Monastery Jam

Brother Matthew, Brother Bartholomew and Brother Stanislaus take their vows this week at the Servite Monastery on Van Buren Street in Chicago. Brother Stanislaus came from the Polish army and five years in a German prison camp. Brother Bartholomew came from the retail clothing trade in Chicago, where he was known to fellow salesmen as "Two-Pants Murphy." And Brother Matthew came from the honky-tonk world of red-hot, blue-air, 4-in-the-morning jazz; his name was Boyce Brown.

"The best white alto saxophonist," wrote French Musicologist Hugues (Le Jazz Hot) Panassie, "is a Chicago musician, Boyce Brown . . . He has voluminous sonority, a trenchant attack and a hot, mordant intonation." He got his first horn when he was 14, and he played in combos all over, even played at the Palace on a bill that included Eddie Cantor and George Jessel. In 1952 Boyce was working in a Chicago nightclub called Liberty Inn, and developed the habit of dropping into a nearby church in the early morning after work to listen to the cool music of the organ. Then he began to stay for Mass. He became a Roman Catholic, and two years later he went to the Servites and told his story to the director of vocations, Father Hugh Calkins, O.S.M. (Order of Servants of Mary). Did a hot saxophonist have a chance to be accepted as candidate for lay brother?

Father Calkins grinned. "My own hobby is jazz piano," he said. "Looks like you and I might have some good jam sessions together here at the monastery." They have.

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