My dear friend and fellow musician, Jim Maihack, passed away Saturday, April 30, 2022. His death was not really a surprise but the shock of his sudden absence from our lives and the lives of his family leaves an emptiness that is very hard to get past. It will probably be years before I will not immediately think of calling him to do a job on tuba, trombone or piano and then realize that is forever out of the question.
I first met Jim in October of 1974. I know that is the date — and it is probably the only date I will be able to remember accurately here —because it was a week after my former wife and I arrived in San Francisco, having moved across the country from New Jersey. I had been playing for a few years in a trio at a local restaurant and had somehow (before the internet) heard of Earthquake McGoon’s and the Turk Murphy Jazz Band, so we were determined to visit McGoon’s as soon as possible so I could get a “foot in the door”, so to speak. So, during that first visit to the club I met Carl Lunsford, who was playing banjo in the band at the time, and Jim, who was doing the intermissions.
I have no memory of how I even had a phone number, since we had been in San Francisco for only a very short time, but I must have given him one when we first met. Jim called me a few days after and asked if I could sub for him in a trio playing outdoors for the opening of a sto
