Last night I played a gig in Houston with The Pictures, a band that I work with sometimes when they need to beef up the horn section by adding a baritone sax (that’s me!) and a trombone. Jimmy Shortell and I drove in a rented Hyundai to the Toyota Center, not really knowing what the event was that we were playing for. When we got there, it turned out we were playing Yao Ming’s charitable foundations annual fundraiser for Chinese disaster relief.
There being only one stage in the Arena, we shared the stage with Yao Ming. Let me tell you folks, you have no idea how big this guy is until you park alongside him and look up.
To prove my point, here is a picture of Chris, the singer in The Pictures, who is not the tallest of men (but one of the best singers in the business). As you see he goes up to Yao’s belt buckle and no further.
Yao struck me as a very gentle guy: soft-spoken and humble. He’s done a lot for earthquake relief--building schools, dealing with the ramifications of 70,000 dead. He’s a credit to the human race.
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