“Take Me To That Land of Jazz”: Texas Serenaders feat. Christy Foster (W...

Headlines from NY Times music obits collected over years

 Litany of Influence

Headlines clipped and saved, from

newspaper pages flattened in scrapbooks, mostly not cut or detached but 

yes, folded, creased, and all that

they scream the importance of branding your life in advance

they tell the importance of age in increments of tens and fragments of those

Nat Hentoff, a Writer, A Jazz Critic and Above All a Provocateur, Dies at 91

Levon Helm, Drummer and Gravel-Throated Singer for the Band, Is Dead at 71

and likely still dead

Hal David, Award-Winning Songwriter, Is Dead at 91

and is probably still dead at 92

Imagine Dying at the age of Something-One

Jack Hardy, 63, Folk Singer and Keeper of the Tradition

Earl Hagen, 88, “Andy Griffith” composer

Wilma Cozart Fine, 82, Record Producer

Levi Stubbs, powerful voice for the Four Tops, dies at 72

Hank Thompson is Dead; Country Singer was 82

Jimmy Giuffre, Imaginative Jazz Artist, Dies at 86

Harold Leventhal, Promoter of Folk Music, Dies at 86

Jack Lawrence, Writer of Hit Songs, Dies at 96

Jim Stewart, 92, Dies; Unlikely Record Maker of Black Soul Music

Yes, if you hadn’t guessed, the headlines are all composed in New York City

in the Land of All That’s Fit To Print u won’t see me there a pity

Dorival Caymmi, Singer of Brazil, is Dead at 94

and is probably still dead at 95

U. Utah Phillips, 73, Folk Troubadour

Bob Brookmeyer, 81, Jazz Master and Mentor

Don Helms, 81, Who Put the Twang in the Hank Williams Songbook

John Martyn, Folk and Jazz Guitarist, Dies at 60

Johnnie Johnson, 80, Dies; Inspired ‘Johnny B. Goode’

Hank Crawford, 74, Prolific Saxophonist

John McGlinn, 55, Restorer of Musicals

Flute Music Wafted in Caves 35,000 Years Ago

Jim Dickinson, 67, Player In Memphis Music Scene

Singer-songwriter Del Shannon dies

Nick Ashford, 70, of Motown Duo, Dies

Stanley Drucker, 93, Longtime Clarinetist For Philharmonic, Dies

Sam Butera, 81, Saxophonist for Louis Prima

Billy Lee Riley, 75, Sun Records Singer

Neal Hefti, Composer of ‘Batman’ for TV, Dies at 85

Bo Diddley, Who Gave Rock His Beat, Dies at 79

Odessa, Civil Rights Voice, Dies at 77

Seattle Bids Tuba Man a Sad Goodbye

Consuelo Vela’zquez Dies; Wrote ‘Besame Mucho’

Gene Pitney, Who Sang of ’60’s Teenage Pathos, Dies at 65

Boots Randolph, the ‘Yakety Sax’ Man, Dead at 80

Chuck Stewart Dies at 89, Jazz Photographer Left His Mark on Album Covers

Rudy Van Gelder, 91, Audio Engineer; Helped Define Sound of Jazz on Record

Chuck Berry, Rock ’n’ Roll’s Master Theorist and Statesman, Dies at 90

these people all seem to have had to do with popular music in the last half of the 20th century

James Brown, the ‘Godfather of Soul,’ Dies at 73

Mickey Baker, Guitarist, Is Dead at 87

Pete La Roca Sims, 74, Postbop Drummer

Earl Carroll, 75, Lead Singer of the Cadillacs

Greg Lake, a Progressive-Rock Icon Of King Crimson Fame, Dies at 69

Jesse Winchester, Singer and Songwriter, Dies at 69

Enduring, With a Half-Smile and a Song

Curly Putman, Songwriter of Heartbreakers, Dies at 85

Giorgio Gomelsky, 81, Rock Music Producer Who Gave the Rolling Stones Their Start

Marie Knight, Rich-Voiced Gospel Singer, Dies at 89

Sam Carr, 83, Delta Blues Drummer

Bob Marcucci, 81, Backer of Fabian and Frankie Avalon

Pinetop Perkins, Delta Boogie-Woogie Master, Dies at 97

Hubert Sumlin, 80, Master of Blues Guitar

Velvet-Voiced Ferlin Husky Dies at 85

Ross Barbour, 82, a Founding ‘Freshman’

Creed Taylor, 93, Dies; Producer Who Shaped Jazz Sound for Decades

Now read this in reverse

 Delirious Guy

Here is a lonely old "spoken word" from many years ago, after immersing in Shep Shepherd Jr.'s great recordings and radio transcriptions.

At the time, I was enamored particularly of "Shifting, Whispering Sands." Both Part 1 and Part 2.

Sam Thomas had a bunch of Jean Shepherd records I had never seen. While we were needle dropping on his vinyl one night, I asked if he had anything Italian because I had to play an Italian wedding that weekend.

He didn't, but he had an old mandolin. He handed it to me and we spilled a few cans of Texas Pride beer doing the hand-off. I wondered how hard it might be to fake playing it.

He let me take it home to use on the gig that weekend.

Coincidentally, I'd been making cassette tapes of me playing with the great guitarist Dave Lincoln, and we had a draft of "autumn leaves" which I practiced to, hitting strings on the mandolin to get the typical sound as close as possible.

Overdubbing the mandolin onto that cassette basically ruined it for any practical further purposes. Who wants to hear someone fumbling with a mandolin.

But since I can't throw anything out, I decided two mistakes were better than one. I wrote some lyrics that I could picture Jean Shepherd Jr. reading over the mandolin and guitar track.

I'm writing this because the story behind the song is possibly more interesting than the song itself.

Sam Thomas was an inspiration who made tapes for me of tunes I should learn on sax and clarinet. A few days after the wedding I heard he was found dead in his apartment.

He and his son did not get along, his only living relative. I thought, I could keep the mandolin and Sam would not have minded. But he lent it to me, not gave it to me.

I went to his apartment with the mandolin and knocked. No answer. I pushed on the door and it was open. I didn't want to look inside, because even when Sam lived there, every surface was covered. His career involved delivering groceries to families on the North Side of Fort Worth. His recreation was going to hear live jazz and playing records; how we met up.

I put the mandolin inside the door.

I learned later that his son had sold all his records, and mandolin, etc. to Sumter Bruton at Record Town, the store we all hung out at.

Now as the weather turns colder I thought of the key line in the spoken word "Delirious Guy"-- "Somebody May Still Care."

Click on "Delirious Guy" at the top of this if you want to hear it.

Performing with...

 

Performing with...

Intelligence. Knowing what's going on around you

Heart. Feeling the song

Humor. as in ice cream

Empathy. Feeling the audience

Generosity. Play for tips

Courage. Run with it

Honesty. Find in the song

Grit. Wear yourself out

Performing with...

Dynamics. Contrast

Articulation. Variety

Repetition. Learn

Melody. Phrasing and expression

Effects. Visual

Expression. Suit the song

Range. use it or lose it

phrasing. Words.

vibrato. like singing.

note bending. judicious

duration. right length

smoothness. musical sounding

Holiday with sax

 Holiday with sax

It was just about the turn of THAT century, when all the computers would shut down because of a year 2000 problem.

The time wasn’t that important. And only some computers would shut down.

My brain was shutting down at a bad time. I can’t remember the girl’s name. I’m usually only in a bar on business.

This Friday night, the outdoor gig was rained out at the last minute. Playing music, if you want to call that a business. Writing and reviewing records and performances, if you want to call that… a business. The types of things which found me in bars and sometimes getting comped.

I was already 40 miles from home so when the bass player said, let’s go to a nice darts bar, I was meh but willing. Being in a bar as a customer would be good experience.

But there was no ability on my end, to join a conversation in the middle of two girls talking. Small talk doesn't come easy for some folks.

Mid-range hearing loss caused me to miss all but the punch line. There’s five pennies down on a table and the joke line  was, “It’s a pussy but you ain’t gonna get it for five cents.”

My sax from the rained-out gig was in the car, alongside my brain it seems. The girl grabs my hand, twists my wedding ring, reads my t-shirt. “Slim’s San Francisco.” Loud in my ear.

Barefoot Miller was on stage, I hadn’t seen him in a few years, since I gave up playing blues for Top 40 and jazz. Those blues chords turn up in all kinds of music, like me turning up in this darts bar in Oak Lawn.

I finally noticed the two girls are handcuffed together. An interesting detail, particularly since neither of them can find the key. Maybe it’s a joke between them. They do seem to separate somehow and one girl says, “I have a sax at home. I was taking lessons, but I lost my time slot to one of my teacher’s high school students.”

Being usually on stage with a sax, I’ve talked many times with people who used to play sax.

“It’s a Selmer Pro Model. I won it in a secret wish contest on K-LUV.”

Oh man K-LUV. Yes, that's what that radio station sounds like with a signal that blows away all the good radio stations. Her name comes to me—- Marilyn. A popular name probably when she was born.

“I entered the contest, where you tell them what you want. I told my mother, we’re listening to nothing but K-LUV from now on, because I’m going to win a saxophone.”

I guess it was the sax talk which got me to focus. She was real cute and used her free newly un-cuffed hand to move her fingers on me.

I told my bass player friend, “I don’t need the aggravation.”

Weighing the ingredients of this recipe for disaster.

“I think she really has a Selmer,” he said. “I just have this feeling.”

“I don’t live far from here. I really want to hear someone play my horn. Will you play it for me?”

Marilyn had finally caught my attention. I told her about lending out my sax once, even for one song.

“I would be careful who you let play your Selmer. You just met me. But since you met a person who wants to play it, let’s go to your house then.”

We all piled into my Oldsmobile station wagon, a relic whose transmission only shifted when it felt like it. The girls were talking about crotches and whatever. I told Marilyn basically my rules I had just made up on the spot. I get to play the sax. She doesn’t get to play me.

“That’s it,” she starts yelling to her friend. “I’m not having any part of this. Nobody talks to me like that. What’s this guy’s name again? Forget it.” She fumbled for her house keys.

The case looked like a case with a Selmer Super 80 in it. I wouldn’t go in the house and she wouldn’t open it in the driveway. A pretty girl full of sour notes carrying a sax that could turn them sweet. I knew as soon as I put that thing in my mouth she would forget my prude vibe. I’d get to play a sax I would probably never be able to afford. My own sax was in the back, a beat up Buescher 156 which had a nice sound alright. But it was no Selmer.

This Super 80 did purr like a cat and growled like a tiger. I took it inside the bar in case there was a chance to sit in with the band.

With the sax as a prop, I kind of waited politely to be asked up to join the band for a song or two. I figured one of the guys might recognize me.

“You gotta wait to be called up, that’s how it works,” I told Marilyn. Her patience wore thin. “I want to hear my sax,” she said as she stumbled onto the stage and tried to dance while the band was playing. Kinda drunk but still good looking. The singer, James Buck, helped her back to where I was.

I’m re-thinking her story about winning the sax on the radio. I tend to think to much and that's when my imagination goes wild. It’s a very cool story but I think the guys in the band know not just the girl but the sax. Which I am holding. They may even know the true owner of the sax. Whatever. All kinds of things go through the mind while holding someone else's sax. The same thing happened to me once when Pete Fountain let me hold his clarinet. I thought I was him for a minute.

“Tony broke my heart tonight,” she said out of nowhere. And, “they’re ignoring you, they don’t want you to go up and play.”

“Don’t sweat it,” “I said. You’re making too much out of this. It’s just another night.” I was 40 miles from home and in this big city there were sax players better than me playing on street corners.

“No it isn’t,” she mumbled. And louder, “You should have heard the things Tony was saying about you.”

“I doubt it.” Karen alert.

“I want to hear my horn.”

“Let’s go out in the lot, I’ll play you a private concert.”

“I’m leaving. Outta here. Where’s my keys. I can’t find my keys. I think I left them in your  car. Take me to get my keys. I can walk home. It’s not that far.”

Maybe the sax wasn’t hers. I drove her home the three blocks and the old song “I want to hear my horn” fell off the charts while the new #1 was “Tony broke my heart tonight.”

If she's drinking the night away maybe I better too. But that would make two of us.

Or maybe she and Tony will laugh about this tomorrow.

I followed her to her front door and waited while she fumbled for the keys, which seemed now to be always how she found her keys.

Rick Dees was playing on the TV. The sofa looked like somebody’s bed some of the time. The kitchen was piled with dirty dishes and smelled like dog food. Some negligee on a drying rack.

“You wanna beer,” as she gets us each one.

Marilyn had been thinking as she pointed out. “I’m really into friendship,” she said. “I do a lot for my friends, and I expect a lot from them to me. If you don’t have friends, you have nothing.”

Her voice trailed off on the word "nothing."

“Tony really, really, broke my heart tonight. We’re very good friends.”

She sat down on the sofa and patted the space next to her. “Sit here. No commitments.”

“So, you said, or your friend said, Marilyn, you’re a nurse?”

“A baby nurse.”

“A pediatric nurse?”

“No, different. We decide if the babies are born with deformities and things. We’re very good at what we do.”

Marilyn has a very demanding job and Tony broke her heart tonight.

“I have a headache,” she says. I say let me get you an aspirin before you go to bed.

The nurse’s eyes droop and blink with the audacity of me trying to find an aspirin in this ash heap of humanity. Bathroom probably.

“I don’t think work is ever going to come tomorrow.”

A nurse can have Friday off sometimes.

“I gotta go,” I said to someone who was just about asleep on the sofa. It wouldn’t be the first time I talked a girl into dreamland. On the way out, I pull her keys out of the outside front door lock.

“Lock your door from the inside. Don’t forget the aspirin.”

I went back to the bar to see how my bass player pal was doing with Marilyn’s friend with the handcuffs.

Walking in and hearing a sax. “Honky Tonk ( Part II)” from 1956, just like Clifford Scott played it.

That Tony can play.

Fallen off her horse

So this is my American girlfriend here.

She brought me here from Tasmania and I don’t have a clue. Now she and her father want me to go back. Which I don’t mind actually. It’s just the way they’re going about it, blaming me for Gingham falling off her horse.

And of course for everything else. If she hadn’t run home to her parents (Oh, ok, her biologist father happened to be doing a study in Tasmania and he came to visit and told Gingham she was always welcome home back in the States.)

BUT, if she hadn’t gone along with that we would have had medical insurance down here. (And possibly she wouldn’t have fallen off a horse knowing I was close by.)

And so now it’s medical bills and though she’s still covered under her parents’ policy it’s outrageous the bills she’s getting! Her parents will have no end talking about it.

Her blind dog she picked up in Brisbane ended up with me and so did Gingham’s name for it, “Billie.”

I was surprised she could reach me when I’m out tending my herds, but the medical bills led to her calling me and she forgot about the time difference.

“The rehab was fine but I never heard of the people on the bills,” she told me. “You with your medical billing company, I thought you were being a wise guy and playing a game with me,” she said.

I’m just a Tasmanian shepherd, I reminded her, the same person she fell head over heels in love with right? (I wondered whether she had gone without oxygen at any point on the ride to the hospital after falling off her horse.) My company has nothing to do with it.

She did fall off her horse though. The EMT outfit which responded to the 911, to hear her tell it, seemed hapless from the get go. Which stretcher. Which paperwork. Oxygen or not. The old guy from the fire department was more helpful but only until they took off for the hospital. And then another hospital.

And then to one which accepts her parents insurance. In the country where they live, like where I live, I’m sure the ambulance will go anywhere a taxi goes and charge accordingly. Gingham had fainted part of the time on the trip, and the crew struggled to find a vein for IV. Meantime at the farm the horse was still panicked after everyone left. Mother rode with daughter in the back of the ambulance. Downhill skiers both, not the first time they’d been together in a medic van. Here’s Gingham trying to lay still and her mother is lecturing her about me.

“You dropped out right after you met him,” she accused. I used to enjoy visiting her long weekends at her family’s new farm and helping her father Brian with splitting logs or working on his old 1948 Buick Special. The whole family was world travelers who had gotten the recent idea they would like to settle down on a farm in the country.

“Why do you call him Shep,” her mother asked in the ambulance.

“It’s just a little joke between us.”

“Did he teach you to ride that way.”

“Mom, how many times have I said, Shep didn’t teach me to ride. I had an instructor, the best instructor in the country.”

“Remind me of the country again. Antarctica?”

Anyway, she still thought my company sent the bills out but that doesn’t really matter. They were real. It was real actual medical bills that she wasn’t telling her mother about. She thought she would quietly start paying the pesky unpredictable bills with her college money, $35 here, $60 here, $150 there. The cost of getting cured she figured. She should get on a horse sooner than later. She missed Shep and Tasmania. But the bills kept coming. Reading them didn’t help. She couldn’t tell if she was being charged for a pill or a test.

Dating locally was fine with her but now her new boyfriend who was also her English prof is in trouble because of it. And she couldn’t tell her previous boyfriend, the artist in residence at Bard; maybe about the horse, but not about me. Maybe older guys wasn’t her thing after all. Gingham’s sister Maureen has a boyfriend living with her on the Screen farm. Much more straight ahead situation, he teaches her how to work with rare woods. He has a source for some rare Brazilian rosewood. Besides Gingham and Maureen, the other sister Josiah apparently was born the wrong gender and is male now.

“You seem pre-occupied.” Mother said one day back at their farm.

“Yes, you need a vacation,” Gingham offered back weakly. She wanted her mother to think that the parents’ need for a vacation was pre-occupying her mind.

“I probably do need to do something other than ski on my vacations,” replied Mother. “My ankles and knees are beat to hell and my ski partner just broke her hip on a run in the Pyrenees.”

“Take a river cruise.”

Gingham had called a couple of the doctors. The offices all had some kind of code for the visit on the bill, mostly while she was in the hospital. While they were all curing her from her fall. Can’t wait to ride again. Maybe stay off the horse for awhile. She had picked up a decent job over at a plant nursery, got paid partly in plants and starting putting them in around the farm.  And starting to catch up on the school tuition bill. And wondering if school will start in person or on-line. Her profs were much less appealing online. But dropping out was a bad idea. Dropping back in is the thing to do.

Her mind fell into a reverie of making love with Shep in the mud out in the woods. She actually told him, “this reminds me of riding a horse.”

“Dodging sticks coming up out of the mud reminds you of riding a horse?”

“Not that. More like the feeling of two becoming one.”

They had been walking the perimeter of the property, checking their phones and marking compass points. It felt useful. The quiet brought a long wet kiss and the requisite fumbling with clothes.

“you got any bug spray?”

“I thought you did.”

The love was nice and so was the shower afterward at the big empty farmhouse. Her mother was off skiing in Switzerland, father on a research trip studying invasive plants, one sister in France visiting friends and Josiah was off playing boyfriend to his girlfriend’s parents.

“Sorry you’re going back.”

“Hope your parents don’t think you’re crazy for hitting on a Tasmanian shepherd. I’ll call you when I’m home safe.”

“They've been wrong before. Maybe I should have told them you built up a medical billing company from scratch in the outback and the sheep thing is just a hobby.”

“No sense in re-thinking that,” I told her. “Part of what I do with the company involves keeping a good distance.”

“You seem to be a master of good distance.”

“Not so fast, sister.”

 So making love after a shower is just as much fun as before of course. It might be one of the last times anyway.

I had told her no sense in trying to reach me via cell because there was no service in the field where I’m cross-training my people to herd ducks as well as sheep. But I would call when I got home and settled.

Which is just what I did of course, waited ’til it was a nice bright mid morning her time, Gingham time. I let the phone ring and ring but before it went to voicemail she managed to pick up.

“Sorry, I had to fetch this thing out of my saddle bag under a bunch of stuff. Hang on a sec…..oh….holy crap….”

That was it. I heard a big pile of noise and found out about all this later.

    

Elvis on my Birthday

 

Thanks to my parents I got good coverage, but growing up in 2 places at once makes for a busy time on the bilocation side of things. Every summer around my birthday I had to go help out Elvis as some kind of a deal my parents had made with somebody.

It wasn’t the same as going to school the rest of the year or even just going to summer camp. For example the year I was born I had to convince Elvis not to fight with the other usher over the candy counter girl at Lowe’s State Theater. I learned that he only learned from experience. He kept me out the next summer going to all night gospel sings.

So it was not surprising the day he took off from the machine shop to record a song for his mother at Memphis Recording. That was around my birthday and we were there again the next year almost to the day.

It’s well known that Elvis had friends and hangers-on and a lot of people felt they knew him, they say they knew him, whatever. He didn’t know me though. I was invisible to Elvis like a guardian angel but I could steer him in the right direction if he was listening. Making movies and going on endless dates he kept me under the radar or I did him.

By 1958 I had spent about 7 summers shadowing this machinist from Tupelo and he was getting out of control, so he packed off to Fort Hood and the military.

Every July from then on, there was water skiing, album recording, late night movies to watch and others to be in like Viva Las Vegas, Tickle Me, Paradise Hawaiian Style. Then Las Vegas shows through the early 1970s, tour tour tour. On my 25th birthday Elvis finished his Oklahoma shows to take a vacation in Palm Springs.

I’m still around but he didn’t have long to live at the time. He never knew me but sure took a big bite of my summers.