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On any given day, you’ll find Don Brame with his three saxophones.

He’ll stick the cases on his wheelchair, push them down the hall and stop by someone’s room to play. Other times, he’ll camp out in the community room and play almost anything, especially from Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs, his favorite.

He hardly ever finishes. He needs to stop and catch his breath. But be patient. He’ll finish in a minute — or two or three — and have some wisecrack for you at the end.

Yet, you have to listen. Really listen. He’s hard to understand. His lips barely move and, many times, he speaks in a run-on jumble no louder than a whisper.

But ask him to repeat or slow down. Then, you’ll get it.

“I got some soul, baby!’’

“Where is Lawrence Welk when I need him?’’

“Hello, world!’’

“You know, all things are possible.’’

Yes, all things are possible for Don Brame. (See video of Brame)

There was a time he’d travel the Southeast to hear music, particularly beach music. And particularly Maurice Williams. He’d go anywhere to see Maurice.

Today, Don can hardly travel beyond his hallways. He takes 18 pills a day to keep his body from freezing up. And even with his medication, when he gets excited, he’ll freeze and mumble.

Don has Parkinson’s disease.

He got diagnosed in 2005 when he found he couldn’t move his arms above his shoulders. But a week or so after his diagnosis, he bought an alto sax, a soprano sax and a tenor sax.

“I am not going to let this Parkinson’s get me,” he told his good friend Fred Shaw, a beach-music producer in South Carolina.
Brame hadn’t played the sax since Greensboro Senior High — since he gave up the instrument to play football. But at age 64, in the early stages of Parkinson’s, he wanted to learn how to play again.

“What if you can’t play them?” the salesman at Moore Music asked him.

“Can’t is not in my vocabulary,” Brame responded.

He had always loved that fat round sound. He still remembers dropping a quarter into a jukebox at Ham’s off Aycock and hearing the opening sax in Bill Pinkney’s “Drip Drop.”

He also remembers catching Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs back in 1959 at Henry’s Dance Land in Stokesdale. He heard those saxes sing and thought even then, “I want to listen to this music for the rest of my life.”

He has. Two years ago, Brame produced the DVD “Christmas With Maurice Williams & Friends.” Watch it, and you’ll see Brame in a tuxedo walk on stage with a cane and a trembling right hand.

“It’s wonderful to be here tonight,” Brame tells the audience. “I’d love to play, but I’ve got a little tremor going.”

Brame doesn’t produce any more music. But Shaw, who owns Bradley House Music, a recording studio in South Carolina, will throw Brame’s name in the credits on a CD and send it to him in the mail.

Shaw knows Brame, a lifelong bachelor, loves being in the spotlight.

For two decades, he was the president of the Bel Aire Golf Course, his family’s business near the airport.

And today, at age 67, he is the Pied Piper of Greensboro’s Blumenthal Jewish Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, the 154-resident facility he moved to in March because of his Parkinson’s.

He’ll call Shaw or Williams and play his sax over the phone. Or he’ll walk the halls, play his CDs or DVDs for fellow residents and play one of his saxophones until he runs out of breath.

That, he says in his mumble of a voice, makes him happy.

He is Blumenthal’s Music Man.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com