ALAADEEN & DR. KING

Ahmad Alaadeen asks if you want to hear a story about a fledgling Kansas City musician in the full-blown days of bebop.

In 1950 he was a sophomore enrolled in the band sequence at a vocational school. He likens it to a present-day fine arts school, one that graduates people ready to be working musicians.

But in the Kansas City of his youth, Alaadeen already was living in one of the best musical laboratories in the world. Charlie Parker and Lester Young and Ben Webster lived there. Dexter Gordon came to town "just to hang out," Alaadeen said.

The story, Alaadeen says in a soft voice, is about the day he heard the late Miles Davis was in town. He and a friend "played hooky" and knocked on Davis' hotel room door about 8:30 in the monring.

Davis arrived at the door naked and unamused. He cursed the two boys and let them in. Then he went back to bed.

"We sat there four or five hours watching him sleep," Alaadeen remembers.

When Davis awoke, amazed they were still there, he asked the boys if they were hungry. Of course they were. Davis sent them across the street for some lunch meat and a hot pickle.

Alaadeen still remembers Davis' face when he bit into that hot pickle and cursed some more.

That's the story part celebrity gossip, part etched crystal.

Alaadeen, a tenor saxophonist, got to know Miles Davis and a lot of other musicians after that. The list of people he has played with Holiday, Kenton, Fitzgerald, Basie, Ellington, Horne, Sam Cook, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and Natalie Cole, to name some reads like a Who's Who of American music.

On Monday, Alaadeen and his four-piece band, the Deans of Swing, will give a special martin Luther King Jr. birthday concert at 7:30 p.m. in the Forrest Rose Theater at Southeast Missouri State University.

Tickets are $4 general admission and $2 for seniors and non-university students.

Alaadeen also will lead a free jazz improvisation workshop at 1 p.m. Monday in Brandt Music Hall. Preregistration is required by calling 651-2141.

The band will play mostly original tunes, but Alaadeen says he is surprised these days at how knowledgeable college students are about the jazz greats and their music. "At one time that wasn't the case," he said. "Right now jazz is on the rise."

Forty-three years after getting his first union card, having lived and performed in San Antonio, Denver, St. Louis, Chicago and New York, Alaadeen is back in his hometown fronting his own band for the first time in his career.

It paid off in 1992 when he won the Missouri Arts Award, the state's highest honor for achievement in the arts.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Kansas City musicians "changed the face of jazz," Alaadeen said. On Monday, he and his band will perform in honor of a man who changed the face of the country through his leadership of the civil rights movement.

In the 1960s, Alaadeen was a follower of Elijah Mohammed, founder of the Black Muslims. He describes himself as "a street person" who didn't agree with Martin Luther King Jr.'s policy of nonviolence.

"I couldn't understand how he could practice that much restraint," Alaadeen said.

But his views have changed. "I can see his greatness, the sacrifices he made and the strength to complete what he had to do.

"...He was a man," Alaadeen said.

Also performing in the theater Monday on Martin Luther King Day will be the St. Louis Black Repertory Company, which will present a theatrical production titled "I Remember Harlem..."

Ticket prices for the 3 p.m. performance are $4 general admission and $2 for seniors and non-university students.

"I Remember Harlem..." is a montage of poetry and song by the giants of the Harlem Renaissance, African-American artists whom the audience may be discovering for the first time.

The company also will offer two free workshops for professional and amateur actors and directors at 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Monday. Reservations can be made by calling 651-2149.

Both performances are sponsored by the Cultural Programs Committee at the university in cooperation with the Missouri Arts Council.