In the last years, anytime I showed up to Fat Alberts he would surely be there and every time he asked if I would sit in with him. Always politely, as if we didn’t know each other the last thirty years. Sitting in with him was a pleasure. Never asked what key or what song and he was not insecure about what I might do. An instant exercise of listening for changes, suspecting where they were headed and trying not interfere, let the lyric get across unencumbered and seizing moments of space with anything relatable to the melody. Sam always tried to get number six or seven at the open stage. They were his lucky slots, the best place in the performing sequence. Glad I mostly knew Dr. Jekyl since he had another side to him. When I first met him, Fat Alberts was at its original location, 300 Bloor West and after the Wednesday performances he led the march of regulars for a beer at the New Madison, which for the last twenty years became a vegetarian restaurant called Fresh. Whenever I’m there I still see the ghost of Rose, the old Hungarian waitress in the red vest, big glasses and bigger hairdo. She served us all in that back room. Still see Sam leading those conversations, making outsiders feel like insiders and recall the unexpected joy to relax a little, let down one’s guard in the big city and experience a rare moment of community. Many times I have asked the staff at Fresh if they know what this place used to be. They never do and they don’t care and none of that’s weird except it’s hard as you get older to turn off the part that wants to tell people what was exactly right here, just a few moments ago when you were thirty years younger. It’s like I’m doing a land acknowledgement and they’re trying to be polite while counting the minutes for me to finish. In some of the mystic literature they say there is a big world and a small world connected to each other, always mirroring each other. Like for every artist celebrated in the mass media there is another more obscure but just as good, fated to remain in the smaller world, the one of zines and brokesville. Whether he got #7 or was holding court at the New Madison, Sam left everyone feeling they were in the presence of a star and that they too were one. I’m so gratified by that last record, The Secret Songs of Sam Larkin, now starring on youtube.