TEXAS TYPE by Ken Esten Cooke
It is said true friendship isn’t about being inseparable, it’s about being separated and nothing changes.
That’s how I have felt about my best friend of nearly four decades, Mark Rubinstein, who died Friday after infections complicated by battling vasculitis, a disease of the blood vessels that slowly cuts off oxygen to organs, in his case, to his sizeable brain. He’d been in and out of hospitals and finally in hospice.
Mark was the smartest and kindest person I have ever known. He came from a family (“Half Jew, half Texan,” he joked) that valued self-worth and curiosity but had little use for pretensions or keeping up with the Joneses.
We met in jazz band class at Odessa College. I was a dorky tennis player and he took the class so he could go to London with us to play a few concerts. On that trip, we roomed together and became fast friends.
He was well ahead of everyone musically. I was apologetic about my humble drum chops, but he told me, “Yeah, but you swing, and that’s more important.” I never forgot that.
Odessa, not exactly a hub of culture back in the mid-1980s, left me wanting some intellectual and musical stimulation, so I frequently drove to his rented house in Big Spring and we’d listen to records well into the night, from Elvis Costello, to Thelonius Monk to old Willie Nelson. We’d talk about music and girls, of course, and the challenges of understanding both.
His record collection had everything from English punk rock bands (he had been in a punk band with his older sis, Denise, in high school), to cello performances.
And then there was jazz. Somehow, in a family that had little other interest in music, Mark immersed and taught himself how to be one of the most wellregarded jazz pianists in San Antonio when he moved back to the River City. In the living room of their house sat a grand piano, and Mark practiced and played on it amid the constant activity of siblings, dogs and family chatter.
His bookshelves were equally diverse and held a bit of everything, from poet Robert Bly to a book about currencies of the world and their relative values and everything in between.
Mark introduced me to cigars back when people could smoke in public places. We’d make a pilgrimage to Mexico every now and then in our 20s to find Cuban imports and smuggle them across. Mark remembered one appreciative border agent who found Cuban cigars and ordered that “they be destroyed by fire.” Roger that.
In the summer of 1986, we took a road trip from San Antonio to Cincinnati, Ohio. He was being asked to audition for a music conservatory there, and I went along for the ride. It was my first cross-country road trip and I got the bug, later joining bands that would crisscross the nation, Europe and Scandinavia. Mark did the same with a variety of bands. He could play anything, so he backed up people on jazz piano, yes, but also bass guitar and accordion.
One thing people have remembered was Mark’s exceptional kindness. I certainly witnessed that. Being close to him, I also witnessed a couple of times when his musical mischievousness overshadowed people’s obnoxiousness. At one gig, he knew the jazz flutist’s predictable solo, so he mimicked the passages, only a half-step higher on the keyboard to create a dissonant mess.
The bass player in our college rhythm section was Inez Wyrick, an Amarillo product. The three of us maintained our friendship and warped sense of humor throughout the years. We performed at a wedding of our musician friends and managed to play some Conway Twitty, the theme to The Flintstones, and snuck in the ska tune “Monkey Man.”
Ours was a friendship filled with music and laughter and no small amount of late-night diners wherever we were able to meet each other. We overcame life moves — Inez to Virginia, and Mark later to Ohio, where he became an instructor in studio engineering for Ohio State University. Sadly, Inez passed a few years ago to health issues.
While Mark lived far away, I went to see him a couple of times in Ohio. Each summer he returned to San Antonio to direct a program, and we’d meet at The Barn Door for steaks and a cigar.
He was always a brother to me, even though I was raised with two in my own family, and I was his brother in his family of female siblings. Our calls about once a month picked up right where we left off. The last time I spoke to him was the previous Saturday night when his sister held the phone up to him and I told him how much he meant to me.
Best friends, in spite of the distance, are a gift. And Mark enriched my life in many ways. I am so grateful for our time together, and the world is less bright without my friend and maestro, Mark.
Love to my friend and his family. Rest in peace, Mark.
ken@fredericksburgstandard.com
