I didn't hear about this:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...to_miracl.html
It started as a simple gift of a bass guitar to a Staten Island musician down on his luck.
The kind gesture ended up changing the life of Arthur Lee (Butch) Porter.
Because of the guitar, Porter reunited with a brother who'd been lost to him since 1969. And he reconnected with a daughter who feared he was dead.
"It was more than just a bass he gave him. He gave him a new lease on life," Porter's brother, Andre, said of the Hunter College student who arranged the gift.
Porter had hocked his beloved bass guitar to buy food in 2007 - a year that found him homeless, jobless and on probation after being convicted of assaulting his ex-wife.
That was rock bottom for the 51-year-old musician, who launched his career playing on hit records for Empress and Johnny Dynell in the 1980s.
He went on to accompany singers Jeff Redd and Donna Summer.
Without his instrument, Porter was depressed.
Employees at Tuttoriso, a cozy Staten Island cafe where Porter works, noticed.
Andrew Rice, a 20-year-old Hunter College student and a Tuttoriso employee, wanted to help.
Rice, who also plays bass, posted a message about Porter on TalkBass.com. Within two days, several musicians contacted Rice and chipped in to get Porter a brand-new SX 5 string jazz bass.
Then luck - or fate - added a grace note.
Porter's brother in Monterey, Calif., happened to spot the online thread.
"PLEASE HELP ME!!!!" Andre Porter, 49, wrote.
"If this is my long lost older brother I really want to see him again. I am thinking that this is some sort of miracle."
It was.
When Rice presented Arthur Porter with the bass last month, he also told him he'd made contact with his brother.
Then lightning struck twice.
Weeks later, Altranise Porter-Harris, 32, of upstate Rensselaer, saw the TalkBass.com thread and suspected the musician was her father.
"My biggest fear was, 'Is he dead?'" said Porter-Harris, who spoke to her father last week for the first time in two years.
"I let him know I missed him, and don't ever allow time to go by like that again. Two years was way too long."
The shell-shocked musician, who works as a dishwasher at Tuttoriso, had nothing but praise for Rice.
"I consider Andrew [a] god," Arthur Porter said.
"I was scared to fall asleep because I was thinking it was a dream. ... I was numb."
The brothers were separated as kids while living in Queens and grew up with different relatives - last seeing each other in December 1969.
Rice said he could barely believe the upside of his good deed.
"I was just trying to get him a bass," Rice said. "I never thought something like this would happen."
BY Michael J. Feeney
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Read more:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...#ixzz0fiUFNha3
Hat's off to you Andrew, just reconfirms my theory that Bassists are the coolest of all musicians.
