In the world of people who go to jazz clubs, a major coup is you got to see a player join the billed act on stage. A sax player, trumpeter, guitarist, singer . . .it's all fun when that happens, and a buff will brag for years about being there. But there are things bigger than players and instruments that may take a stage.

On Saturday afternoon, September 15, 2001, a friend called and said that after the week we've just had and all the things still spinning out of pattern, let's go to "Charlieo's", a jazz joint nearby to me, and hear whoever's there. I can't remember the members of the rhythm section exactly, but the saxophonist was one Charles Owens.

He has a sound that, always powerful, can one moment be directed in and pull you to the stage, audible but not spelled out, and then be streaked with the harmonic spikes of rhythm and blues.

The evening built until, during a jazz standard, the drummer soloed but, while the beats of the song were underfoot, broke it out into a conga line crescendo with what else but a conga line snaking through an intimate club that, after the choked breath of the week, opened the space with ecstatic---and unforeseen--- cries of release.

Then Owens finished the set with a gospel rendition, much in the vein of the Ray Charles version, of "America The Beautiful" on his melismatic tenor sax. What am I supposed to say? This is the great American art that thrives despite what some Americans others dig out of the gutter and throw into the mix? I was there, I've written about it but, then, maybe I haven't.

"Charlieo's" had its last night of jazz August 31, 2011, the general malaise coming through the doors---to stay? I can't answer. Like many things cherished, it didn't make to for this decade anniversary, but it made something. Numbers are interesting, but they are not notes. Notes are nice, but they are markers to further extol, at their best, on reflection and the unknown.