Former Oklahoma basketball star Wayman Tisdale got his first guitar...

Wayman Tisdale plans return to the road in January
By Jenni Carlson
Published: December 18, 2008

Former Oklahoma basketball star Wayman Tisdale got his first guitar in the third or fourth grade from his father. It was a Mickey Mouse guitar.
Wayman Tisdale knew his cancer was bad the day the music stopped.
Even though the basketball legend is identified in these parts mostly for his sport, his first love was music. Long before he became a high school phenom at Tulsa Washington, a college superstar at Oklahoma or a stalwart big man in the NBA, he was a bass guitarist.
The bass became his passion before he was even in junior high.
It still is today.
"Nothing stops my music,” he said. "Nothing.”
Cancer did.
Diagnosed with bone cancer in his right leg early last year, Tisdale endured two intense rounds of chemotherapy. The treatments zapped his energy and his enthusiasm. Getting out of bed was an ordeal, so working in his in-home studio was an impossibility.
"The music actually stopped for the first time in a long time,” Tisdale said.
Now, the music is back.
So is Tisdale.
His cancerous leg has been amputated, replaced by a prosthetic, and his darkness has been eliminated, replaced by hope.
Listen to his music, and you can hear it.
A different ballgame
Wayman Tisdale was in third or fourth grade when he received the gift that changed his life.
His father bought Mickey Mouse guitars for all three of his sons. The two oldest boys were into sports, so their guitars were used as hockey sticks and baseball bats.
Not Wayman’s. He spent hours in his bedroom fiddling with that guitar.
He never did take a lesson. Instead, he would watch the bass players in the band at the church where his father pastored, then he would try to emulate what he saw.
Even as Wayman became a basketball star, he continued playing the bass. He played in the church band. For family and friends. For himself.
During his 12-year career in the NBA, Tisdale started playing in little clubs after games. He would do so at home and on the road. That was his hobby and his outlet.
Thing is, the response was overwhelming.
"It got to be where people would line up around the building to see me play bass,” Tisdale remembered.
Folks regularly asked where they could buy recordings of his music. Eventually, he cut a seven-song demo, figuring he could sell it out of the back of his car and maybe make enough money to pay the house band.
That demo found its way to Motown Records, and in 1994, the music giant signed Tisdale to a contract. A year later, it released his debut album, Power Forward.
The record sold more than 250,000 copies.
"In jazz, you sell 50,000 pieces,” Tisdale said, "you’re doing great.”
Tisdale has done great and then some.
In 1997, he retired from basketball and turned his undivided attention to music. He toured around the world and released eight albums in the decade since.
Tisdale has enjoyed commercial success as well as critical acclaim, a rare feat.
"Early on, it was legitimate to wonder if Wayman Tisdale wasn’t just a basketball player dabbling with playing jazz bass,” Jeff Winbush wrote in a review on AllAboutJazz.com.
But now?
Winbush called Tisdale "one of the brightest talents in music today.”
A change in game plan
Wayman Tisdale was on the road playing shows, doing what he loved when the doctors called.
The cancer was back.
After breaking his leg in February 2007, doctors discovered cancer eating away at his bone. They started him on chemotherapy soon after, and for the better part of six months, Tisdale endured nausea, infection, fatigue and more.
He finished chemo late in the year, and as his strength and his spirits returned, he went back on the road. People told him how much better he looked, how much peppier he seemed.
How could the cancer return?
How could he do more chemo?
"How can you gear up to get that sick again?” he said.
Tisdale started chemo again at M.D. Anderson, the renowned cancer center in Houston. There, he saw this disease at its core. There, he saw it at its worst.
A patient without a nose, lost to cancer.
A patient going through chemo alone.
"We’d share blankets sometimes in the waiting room because we were so cold,” Tisdale said.
"I saw ground zero.”
He paused.
"I needed to see that.”
But even with that perspective, it didn’t always make Tisdale’s battle any easier. There were those days when he would struggle to get out of bed. He might make it to the couch, maybe eat a little bit, but then, all he’d want to do was go back to bed.
That is when the music stopped.
"When that happened, my wife got worried,” Tisdale said.
Regina Tisdale, after all, knew the hours that her husband devoted to his music. If she ever wondered where he was, she almost always found him in his studio.
"Are you coming to bed tonight?” she often asked.
Tisdale still wasn’t feeling well when he started playing again, but he’d make his way to the studio and start tinkering with something. A melody. A beat.
"The next thing you know, the adrenaline’s flowing,” he said. "The music would take my mind off everything.
"I worked through so much after that.”
And when the doctors told him that the chemo wasn’t working, that the cancer was still in his leg and that amputation might be the way to go, Tisdale found his strength in faith and family. But his outlet was music.
Tisdale’s mother, Deborah, reminded him of that gift.
"The cancer could’ve been anywhere,” she told him. "It could’ve been in your arms. It could’ve hindered you from what you were doing. This will slow you down, but it’s not going to stop you.”
An amazing comeback
Wayman Tisdale has always tried to play music that makes people feel better. Turns out, his music had the same effect on him.
Tisdale, who was scheduled to play Saturday at the All-College Classic but decided earlier this week he wasn't ready to return to the stage, plans to return to the road next month. He will host a week-long smooth jazz cruise that will tour the Caribbean and feature some of jazz’s biggest names.
"You won’t hear me playing no sad song, I’ll tell you that,” Tisdale said, flashing that familiar smile. "That’s going to be time to rejoice and celebrate.
"Every time I get on the music stage now, that’s a time to rejoice and celebrate.”
Jenni Carlson: 475-3314; jcarlson@opubco.com; Carlson can be heard Monday-Friday from 3-6 p.m. on KEBC-AM 1340.