His father, who had started the commune, expanded it, moved it a few times, then abandoned it after a couple of years. His father moved out, returning once a week – every Tuesday – to see Cramer, take him out for dinner, a movie or a walk.

Tuesday, June 1, 1971, changed even that tenuous sense of stability. Coming home, expecting a night with his dad, Cramer instead found out that his father had died by suicide. Initially, Cramer “retreated from everyone and everything and trusted no one.” But then, at the beginning of Grade 8, his “obsession with the alto saxophone” began. “It became my key, my escape from everything and everyone, and I poured myself into perfecting it,” he writes. Not a natural talent, according to his own assessment, Cramer “kept at it, practising every day for hours on end.” In 1975, at age 17, he joined a band and headed out on the road.

At this time, a friend gave Cramer a Sonny Criss album. It took time, but Cramer put enough money together to go to Los Angeles, in 1977. He convinced Criss to teach him, and their relationship was special. Criss became a second father to Cramer. And he would be the second father Cramer lost to suicide.

Devastated, Cramer continued to hone his craft. Through a fellow musician, he found out about a school, run by the late Dick Grove, “where the top professional players, writers and arrangers in LA taught during their off-hours.” Cramer’s new teacher and mentor would be Philip H. Sobel, “a top-notch studio musician,” with countless credits to his name, who died in 2008. Sobel was sure that Cramer would be “the best alto player in this town,” and his confidence and guidance gave Cramer back his confidence. Cramer calls Sobel “a lifesaver, my lifesaver, plain and simple.” 

There are other tragedies with which Cramer must deal, but he does. He also comes to better understand the complicated role his father played in his life and forgive himself for some of the mistakes he has made. The memoir is written in the context of Cramer being hospitalized, months shy of 64, for a heart disorder. He seems remarkably well-adjusted for what he has experienced – wise and hopeful, still believing in love. Chasing My Father is indeed a worthwhile read, especially for “anyone who’s been lost and tried to find their way back….”

Cramer’s website is dylancramer.com.