recordings, Charlie O'Kane was brought in to play baritone on the section parts, so Chaloff could preserve his strength for the solos. Here his playing was as strong as ever, especially on "Aged in Wood", written as a solo vehicle for Chaloff by Al Cohn. Richard Chaloff: 'He took a wheelchair down to make that recording, you know. They didn't think he was going to make it. I heard stories from people there. But when he stood up and played, you never knew he was a sick fellow. He played dynamic. If you listen to the record he sounds like the old Serge. He pulled himself together. I don't know how he did it. But he had tremendous drive, tremendous stamina.' Don Gold reviewed the album in Down Beat: 'This last session before his death represents a fervent expression of a fatally ill man. It is a kind of significant farewell in the language he knew best.' Chaloff made his last live appearances at The Stable Club on Huntington Avenue in Boston the following May. Interviewed in 1993, Charlie 'the Whale' Johnson recalled Chaloff's final performances: 'I remember pushing Chaloff's wheelchair into The Stable for his last appearances there. He was in bad shape but could still really play, standing leaning on a pillar. However, he didn't have much stamina. He couldn't really finish the gig. I also had to go get pot and booze for him. He was still using these steadily, even in the hospital at the end.' On 15 July 1957, the dying Chaloff was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital. According to Richard Chaloff, he took his horn and pet monkey with him: 'He still had the kinkajou monkey Mother got him to keep him company. And he had his horn. I was told they wheeled him into a vacant operating theatre so he could practise, and that was his last gig, his last public performance, solo baritone sax alone in an operating theatre. Nurses, doctors and even patients were standing outside and listening. He fought it to the end. Mother would visit him and urge him on, saying, 'You can beat it' and things. But that last day, they brought a priest to visit him, and the priest saw Serge in bed looking so wasted, and the priest thought he was supposed to perform the last rites. Serge woke up in the middle of it and