Chuck Mangione

Chuck Mangione (RIP) was part of a long continuum of good or very good musicians who lost their chops and reinvented themselves as images of musicians...with enormous success.

The gambit works because the public is far more interested in image than in substance (e.g. musicianship). Dropping the "music" part, and focusing on the image part, can actually increase your value...tremendously.

The list includes some names most people—even most musicians—would find surprising. Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong were faint shadows of their younger selves by mid-career (and desperately seeking chop recuperation behind-the-scenes), but did far better as icons than they ever had as musicians. Consider the Rolling Stones and so many more, even aside from more widely-recognized image-pushers ala Kenny G, Herb Alpert, Chris Bodi, Liberace, etc.

Chuck was a serious bebop player when young. By the time any of you heard of him, he could barely play two notes in a row...and made a zillion dollars with the hat and the flower and the beard, playing kitsch ear worms.

Something to consider: I know a very good jazz guitar player who won top price in a Guitar Hero competition (that's a game where you pretend to be a guitar player), and it earned him more money than his entire previous career as a real guitarist.

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Most singers become singers because they want to be singers, not because they want to sing.

Roy Haynes Meets Mr. Raucous

I despair at the task of making you understand what drummer Roy Haynes, who just died, meant to jazz. You need to really understand jazz and jazz history to fathom the impossible sweep and significance and miracle of who he was and what he accomplished.

This was not just jazz hero #600 dropping dead. Not "he played so well." Not a "long and storied career". Not "beloved the world over." Let me try to explain Roy Haynes via analogy to a realm you probably know better: writing.

Say Roy Haynes anonymously wrote Beowulf. And, as a cohort of Chaucer, composed one of the Canterbury Tales. Say he was an important member of the Continental Congress helping Jefferson revise the Declaration of Independence, and a pioneering author of wicked Victorian political satire who'd given Oscar Wilde his first break. Say he went on to write Emmy-winning screenplays for Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and sip absinthe with Hemingway (who looked up to him like a hero) in Key West. Then say, at age 90, you found him writing fiendishly intricate postmodern novels as vibrantly modern as any of the young leading lights. Better, even.

Say he did all this not like some crafty operator making strategic pivots - donning a bunch of wigs and making superficial course changes - but that every single step was brilliant and right and slick and AHEAD of the curve. He sounded not just like twelve different guys from twelve different eras, but like the BEST guy from each of twelve different eras.

It seems ridiculous. Nobody ever did that. Nobody ever could do that. It sounds like I'm exaggerating. But Roy Haynes, who'd played easy, lyrical swing with Lester Young and frantic bebop with Charlie Parker and Blues Rock with the Allman Brothers and modern jazz with Chick Corea and fiendishly complex late-stage intellectuality with the smuggest recent youngsters, truly was that guy. Nobody else in jazz ever did anything remotely like this. Nobody in any field of endeavor that I'm aware of ever did anything remotely like this.

Also, there was my minuscule cameo appearance. 

One night Roy walked into my weekly blues gig - my first steady work out of school - in a trashy little gin mill in the ghetto of Roosevelt Long Island where Eddie Murphy, just a couple years prior, had done his first standup (there was an 8x10 glossy in the manager's office made out "To Mr. Hicks' Place, where I lost my comedy virginity, from Eddie") and Roy was, as always, dressed like a million bucks and had his slick sports car parked out front, and I wasn't the least bit surprised to see him there because Roy Haynes was everywhere and into everything and knew everyone (the garrulous bartender at Skylark Lounge where I hung out when not gigging was Roy's best friend because of course he was), and I, a cocky lad compensating for deep shyness and insecurity, especially here in this ghetto bar at the height of a dangerous crack epidemic, overcompensated by rocking the joint with trombone so raucous and funky that our band's guitarist, Bo Diddly Junior (no relation), who played his axe with every part of his body including his crotch, occasionally took me aside to suggest I tone it down a notch, and on this night Roy was joking around in the back room with the club's manager and a small entourage as I ducked in on a break to make sure my horn was out of everybody's way when conversation suddenly stopped and I immediately began to sweat buckets, sensing that I was about to take some focus, and, sure enough, Roy said "Hey man sound good out there" and I froze. Absolutely froze. I couldn't respond, I couldn't acknowledge, I couldn't even let myself imagine that it was me he was addressing. Must be anyone else.

No more Mr. Cocky, just an awkward white suburban kid right out of school feeling mortified that Haynes, a subtle, poetic musician with a sublimely light touch, had walked in to hear me playing the most raucous fatback and collard greens trombone, and, at age 24, I wasn't wise enough to realize that he bloody well knew I was simply playing the gig as it needed to be played - anything but subtle! - and furthermore heard the poetry latently beneath it all, but I was committed to my embarrassment at being caught with my pants down, so to speak, despite the seemingly solid counter-evidence of "Hey man sound good out there", which only confused me further - was he addressing Mr. Raucous? - leaving me unable to respond or look up or breathe or move or live.

I went on to exist in the periphery of a lot of Roy Haynes stuff. That bartender was my buddy, too, though we never hung together with Roy. I was friends with many of the young players Roy hired to play in his band. I caught a bunch of his gigs, marveling at his pliancy and otherworldly, Faust-bargain-level touch and finesse. As he climbed through his 70s, 80s, and 90s, Roy never failed to sound far more modern and youthfully, nimbly energetic than anyone from my generation.

I never exchanged a word with him. I'd botched my chance, but was quietly present in his world, popping up in the little hood joints unknown to fans or jazz writers where Roy let his hair down between concert tours. Part of that furniture. And it never bothered me much, because there are far worse things than being comfortable furniture for Roy Haynes. If you're gonna Zelig, that's how you Zelig.

Insiders knew that Roy Hayne's favorite record of his was "Out of the Afternoon." It was my favorite even before I learned this. I invite you to download it now and listen. It's remarkable. The blind saxophonist Roland Kirk, who is featured, was important to me, though I never got to meet him. At the same time I was blasting the paint off the gin mill in Roosevelt, I was also seeking out Kirk's surviving sidemen, wherever they were, and befriending and playing with them, poetically and subtly. Roy never stopped into any of those gigs, alas (though those farflung clubs were certainly on his radar, because nothing wasn't on Roy's radar for, christ, literally 99 years), so I never got to be Mr. Poetry for Roy Haynes.


So check this out. This guy 1. is EIGHTY SIX YEARS OLD, and 2. started out with Lester Young, who was one generation removed from "When the Saints Go Marching In”:

 

Win By Not Quitting

The most startling insights are simple observations, but one must sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to deprogram false assumptions before one can really understand. Truth is easy...if, and only if, you can chop away the dense underbrush of ignorant assumptions.

The following is like that. The epiphany is so gut simple that there's almost nothing there. I've carried it with me for years but only recently did it reach full fruition. If it strikes you as banal, consider removing some underbrush while you reconsider!


The key to winning is persistence.

Unfortunately, that observation jibes easily with preconceptions, so most people wouldn't give it much thought. Sure! You fight and fight and bash and bash and then, voila, you triumph!

But no. That's not it. Let's back up 30 years and meet a hero.

The great trombonist Al Grey from the Count Basie Orchestra had invited me to sit in with him. Al was an old-timey hard-swinging player without any fancy airs or intense harmonic innovations or slick advanced technique. Al was all about joy and soul. He was one of the last of the Mohicans.


By the early '90s, that sort of playing had nearly died out, except in a few pockets in rough neighborhoods where, by coincidence, I hung out on my free nights, sitting in with the only people who ever really "got" me: octogenarian black guys. Family and friends had little idea what to do with me. My only places of comfort were black bars where men wore expensive hats and the sidemen from my record collection took refuge to ply their art. And, despite my age and complexion, I enjoyed tribal bona fides as well. I, too, was of the Mohican persuasion.

But Al didn't know any of this, so when he invited me to sit in, he - and everybody else in the club that night - expected to see a 70-year-old swinging elderly black dude dismantle a slick, glib white upstart from Planet Music School.

It was impossible to predict that I, too, was a swinging soulful elderly black dude. Not in a Walter Mitty fantasy life way, but in reality. That's how I genuinely felt and played. That was my truth. And I earned it, risking my life for years getting from street parking into those venues amid a crack epidemic, not to mention the one hour+ drives out to the boonies of Harlem or Newark or Jamaica or Roosevelt or Hempstead. Nobody knew how far I traveled. They all figured I was local, and that suited me fine. I was family. Comfortable and kindred for the only time in my life.

But on this night, I found myself in shiny Manhattan at a shmancy jazz club where no one, including Al, knew my backstory. So when he graciously invited me to take the first solo on the first song, I had a decision to make. My impulse was to swing the lights out, but I knew Al wanted a foil; a Washington General he could foxily dribble the basketball around. He was hoping I'd play some glib bullshit so he could blow me up with a warm folksy grin (the guy had no maliciousness in him whatsoever).

So I did. I played the role, spitting out tricky bebop lines to deliberately enstooge myself. Why? Because playing straight man to the great Al Grey seemed like a worthy pursuit. I was showing respect, and I knew I'd treasure the memory of his slaughtering me with swinging soul more than one where I'd made it all about me by matching his game. I led myself to slaughter, but it was joyous, like the privilege of being insulted by Don Rickles.

At the time, Al was enjoying a late-in-life renaissance, releasing records as a leader, headlining at festivals...the whole shebang. After six decades as that cool dude back in the trombone section, he was a grand old man of jazz. During intermission, another musician asked him his secret. How had he orchestrated this rebirth?

Al chuckled the weighty chuckle of long experience and shrugged at the simplicity of his reply: "Don't quit! I just never quit!"

That's all you have to do. Don't quit. Keep showing up.

I've chewed on it for four decades, and, to really get it, I've had to chisel away a great many things Al wasn't saying.

Most of us project a heroic cast on our "trajectory". An American confessing unlofty aspirations seems like a stoic monk at best, and a loser at worst. But Al was never a loser. He always played his heart out. He was trying hard; just not to be That Guy. In terms of career and stature, he merely showed up. The big arc of it wasn't aspirational.

Let me try a different angle. You might have noticed that the world goes in cycles. Up and down. No matter how hard you try and no matter how good you are, it will all sink to failure multiple times! And no matter how feckless and stupid other people seem, they all get their moments. That's because it's all in play. Things get better, and then worse, and then better, and then worse. That's the gig here on planet Earth. And as we build out stories about these apparent "trajectories" and invest them with meaning, we secretly fear that the stories are false, and that nothing (gulp!) has any meaning.

The stories are false and nothing has any meaning. It's true. So, take it from Al: you just need to keep going. Wait it out! And the next time your stock rises, take a quick selfie atop the rollercoaster and pin that peak moment just before the grueling drop, while you're still brimming with buoyant exuberance. But you need to stay on the ride long enough to get there. Don't quit! Keep showing up!

I don't know much about Al's endgame, but few humans besides Alexander the Great die gloriously, so I assume he petered out in a bed somewhere with a wince of exertion followed by a sigh of surrender. Sweet dreams, Al. But that wasn't his pinned moment. It always goes south after you imagine you've arrived - because, yet again, it's all a dynamic churn. But Al, having never quit, could say he'd been the cool guy in the trombone section who became a jazz great.

At some point we all reach some semblance of a win. Not because the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. Not because victory is what you truly deserve. And not because your outstanding attributes can't be ignored. That's all story-telling. No, it's just this: if you wait long enough your number eventually comes up (though seldom in the way you expected).

In truth, there are no wins; just flow. But if you must pretend to keep score, do so while the boat momentarily rises. Which requires staying on the damn boat! Heed the immortal Al Grey, and don't quit! Keep showing up!


“Wait by the river long enough and the bodies of your enemies will float by."
-- falsely attributed to Sun Tzu

Three Tony Bennett Stories

Gracious Freshness
I played with Tony just once, when he sang a set with Illinois Jacquet's big band at the Blue Note in Manhattan. At the end of the set, the audience, naturally, demanded "I Left My Heart in San Francisco". They weren't chanting it or anything, but they knew, we knew, and, above all, Tony definitely knew what was expected of him.

By this point, I was pretty hooked into the collective mind of the band (they were, after all, my peer group: 80 and 90 year old black dudes). I sensed, and shared, the consensus: "Aw, the poor bastard!"

We all knew the song was his albatross, of course, but this wasn't even his own gig. He hadn't even sung a full concert. And I'm quite sure he wasn't getting paid. Yet the audience wasn't going to let him out of there without obediently performing his little tap-dance - that stupid sentimental novelty song of little musical value which no one actually likes.

The song pattern matches to the guy, that's all. You don't want or need to hear it. Nobody does. But it's mentally associated with the name "Tony Bennett", and Tony Bennett was right there. So, of course, all is not right until he does his Tony Bennett thing (which is not at all Tony Bennett's thing, but everyone else's Tony Bennett thing).

He was gracious about it. Tony, after all, was the exemplar of graciousness. It's got to be weird to be at the top of your profession, 74 years old (at the time), and worth hundreds of millions of dollars and still be forced to dance, varmint, dance everywhere you go. But, from the band eye's view, he was - there is no other word - gracious.

The next thought waving through the communal band mind was "Poor Richard!" The great Richard Wyands was our pianist, and this Tony thing was all impromptu. We weren't working off of music parts. And "San Francisco" has all sorts of very specific and tricky little piano elements, none of which can be missed. And while Richard knows every goddamn song in the jazz and standards playbooks, this one, we all realized with a collective gulp, was outside his perimeter. It's not something he'd be called upon to play on a gig, though even the most grimly unmusical audience member knew every single note like their own face in the mirror. Plus, our bandleader was a raging bucket of irrational sadistic fury known by one and all in the jazz world (though, dear god, never to his face) as "The Beast". So, yeah, there was a wee bit of pressure on poor Richard, who prefers to project an image of cooly elegant authority.

Richard, pro that he is, survived the obstacle course (we heard his shattered nerves but the audience did not). And Tony sang his ass off. While this was my only data point from behind the guy, I took away the unassailable impression that he sang the song fresh.

I can't explain to you what that meant, in terms of actual notes. I'm not saying he broke into some merry bit of scat-singing to make This Time Different. He obligingly sang the song the way his audience (aka his captors) needed it sung. But he sang it fresh. Musicians - especially musicians sitting behind you - know the difference.

Inspirational!

Oxygen-Sucking Karaoke
I had once sat in an identical rear-facing position to the great singer Joe Williams, who'd risen to fame with Count Basie's orchestra.


Notice how Joe holds himself. That's a horn player mentality
- all about the music, not the show biz. To contemporary eyes, it looks wrong.
Why is he not shucking and jiving?!?

After having backed a ton of singers in a ton of contexts, Joe was the first (and last) who wasn't doing karaoke. Most singers suck all the oxygen in the room, leaving the band as their wallpaper. They, alone, are performing, while we're MSPs, music service providers. Like Teamsters brought in to work the musical equipment. Think MRI technicians.

Playing behind Joe was like playing with a musician. Again, I can't explain this in terms of notes. But he locked in with us, it wasn't just us locking in with him. He was in the band, not just backed by the band.

Tony wasn't like this (though I'm sure he, too, loved Joe Williams). He was an oxygen-sucker - which is one reason he died with $200 million, while I assume Joe left a twelve year old Cadillac and a reasonably nice house. But he was such a great oxygen sucker that it was impossible to criticize. The set was so musical that it didn't need to be musical on musicians' terms. Sometimes the suboptimal, done extraordinarily well, is as good as (or even better than) optimality.

Triumphant Reconnection
It's very late in my music career. I may have already started Chowhound. I am out of practice, but my old high school bandmate, Brian, calls in a panic. A trombone player cancelled out of his big band's gig that night, and Brian needed a last minute replacement. Would I do him the favor?

The gig was way out on Long Island, but, by coincidence, so was I at that moment. No time to run home to get my horn, but Brian runs a music store, so I asked him to bring his best student rental trombone to the gig, and I'd fill in.

The horn was a monster. The slide barely moved, the tuning slide was jammed (so everything needed to be played 1% sharp to compensate). It was essentially unplayable, but I'd make it work.

I've told the story of playing a terrible Dixieland gig in terrible physical condition with a terrible band in a vacant field in some obscure corner of rural Spain on three hours sleep, and one of the most important figures in the business of jazz (who, egads, knew me) was improbably present for the performance. Now it was years later, and I thought I'd learned my lesson, but as the band tuned up (I opted out, as my instrument was literally un-tuneable), we learned that Tony Bennett would be enjoying dinner in this cheesey Long Island steakhouse. He'd be present to hear my high school friend's semi-professional big band with me on a student trombone incapable of producing, well, notes. Fun!

Brian is a very nice guy and an excellent musician, though he never broke out of the provincial Long Island scene, or the square swingy music we'd played together in high school. So he did what a very nice guy in those circumstances does: arranged a big feature for me. Naturally, I'd be soloing over Cherokee, the fastest song there is.

"No! NO, Brian! Do not make me play Cherokee with this terrible trombone with Tony Bennett watching me! Please don't...."

"Ladies and gentleman, it is my great pleasure to introduce an old schoolmate of mine...."

"NO!!!!! Brian, DON'T!!!!!"

"...an honor to have him..."

"Ok, ok, but PLEASE, for the love of god, Brian, don't remind him who I...."

"You may have heard him perform with Illinois Jacquet's band!"

From this point forward, I did not once look in Tony Bennett's direction. I somehow got through the extended solo, standing in a spotlight in front of the band, struggling to operate my unmusical instrument. At one point, Brian generously directed the rhythm section to stop for an entire chorus so I could play a cappella. I'd pronounce it mortifying, but some benevolent force inside my brain - who even knew there even was a benevolent force inside my brain? - has erased all specific memory.

Anyhoo, that was the last time I was in a room with Tony Bennett.


Sorry. That last one was a bit of a shaggy dog story, I know. Not the heart-warming pay-off you were expecting to mark the death of a major icon. But, hey, it's music biz stuff (Tony'd have gotten a kick out of it). Remember the time the greatest orchestral trombonist of his time, Ron Barron, utterly butchered the solo in Ravel's Bolero?

Dave Sit: The Wine Ranger

I know a number of bona fide wine experts. Not just folks with fancy cellars, or who lead tastings at the local community center. I mean serious pundits, some of whose names you might recognize. And the guy they all look up to is Dave Sit, who you've never heard of.

Dave was always too busy to seek wider recognition for his wine know-how. He was running WNYC-TV, producing PBS' NewsHour, helping pioneer solar energy, studying French cooking with Paul Bocuse, making the best Chinese five-spiced duck I've ever had by a very wide margin, and, long ago, authoring a witty theater piece - based on the Christmas story - titled something like "Who Knocked Up Mary?"

Dave's wine hobby was strictly for his own enjoyment, so he never pursued credentials like a Master of Wine degree. He's always just quietly been The Guy. Wine Yoda. Total knowledge, zero snobbery, great teacher. He taught me a lot.

Dave recently retired to the Finger Lakes, where he's been writing a newspaper wine column, "The Wine Ranger", for the Finger Lakes Times, sharing his deep knowledge and heralding new finds. He knows so much about France, Italy, and California that the Finger Lakes should be flattered to have his focused attention. In fact, he's been single-handedly persuading people like me to take the region much more seriously. If Dave Sit's excited about it, who are we to argue?

Finger Lakes Times recently published Dave's five part account of the annual cycle of a winery, and I highly recommend it.

THE WINE RANGER: A Year in the Life of a Grapevine
Part 1: Bud Break
Part 2: Flowering & Fruit Set
Part 3: Berry Development
Part 4: Véraison
Part 5: Finally, Harvest!

His column also sometimes offers bargain recommendations (Dave covers and appreciates high end wine, but nothing makes him happier than a terrific $20 bottle - and the same's true for most winemakers and sommeliers I know). This link indexes all his stuff at Finger Lakes Times. Be choosey about what you click, though, as their paywall only lets you view a few articles per month.

Lagniappe: "The August that almost killed the Finger Lakes wine industry (but spawned a new one instead")

Slide Hampton

Backstage Encounter
It was around 1982, and I was backstage warming up to play for the biggest audience I'd ever confronted. I was 20, still in school, and while some veteran musicians considered me a contender, I had the sense to recognize that while "potential" is fine and dandy, my slice wasn't fully toasted.

The crowd size wasn't the most daunting factor. My student group was opening for an all-star group featuring a who's who of jazz luminaries like Frank Wes, Billy Taylor, and my then-and-now trombone hero, Slide Hampton.

I was nauseous with terror, and Slide, who'd been compelled to spend the preceding week coaching me one-on-one via a deus ex machina intervention of fate I still can't explain, leaned in to offer what I expected to be words of encouragement:

"If you play well," he whispered in my ear just before I took the stage, "they'll remember for a minute. But if you screw up, no one will ever forget."

It was an unimaginably horrible thing for anyone to say to anyone, much less a veteran to a 20 year old student, much less a hero to his worshipful admirer. At the time, I accepted it as well-intended guidance. Realpolitik. Tough love. But as I've gotten older, it's remained a tiny inner gnarl; a mental lozenge of malevolence lodged in memory with the razorish edge of a nearly-dissolved cough drop.

I'm not one to fester on painful lozenges. I try to use such foibles to better understand people. Calm examination normally reveals mitigating factors. There are reasons for things. People are confused, and contend with issues and blocks, and it's hard just to get up in the morning, much less say/do the right thing with any consistency. We all unwittingly cause injury, so we ought to grant plenty of slack. Very often I've ascribed to malice what could have been better explained by incompetence. Processed from a higher perspective, this is a far less daunting world than we imagine.

This memory, however, is one of a tiny few that worsen with examination. What twisted insecurity makes a jazz legend destroy a skinny little kid in shorts before his crappy little student combo opens for an illustrious cavalcade of stars? It's like Usain Bolt deliberately tripping a child jogging alongside, or Rocky Marciano slugging his sparring partner in the balls. I've had trouble coming to peace with it.

My Hero
Slide Hampton is not only my favorite jazz trombonist, he's also pretty much the only trombonist I really like. There are others who I respect and admire for certain skills and qualities. But if I ever want to listen to music that happened to have been played on a trombone, rather than listen to someone playing trombone, he's the one. The only one not wrestling a difficult horn to produce (successfully or not) some veneer of fluidity. Slide is lyrical and swinging. He's free-wheeling. He sings up there, not just wrestling cleverly with five pounds of brass tubing.

Well, all that's true on a good night, and under certain conditions.

Slide spent his early career as an unabashed disciple of the more famous JJ Johnson, who hailed from Slide's home town of Indianpolis, and who'd struck it big while Slide was a kid. JJ handled the tube-wrestling aspect with a droll facade of burnished confidence. While sax players gushed eighth notes, and trumpeters spat staccato flurries, JJ would lay back, genteelly expelling wry burrs of cognac. Aloof doodads and effetely pat asides. To me, it sounded affected and passionless. He never dug in, or broke a sweat. It was like the ash never fell from his cigarette. JJ never popped out of character; never riled to catharsis; never transcended. And the very point of music (or any art) to me is surprise, catharsis, and transcendence.

Slide tried to follow in JJ's footsteps, but he was naturally more of a preacher. He'd get riled up and his tuning might turn a little funky, his technique showing seams. He just wasn't that guy. But under the right circumstances - with a really swinging rhythm section, late at night on a gig with no career stakes - Slide might let his hair down and be himself, and he'd move you and surprise you. I've heard it, and will always be a Believer, as is everyone who ever experienced peak Slide.

Unfortunately, those moments were vanishingly rare. Slide, like many black musicians of his generation, had been through some stuff, and he staunchly insisted on dignity preservation. He always wore nice suits, conducted himself a certain way, and insisted on being paid in reflection of his status. Which is to say, Slide didn't work much. And, when he did, it was high-stakes, big-money gigs where he'd reflexively return to his comfort zone, playing safe by imitating JJ Johnson.

I'd have given up a couple toes to hear Slide play a humble gig with a sparse audience where he could just let 'er rip. But that scenario didn't comport with his (understandable and well-earned) sense of dignity. Which, alas, boxed him in.

Leveraging His Late Career Rennaissance
Happily, Slide had a career renaissance in the early 00s, at long last drawing wider attention. And while he was already getting up in years, he was more than technically ready. Slide was famous among musicians for his herculean practice habits. Young musicians would cycle in and out, like sparring partners, as he practiced 8, 10, 12 hours per day.

So what was Slide working on? Toward what end was he investing all that work? And how would he channel his late-blooming attention? In light of the vignette which started this tale, you won't be shocked to hear that he was settling a score.

I wrote several years ago about Bill Watrous. Bill was the hot trombonist in the 1970s, blessed with unbelievably agile technique, which he used (to my preference) to little musical purpose, but which brought him bright commercial heat for a while. Bill never really impressed the mainstream jazz community, though, so by the 80s he was well-settled into the anonymity of the LA studio scene, earning a living recording Dorito's jingles and film scores...and maybe once in a great while playing a jazz gig or two.

Slide, meanwhile, had become the grand old man of jazz trombone, with all the credibility in the world, and enjoying international tours with the best of the best. But Slide never forgot how this Watrous guy had sucked all the trombone oxygen for a hot minute 30 years prior while Slide labored in obscurity. So in 2002 he called Watrous east to make a two-trombone record. It was an odd proposition. A has-been hotshot lured into the inner sanctum to collaborate with the incomparable Master. Come play a song with me, my pretty!

I know Slide's side of the story. He'd deny all that vehemently. He’d honestly never had a bad word to say about Watrous. He admired his prodigious technique. And Slide conceived himself as a lifelong learner, so he'd been simply trying to pull even, that's all. The recording gave him an opportunity to try to match up with the one-time phenom. That's how Slide spinned it, and I think he even made himself believe it. Slide had articulate policy positions on things, and they all painted him as 100% all-about-the-music.

I don't think Slide saw, much less owned up to, his darker impulses, which (I'd bet the remainder of my toes) compelled him to bait Watrous into that studio, with impeccable cordiality, to settle a long-simmering score. To cut him down and destroy him. It was a mop-up operation. The vestiges of a trombonist who'd once risen, gallingly, to "sensation" status would be shredded, leaving Slide supreme on a proving ground existing only in the murky recesses of his own mind.

This was what had spurred those 100,000 hours of intense practice: a lingering Ahabian obsession with Watrous' already-irrelevant white whale. And while there's no denying that the new, improved Slide could play really really fast, you just can't "defeat" people in art. If it vexed the Arepa Lady that Jean Georges was given greater respect and a fatter paycheck, and she reacted by spending 20 years in Paris honing the art of French cuisine, I'm sure she'd cook that stuff fantastically but it wouldn't render JG, like, vanquished, you know? That's not how it works! 

Actually, that was backwards. Slide was by far the more famous and respected player by that point, so it was more like JG devoting himself to mastering Colombian corn-cakes in order to put down the street vendor who’d once garnered some attention.

On the recording, Watrous did his usual spectacular, uniquely personal and (to my preference) rather unmusical thing, while Slide sounded like he'd wrestled the tubing into full and utter submission - which was very far from Slide at his best. It wasn't at all free-wheeling. In trying to supplant Watrous (who, let me emphasize, had not posed a professional threat in three decades), Slide only diminished himself, while Watrous, that rascally rabbit, simply did his thing.

Watrous was the best Watrous that ever Watroused, and while Slide had figured out how to play really really fast, he couldn't match that glib ease any more than he'd been able to perfect JJ's burnished wryness. If ego compels you to not just be the top guy, but to slaughter and liquify all the rest so you can be The Only, that's a fool's errand. Artistic rivals can't be occluded or subsumed. One can't, like, eat them. This, after all, is bebop trombone, not the Mongol horde!

Slide went on to play really really fast for some years, which added absolutely nothing to his greatness (and made him the sort of player I listened to more for trombonistics than for music) while Watrous returned to LA. I'd imagine his Slide Hampton experience felt a bit like my own: thrilled to be in his circle, but disturbed to note, despite all the cordiality, the loud, discordant sound of sharpening knives.

The Bad News
Slide passed away this week, and I'm devastated. I've been going through YouTube bootleg videos to see if anyone ever bottled the lightning; maybe a late-night set in a little club somewhere. I already own every legit recording Slide ever made, and there's lots of greatness, but nothing at his best. Nothing free-wheeling. It's all safe playing, pressured by self-imposed high stakes. He kept getting in his own way, always self-conscious about legacy, always trying to be The "All-About-The-Music" Guy rather than being all about the music. But that's the takeaway from a breathless fan paying way too much attention to fine points and shadings. By any standard, Slide was a legend, and he brought me immense joy, and I can't imagine how I'd have played if he'd never existed.

During the week I spent with him, Slide went on and on about how he'd toured for a full month with JJ and never heard him miss a single note. I somehow found the nerve to respond with this:

"JJ never missed notes because he never took chances!"

Slide fell silent. Reflective. His jaw throbbed lightly, leaving me expecting an indignant chew-out. But Slide, who I loved for being surprising in unguarded moments, surprised me with his reply:

"True. That's true. It's our job to take what we learned from him and make it more musical in our individual ways."

That wasn't just a policy statement. It was profound, honest, and disarming. Free-wheeling, even!

Backstage assault aside, Slide had encouraged me that week (much as Watrous had two years prior). I suppose he had to, given that I'd slyly played almost all his own recorded solos at him, verbatim, as we jammed together (the coolest of cucumbers, he never betrayed a trace of recognition).

Finally, I've decided to seal the tomb on his backstage words, deeming them tough love, well-intended. In fact, I find myself mentally scanning the full length of my career (as a writer, too!), and concluding that Slide was absolutely right about audiences, and that it helped me far more than it hurt to hear this so early on.

So having laboriously ungnarled the memory, I'd like to express this with my full heart: RIP, Slide. You absolutely preserved your dignity down here, so please take humbler gigs up there. Let your hair down and enjoy playing without pressure. You've earned some glee and wild abandon. Just let it slide!

Major Holley

Be-deep bee deep be-dee-deep; dop, dop, bee-doo-bee.

This short phrase from a long forgotten bass solo is one of the fundaments of my musical life.

I was a real jazzbo at age 13, so my parents bought me a couple of Music Minus One records. These were a thing before Americans had heard of karaoke. A single track was removed from a performance - like magic! - so you, at home, could play that part.

In this case, it was "The Music of Fats Waller", and some of the best players of the century were on the recording. I played along many hundreds of times, wearing out the record, and you can't convince me I didn't actually play with those guys hundreds of times. I'd come home from school, pour myself a couple fingers of juice, hoist trombone to mouth, and take the stage with Zoot Sims, Dick Wellstood and a fantastic bass player I'd never heard of named Major Holley, to play buttery, primal, urbane swing. I took youthful credit for discovering Holley (much as, at around the same time, I took pride in my discovery of international violin superstar Ruggiero Ricci).

Holley had played with Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, and most everyone else, without ever making much of a name with the general public (which sort of sums up my own career, as well). And while bass solos are rarely the best part of the song, well, bus drivers don't normally give out bubblegum, either. I remember every note of every one of his solos; every micro-nuance. You could create a higher-fidelity recording by outputting my memory than you could with the original studio tapes.

Let's cut ahead years and years and years. It's the late 1980s, and I've been lucky enough to work with and befriend many great players. Out of nowhere pops up an opportunity to sit in with....Major Holley!

Major is playing in duo with a pianist, who asks me what I want to play, so I call one of the Fats Waller songs from the record, and, in my solo, I allude to The Foundational Lick, which, of course, Major doesn't even vaguely recognize from a blizzard of lifetime record dates. I don't care. The circle is complete. I'm sharing the stage with my old colleague again, only now 1. I'm actually good and 2. he's actually there.

Major's shtick was to sing along with his solos, creating a thunderous, rip-snorting effect. I'd developed a multiphonic technique, myself, so, between the two of us, we were a quartet. This tickled Major no end.

This wasn't, as you might think, a kid sucking up to an aloof veteran. We were two kids, one of whom happened to be 65. Major shared my eagerness because I was utterly adapted to his ecosystem. He was an odd-shaped screw and I was the matching nut. From that moment forward, whenever he gigged in New York, he'd ask me to come by and sit in.

We had little in common, superficially. And he wasn’t what you’d call a super-nice guy. I remember leaving a club with him one bitterly cold night when a young homeless black guy launched his panhandling spiel to the dapper, dignified bassist, starting "Hey, brother...." Major shut him down very fast and very, very hard. I learned something about black generational differences that night. In fact, I've had few black friends since my elderly circle vanished; I just couldn't help viewing the hiphop generation through their grandparents' disapproving eyes.

His hard-assedness didn't matter. I didn't need Major Holley to be "nice", or to validate me, or to teach me anything. I simply wanted to play as much with him as humanly possible, because that's what I'd spent the previous couple of decades preparing for. That's what I was made for. And he felt it. We were the most kindred of musical spirits, thick as thieves, and nothing else came close to mattering.

The last time I saw Major, he said he had big plans for me, and would be in touch when he got back from his European tour. He fell ill on that trip, and passed away soon after his return, exactly thirty years ago today. I began to stray into writing, eventually going all in on Chowhound, and never was a musician again.


This wasn't the only hero who died shortly after vaguely mentioning big plans to me. British writer Michael Jackson, who singlehandedly launched this entire beer craze, was an eating buddy, and I had a voice mail from him asking to meet on his next trip to the states to discuss some scheme. He never made it. And there was a good chance I’d be slated to play a trombone/mandolin duet with bluegrass legend Bill Monroe when he kicked the bucket. Moral of the story: do not make plans with Jim Leff!

Joe Randazzo

NYC trombonist Joe Randazzo died.

A lot of musicians never knew that, in the 90s, Joe tried to switch careers and become a chef. When he landed a gig cooking in the cafeteria of a specialty college on the Upper West Side, I heard about it and ran right over. The food was absolutely slamming. Just the sort of under-radar deliciousness I loved to discover.

I wrote it up in NY Press, but my time there was strange. Some places I raved about (Mississippi BBQ Shack, Kabab Cafe, Arepa Lady, DiFara Pizza, etc) became sensations, while others, equally good, garnered no movement at all. I was never able to figure out the formula.

Despite the disappointing lack of interest, Joe was excited to have his name in print, and tried to parlay it into better gigs, but industry types wanted to hire sharp, culinary school type chefs, not soulful street-smart jazzbos who could make veal sing.

Joe returned to trombone, we lost touch, and now he's gone.

RIP, Joe. Bone appetit.

Joining Team Walter

Walter the Substitute Bus Driver
When I was very young, there was a substitute school bus driver named Walter, an older gentleman who'd periodically appear, like an apparition, and give out bubblegum to kids as they got on the bus.

It gobsmacked me that such a person could exist. Bus drivers - I recognized with the instinctive reflex of those low on a food chain - were a nemesis for children to fear and avoid. You don't need to be a particularly clever bunny rabbit to know to run like crazy when a german shephard comes prowling. So you get on the stupid bus, walk all the way to the back, and try to avoid setting off the driver at all costs.

Imagine if you discovered that a certain mosquito, once you slow down its whine, is actually singing Mozart arias just to soothe you.

Walter Crowther rocked my world. Representing more than just a good version of a bad thing, he spurred a fundamental shift in my childhood experience. It had never occurred to me that anything positive could ever come from a bus driver. I suddenly realized, thunderstruck, that the world was studded with hidden and delightful Easter Eggs. A hunk of bubblegum had squarely launched me on my life path.


The Fabulous Mrs. Montesano
My first grade teacher was a sourpuss; a stuck-up, humorless horror. I just barely made it through the year, and was trepidatious about returning to school the next September. But I was assigned, for second grade, the fabulous Mrs. Gloria Montesano.

The prototypical Mrs. Montesano vignette took place the day Steven Bazone raised his hand and asked what "dash" meant. Without hesitation - not even a blink - Mrs. Montesano kicked off her heels and ran out the door.

She disappeared, leaving us unsupervised and completely mystified, for several minutes. Finally, someone pointed eagerly - almost hysterically - out the classroom window to the distant football field, which Mrs. Montesano was traversing at a very impressive speed.

We all gathered around the window screaming our heads off, pointing and jumping around in utter delight as Mrs. Montesano ran as if her life depended on it. Frankly, I'd never realized she was so athletic.

Finally, she arrived back at the classroom, winded and gasping. She put on her heels, and, with her remaining breath, explained that that's what dashing is.

It goes without saying that after my arteries harden in old age, the very final memory to vanish down my cognitive sink hole will be this word. I'll forget pizza, "2001", the 1973 Mets, and my own name long before I forget what it is to "dash".

Not all of Mrs. Montesano's lessons were flamboyant. I remember vividly how she explained how to remember "desert" versus "dessert". You want more “dessert” than “desert”. More esses! She explained this with such relish that it wasn't just a memory trick, it was like she'd initiated an entirely new way of seeing the world. Plentitude, even of mere consonants, felt like a gift.

I wish Mrs. Montesano had explained everything to me, but, alas, I had only one short year with her before it was back to the prigs.

Mrs. Montesano always encouraged my writing, and when I published my first book, I dedicated it to her, though I was too overwhelmed at the time (creating Chowhound) to get around to sending her a copy (I hadn't spoken to her since 1974). Finally, in late 2004, right at the time my life was turning upside down, I was going through my childhood boxes and found this ancient postcard from her, and I photocopied it and send it to her along with this reply.


The Painters
I mentioned a few postings ago that I've been having the exterior of my house painted. Every day, I served the workers lunch. Really good lunch. And generally treated them like family. I blasted Radio Guatemala out of my windows all day and we shared beer at the end of most workdays. It was more like summer camp than a job. They called it "Camp Jimmy".

This is how I do it because of a tenet of Christianity that I particularly like - which also happens to be, in my opinion, badly misunderstood.

Everyone assumes "Love thy neighbor" refers to the person in the condo next door. But I am convinced that's not what it means. It means whoever you encounter right here right now. The clerk at CVS. The FedEx guy. The house painters.

You don't have to make an ostentatious big deal. You don't need to slap birthday hats on their heads and tell them how wonderful they are. But I go Pashtun. If you smash your thumb, you're going to get ice from me, stat, carefully wrapped, and you're going to eat a lunch that's the very best I can whip up - likely better than what I myself eat for lunch. With dessert, too (double "s" 'cuz you want more of it). Plus a bottle of really good beer to take home at the end of the day. And jokes. And respect. And knowing when to leave you the hell alone because it's not all about me.

But the one week job stretched to three weeks. So the expense went far beyond what I'd expected. With the guys working six days/week for three weeks, I likely blew close to four figures on hospitality expenses. Yikes.

By week three, it began to hurt a little, and I welcomed that pain. It signaled the collision of my vanity - my image of myself as a good person - with actual stakes. Everyone's a philanthropist with orange peels and used toilet paper. This was a test to see if I really meant it.

I welcomed the test. I embraced the raised stakes. Lunch got better and better. The sole problem in this scenario was my own discomfort, so I made an antagonist of it. No longer dressing panini with raw spinach, I'd begun to sauté the greens...and then escalated by sautéing with garlic. If they'd remained another few weeks, I'd have shaved in white truffles and sold computer equipment to finance purchase of rare caviar.

I steered straight into the skid, into my discomfort (and the residual wisps of hypocrisy lurking just behind it). I applied my Mazlow Hammer of commitment, upping my game. A friend asked why I was doing all this, and I explained about Christianity. He replied, yeah, great, lovely, but why are you actually doing it?

Switching Teams
I had to ponder the question for a few weeks (I can be very slow), but suddenly Walter's face flashed in my mind, and I realized this is the same irrational impulse that compelled Walter and Mrs. Montesano to induce delight. Not hoping that I, myself, would be considered delightful (hardly a risk for me, fortunately, as I don’t seem so, and seeming is everything), but just for its own sake.

I hadn’t planned it that way, so I never registered a point where I went from perennially wishing for a Walter to becoming a Walter ("being the change"). I'm just living out the spin imparted in me by he and Mrs. Montesano. Someone, many links back in the chain, had found a different way of doing things, and Walter, Mrs. Montesano, and I...and now the painters (and you!) were haplessly caught in the ripple effect.

Perhaps a blogger in 2060 will recall the dude who delighted him with delicious panini during his youthful summer painting job. But I'm not shooting for that. It's not about me. The guys were here. They got fed. Full stop. Why does there need to be further rationale? Does it really make so little sense as-is? That's why Walter gave out gum, and why Mrs. Montesano went overboard to teach not-especially-significant words. They were just moved to do what they did. Not much self-consciousness was involved.

I'm a bit more self-conscious, because I need to intellectually understand myself and my world or else I start feeling very lost and confused (hence this Slog). Yet I never noticed myself switching teams; from being a grateful admirer of Walter to being Walter. I never made a mental story out of it. It was just what happened. It took a while to even notice.

I remain a grateful admirer of Walter and Mrs. Montesano. More than ever, in fact. And I can't imagine placing myself fully in their pantheon. I'm not all that. I'll just keep making panini and icing thumbs and blasting Radio Guatemala, when appropriate, here at Camp Jimmy, and explaining my weirdo ideas here for the scattering of readers who offer their attention. I don’t think I’ll ever come up with a better explanation of my motivation. I’m comfortable with it as-is. I conjure up memories of Walter and Mrs. Montesano, and feel relieved to be preserving, in my small way, the customs of our random little tribe.


Further reading: The Generosity Impulse

Illinois Jacquet

I toured for several years with Illinois Jacquet, a big name to anyone over age 60 with any casual acquaintance with jazz, though he's scarcely remembered today. They say Jacquet died in 2004, but, not having viewed the body, I remain guarded.

Jazz stars of his era got nicknames. Lester Young was "Prez", Billie Holiday was "Lady Day", and Charlie Parker was "Bird". Jacquet, bestowed with something less upbeat, was known by everyone in the business (though never - my god - ever to his face) as "The Beast".

I took this photo of him, and was so delighted to have captured his true self that I somehow scraped together the cash to order a blown-up print:

Behold The Beast

---

Jacquet had vaulted to fame as a 19-year-old wunderkind in 1942 when he played the single most famous jazz solo of the first half of the twentieth century, a marathon-length tenor saxophone showcase on Lionel Hampton's mega hit "Flyin' Home".



For years, Jacquet was called to repeat the solo note-for-note, and he continued to do so decades after audiences were, shall we say, less feverishly demanding. When he picked up his horn, preparing to blow the world-renowned opening lick, his imagining of bright spotlight was so powerful that his face would actually illuminate.

40 years after his heyday, Jacquet repeated the same solos nightly on all the other songs in our repertoire, too. It was utterly mysterious to me, given that he was a master improvisor who could effortlessly produce a fine spontaneous solo. Finally, the guys in the band (which included legends like Cecil Payne, Eddie Barefield, and Richard Wyands) explained the situation with rolled eyes and helpless shrugs. Jacquet, I was told, was hoping those canned solos would become equally famous, treasured, and demanded if he repeated them enough. Like jazz solos might still become ubiquitous anthems in late-1980s America.

Show me someone angry enough to pick up a nickname like "The Beast" and I'll show you a mismatch between reality and self-image. Self-styled giants forced to endure the indignity of mere normalcy never go gentle into that good night. This is the most noxious form of immaturity.

---

Jacquet was not a bright man, but he had enormous cunning. The wheels were always spinning, making it devilishly hard to decipher his thinking. For example, he very rarely let me solo, though I always ignited the crowd (not boasting, it's just true). Over time, he backed me down to a mere 8 bars (about 15 seconds) per night, and I still managed to earn thunderous applause, to his undisguised annoyance. I might have sulked, but instead I viewed it as a fascinating psychological knot to unravel.

The obvious answer is that he didn't want to share limelight. Yet there were other musicians he went out of his way to feature, multiple times per night. It took years to map out his thinking, and here's the schematic:

A young black alto saxophonist, Jesse Davis, played lots of notes (and very well, too; he's still a deservedly popular player). Jacquet would let him unleash his technical prowess, then smugly hoist his own horn and waft out simple strokes of buttery soul, undercutting all that had preceded. The counterpoint worked for him. Show biz!

But a mystery remained. Joey, the band's white lead alto player, could waft out credible buttery soul, himself. So why was he featured several times a night, Jacquet screaming his name into the mic to whip audiences into a frenzy? It finally dawned on me. Jacquet needed a foil. Joey was like the Washington Generals - the Harlem Globetrotters’ perpetual opponents, urged by management to play their best to keep the stars on their toes and ensure a tight show. You need a second banana - a Mini Me - playing the same game for the presentation to have heft and structure. It was all dramatic narrative, all kayfabe.

I was just as young, just as white, and just as buttery/soulful, but Jacquet already had a white kid in that slot; he didn't need a second one. So while Joey blew his heart out, Jacquet would freeze his face in a camera-ready kabuki mask of faux pride and delight. And when I blew my heart out, he'd bear it with his back to the audience, showing his true face: that of a glowering, malevolent, dead-eyed old woman. Here, again, is that face:

---

It's well known that victims of abuse go on to abuse others, and that, indeed, had been Jacquet's origin story. His mentor/tormentor, Lionel Hampton (with whom I, ever hapless, also worked) had a public image as an elegant, dignified elder statesman, but musicians knew him as a ghoulish narcissist who literally could not stop playing so long as the crowd kept cheering. Sets would stretch for hours - venue owners begging him to get off the damned stage - while some remaining gaggle of drunks kept clapping to egg him on. Oh, and I will not be so foolish as to publicly discuss the truth (well known by jazz musicians) behind the untimely death of Hamp's wife. Ask a jazz musician in, like, 2080, when our progeny might consider it safe to finally share the tale with civilians.

But while Jacquet may have been The Beast, and Hampton may have been the Uber-Beast, Hampton's mentor/tormentor was one of the most evil bastards ever to stick a horn in his face. I'll offer my single favorite of many, many Benny Goodman stories passed down through the generations.

It was mid-January and the band was rehearsing in Goodman's palatial Manhattan townhouse. The thermostat was set somewhere in the 50's (Benny was a notorious miser), and the musicians were suffering. Suddenly Benny cut off the group mid-song and asked:

"Hey, fellas, is it just me or is it cold in here?"

The band replied, en masse (complete with chattering teeth and shaky voices) ala "Yeah, Benny, oh yeah, cold, yep, awful cold, Benny."

Benny strode wordlessly out of the room, returned in a sumptuous mink coat, and counted off the tempo.

---

Illinois was managed by a stern, austere woman named Carol whose ex-husband had been Woody Allen's original producer. She'd seized great gobs of money in the divorce, and used it to buy band uniforms and publicity for Jacquet, with whom she lived (we all assumed it was platonic) and whose playing she worshipped nearly as fervidly as her evil guru, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, who promised her and Jacquet eternal life so long as they kept the donations coming.

Jacquet was all for the "eternal life" thing, but less so the spirituality thing, so he continued boozing on the sly, hiding a profusion of glasses and flasks in the landscape around the bandstand (under the piano lid, in potted plants, etc), perennially out-foxing Carol, who tried to maintain her facade of elegant dignity while rooting around for these stashes like a truffle pig.

---

I could keep going. Endlessly (and, again, I did not view a body). But this must suffice for now. Sleep well, all.


Oh, here's my backstage pass from when we played the Pori Jazz Festival in Finland:

Forgot to note. Oddly, Jacquet really loved my name. He decided it had show-biz pizzazz. He loved to holler out both names at errant moments, like a Tourette’s tic: "JIM LEFF!"

The Great Leon Redbone

The great Leon Redbone died today. He was even greater than you realize.

Leon Redbone was flawless. The fact that he was an Armenian refugee who entered the hemisphere at the late age of 16, yet managed to channel the essence of old-timey American music more beautifully and authentically than any other retro performer only magnifies his glimmer. I’m like Diogenes when it comes to insisting on genuineness in music (and other things) and Redbone was the realest of the real, even though his persona was the fakest of the fake.

He was flawless in his musical taste and performance, his singing and his strumming, but also in his witticisms and bon motts, many of which appear in this great profile which you absolutely must read, even if you've never heard of the guy. Every quote is a gem; every observation a pearl.

I apologize for my flatly superlative praise, but as with Mamma Grimaldi's lasagna, there's a level where there's not much to say.

The very best stuff has a shocking purity, a grace, an emptiness.

I think Redbone was at that high pure level, and remained there consistently throughout his long career. His output was so stripped down and unearthly relaxed that you might not notice your universe has been powerfully reframed - into a timeless space of elegance and intimacy. It's magic.

Pure water gently trickling. A soothing stream, at body temperature, scarcely vulgar enough to fill your gut or tickle your palate.

The following is a late Redbone performance on the "ALF" talk show, hosted by a puppet alien (the show lasted only seven episodes and is considered among the very worst things ever put on television). After performing one song solo, ALF, the obnoxious puppet character, insists on a duet, the very suggestion of which will leave you cringing. But dammit if Redbone doesn't make it music...and touching music, at that. Again: magic. Have a look:



The following are Redbone's two favorite recordings (as mentioned in the article linked above). Have a listen, and see if you don't come around to Redbone's it's-all-happening-now perspective. Both of these strongly evoke Redbone, who was more of a timeless wavelength than a man. Andy Kaufman, alas, is truly dead. But Leon Redbone? Never.






No accent. Not in his speech, nor his music, nor his taste. Never out of time or out of place in any respect; always the very essence of whatever he chose to evoke. Flawless!

Ricky Jay

I've been thinking a lot about Ricky Jay, who died last month. If you don't know about Jay, you absolutely need to. Start with the documentary about him, "Deceptive Practices" (free on Amazon Prime), move on to the New Yorker profile, and from there you have a world of books, films and videos to explore (as well as Jay's own web site).

You don't need my two cents about Ricky Jay. It would be ridiculous to try to sketch - to capture and circumscribe - a man who'd made an exquisite art form out of startled surprise. Lightning resists bottling. However, I will relate the most Ricky Jay-ish experience of my life. If I'd ever met Jay - alas, I did not - I'd have told him this story, and I'm certain he'd have loved it.


There was a "bookstore" in the East Village in the 80s called Harris Books. I use quotation marks because it was not, in fact, a bookstore. It was just this dude's apartment. His name was Harris, and he lived a couple floors above Kiev Restaurant on Second Avenue with his hippy British girlfriend and an autistic (or maybe I should say 'especially autistic') cat. If you rang the "Harris Books" buzzer, and he was at home, you could come up and hang out, and perhaps buy a book or two from his large-ish collection.

Harris looked a bit like Zonker, the character from the Doonesbury cartoon strip, and he was a real character. Once, I mentioned that I'd been hunting for a certain extremely obscure book. I was mostly just making conversation. The title was much too arcane to be found even in a gigantic bookstore. But as soon as its name left my mouth, he broke in and said "Look straight down." I did, and there it was. The very book.

I tallied the miracles. First, that he had the book. Second, that I was standing right in front of it. Third, that he knew that I was standing in front of it. And fourth (and perhaps most unsettlingly), while there were hundreds of volumes within my line of sight peering downward, something about his unequivocal command to "look down" made my eye lock straight onto that specific book.

Next visit, I mentioned another obscure book (different topic), whose title I'd forgotten. He asked me to describe it, I offered a vague few words, and damned if he didn't pull it straight off a shelf and hand it to me.

On the following visit, I'd planned to ask about yet another book in yet another topic, but when I arrived the title once again escaped me. "What's it about?" Harris asked. That, too, had suddenly slipped my mind. As I stood, sheepishly mute and struggling to recall, Harris walked to a shelf, pulled out a volume, and it was, somehow, that very book.


This was one of only a precious few times I've experienced a sense of heart-stopping wonder akin to the Max Malini ice block trick.

Kenny Shopsin: White Knight

Kenny Shopsin passed away last weekend. See this remembrance on Grubstreet. And, unusually, the New Yorker offers free reading of Calvin Trillin's classic profile from 2002. Don't miss it.

So much was always made over what a character Kenny was. That aspect never phased me. I'm old enough to remember when NYC was full of characters. Shoot, I'm a character, myself. And to be perfectly honest - what the hell, it's not like he ever held back! - I thought Kenny had crossed over into the realm of shtick, locked into playing this Kenny Shopsin character. Pandering to feather-ruffling expectations rather than genuinely ruffling feathers. He was hardly the first fuck-you iconoclast to wind up a treasured cultural landmark (slip a quarter in the slot to receive your "fuck you"!). The eccentricity racket can be an awfully sticky wicket.

I was much more interested in the deliciousness of his cooking. We musicians had found him early. It was pianist Uri Caine who first tipped me to Shopsin's, describing it as "this great soup place". Uri offered no titillated stories about the eccentricity, because, compared to us and our friends, Kenny was downright straight-ahead. Musicians had him on our radar purely for his food - both its deliciousness and its singular creativity. Who else had invented so many genuinely successful dishes? We considered him an artist, period. Same with the Soup Man, for that matter, despite Seinfeld's disrespect.

I never spoke directly to Kenny, though I made infrequent visits to both his restaurants over the years. For a peripatetic chowhound, always questing for new greatness just over the horizon, it was hard to find patience to work methodically through Kenny's twenty zillion offerings. I did really like everything I tried, however. I was an early adopter of mac-and-cheese pancakes.

But I do have a story to tell you about Kenny. It's a secret. As I once explained, I've always taken ethics very seriously. There were only two instances where I intentionally relaxed my self-imposed rules. I ate anonymously everywhere (to the best of my ability) except at Astoria's Kabab Cafe, where I was friends with owner Ali. And I never took a dime, or a morsel of free food, from any restaurateur...except Kenny. When Chowhound had scaled from a fun hobby to a time/money sucking nightmare, and I'd exhausted my own meager savings to keep the damned thing open as a public service, and had to ask for support from users, Kenny sent a couple of checks. Big checks. With no notes attached, no self-identification, nothing. Just mutely generic checks in plain white envelopes, signed by one Kenneth Shopsin.

To this day, I'm not sure why I accepted. It wasn't greed; it's not like I was tempted or anything like that. I just felt a deep certainty that it was the thing to do. The quietness of how he'd gone about it spoke volumes. I understood no strings were attached; that it would never bring me grief. In fact, we moderated discussion of his restaurant extra vigilantly from then on, to be sure we weren't playing favorites. Kenny wrote in a couple times over the years to politely (believe it or not) complain about the moderation. Our staff politely explained the specific issues, and he amiably accepted those explanations. That's it.

To his great credit, Kenny never once mentioned his support when he wrote in. Or at any other time. Class guy. I know terms like "quietness", "class", "amiable", and "polite" were not his brand, so I've waited until today to tar him with this slander. But I felt him.

I was championing quality; trying to awaken consumers and coax them into more thoughtful choices, to help support the good guys. He understood I was chopping a decade out of my life to work an essential angle no one had previously thought to work. While other restaurateurs tested Chowhound's defenses, scheming to pollute and dilute the resource with fake raves, or sent us furious objections for allowing people to post negative opinions (if I had a dime for every threatened defamation lawsuit...), Kenny, and seemingly Kenny alone, understood that it was all a big fat wet kiss on the lips for dedicated, talented people like him. Don't ask me how I knew this, but I did, from the silence of his gesture. So we cashed the checks.

Mr. Asshole turned out to be a white knight.


His cookbook, "Eat Me", is wonderful, by the way. Very underrated. It's currently out of stock, but I'd imagine they'll reprint if there were demand. Order at Amazon to help make that happen. If you enjoyed Chowhound, this would help return the favor.

Bill Frickin' Watrous

"Dude studies with Bill Watrous!" marveled Erich, the worldly and ordinarily cynical sixth grader trombone section leader in my elementary school's concert band. "Dude" was a hotshot player from a nearby middle school. For Erich to be so envious of another trombone student - when he, himself, had lived so large and seen so much - was nearly inconceivable to me. I'd never heard of Bill Watrous, but kids at that age imprint instantly. Bill Watrous, whoever he was, was definitely the bomb.

Erich was impeccably tapped in, as always. Watrous, at the time, was the hottest name in trombone. He was the Elon Musk of trombone; the LeBron James of trombone. I detested his playing from the moment I first heard him a couple years later. But at that age I hadn’t developed a cohesive perspective, so I was able to hold contradictory positions. I could hate his playing while idolizing his status. After all, we’re talking about Bill frickin’ Watrous here!!

Here’s how I sized him up at the time: Watrous spewed breezy streams of fast high notes in a glibly detached monotone. The effect was both laid-back and tiresome. If Axe Body Spray could play trombone, this is how it might sound. His tone was so weak (one of several compromises facilitating his bag of technical tricks) that he had to practically swallow the microphone into the bell of his horn to be heard. There was not much in the way of phrasing or expression, more just a dense packing of flurries of notes. That's it: dense note-packing.

I would take the opposite approach, cultivating a rich, fat sound which projected to the rafters. I'd swing hard and listen with utmost attention to my fellow musicians, never merely gliding over them like wallpaper. I wound up incarnating a 75 year old black man in the body of a suburban white kid.

Here's a sample of Watrous' playing:




Here, by contrast, is my hero, Slide Hampton, who also had formidable technique but who struck me as far more swinging and expressive:



Jump ahead nine years. I’m attending University of Rochester while taking classes at the associated Eastman School of Music. I still dislike Watrous’ playing, but certainly acknowledge his technique and ease. And - hah! - I am offered an opportunity to study with him for a week over the summer. I don’t know quite what to expect. Check out the early photo, above, and see if you don’t share my trepidations about his ego.

Sure enough, he showed up in a shiny Adidas track suit - like an NBA star on his off day - and a haircut straight out of Austin Powers, like some groovy modster from the 60s. A real star, baby! Yet he spoke to his students like colleagues, without a trace of condescension. And I was flabbergasted by his reaction to me.

I assumed Watrous would hate my playing as much as I detested his. I was, after all, the anti-Watrous. But, to my shock, he liked me...just as I was. He didn’t tell me to go buy a smaller horn, or to reign in my fat tone, or to work on cramming a jillion notes into every gap. He didn’t suggest that I take everything up two octaves, or reduce my intensity. In fact, he was far more respectful of my choices than even my most like-minded teachers, who were constantly pestering me to tone it all down.

He offered suggestions, but only to help me achieve what I was already aiming for. Watrous respected my vision, and didn't urge me to be more like him. In fact, he suggested that I tell anyone who didn't like my musical choices to go screw off. No one had ever spoken to me like that before, much less Bill frickin’ Watrous.

Watrous shook up not only my assumptions about Watrous, but about music and art, generally. In fact, I’m still processing the lesson. He told me about a trombonist whose playing style was downright lazy. Notes wouldn’t glibly propel from his horn, as with Watrous, nor did they waft out, as with me. Rather, they’d tarry and slobber, like a depleted wind-up toy. But his playing had personality, so Watrous respected and adored it.

So: what the hell had been my big problem re: Watrous' playing? Why had I been so judgemental about him? You can respect - even love - a thing even when it's not your thing. Again, I'm still processing this, many, many years later. It's a lifelong effort.

I was not making out well in music school (for reasons explained here), which stamped out clones more along the Watrous spectrum - certainly a trendier choice than my geriatric African-American inclinations. I was rejected like a slug coin. I wasn’t permitted to major in music and the illustrious top trombone professor refused to teach me, sloughing me off on the backup teacher (who I now recognize, with immense shame, was a far better player and teacher).

I told Watrous this, and he said “I know the guy. You go straight to him and tell him Watrous says to get off his lazy ass and teach you, and that it’s important.” I was grateful and flattered, but too young to understand how seldom people put themselves out there like that. He didn’t need to do this for me. It shot right by like a heady blip, but now, shortly after Watrous' death, I'm belatedly feeling a fuller appreciation.

That fall, I returned to school, delivered the message, and the haughty top-string trombone professor was dumbstruck. He knew me, slightly, as the liberal arts guy who sloppily dabbled a bit in music. I was a dilettante, unworthy of his time or attention, yet here I was, bearing a directive from Jesus Christ himself. The poor fellow just couldn’t reconcile it. It really messed him up.

This was the first of many times where I would uncomfortably witness the real time shock of someone who'd severely underrated me getting The News. At age 55, it still happens. An old pal, who'd missed the Chowhound period and never really accepted that his goofy musician friend had ever done anything significant, recently reported, dumbfounded, that a food-loving colleague had turned giddy upon learning that he knew me. It doesn't happen often; just enough to keep me awkwardly disoriented.

Thankfully, the top teacher didn’t wind up teaching me after all, and I stayed with the good guy....who was neither important nor famous, but who offered a rare direct link to the late great Remington - hallowed be his name - who was a titanic influence on all my previous teachers. While Top Guy was an egotist whose playing lacked soul, my guy was warmly caring and a truly great player. Exactly the teacher for me, despite my foolish angling to get with Top Guy.

I'd gotten lucky. The haughty local capo was interested in turning out clones (and correctly sensed that I’d never submit), even though Bill Watrous, the capo di tutti capi, saw more deeply.

I’ve seen this pattern repeat constantly; the pack is inevitably smaller-minded than the top dog. I hung around a lot in Jamaica Queens in the late 80s with the guys who were developing hiphop by day and playing jazz by night. The scene included a contingent of very “militant” black Muslims who didn’t like white guys much, and they gave me the serious cold shoulder. Their spiritual mentor was an elderly trombonist who I heard a lot about, and who I expected to be as harsh as the surface of Venus, one Hassan Hakim (father of famed drummer Omar Hakim). But when I finally met Hassan, he was the sweetest guy ever and we became instant best friends, going out all the time to sit in with local rhythm sections. Hassan, who was in his 80s at the time, had little technique, but I hung on every swinging, uplifting note like a gift from Heaven. His followers, who hadn't suffered a fraction of the persecution, poverty and Jim Crow that he had, had sadly misinterpreted his perfectly admirable urgings to cultivate backbone, dignity and self-respect.

When you finally meet the top dog, it's always different.

I'd shallowly idolized Watrous' celebrity while stupidly disdaining his playing. I should have admired his abilities and embraced his originality - however different from my own choices - just as he'd embraced mine. As for the celebrity and status, none of that should ever have been a thing. He’d knocked himself out for me, and I was the furthest thing from a celebrity. So, again, what was my problem?

I’d made assumptions about Watrous’ arrogance, but I was the arrogant one, disrespecting an influential master who respected me, some kid, far more than I deserved. And I'd distracted myself by chasing celebrity for celebrity's sake - twice in this tale, alone (with fortunate results in both cases, though it took years to fully purge the impulse). I should have embraced more broadly while navigating my own course more narrowly and thoughtfully. Instead, I was backwards in both aspects, turning into a judgmental, status-conscious little snot who let himself be distracted from the only thing that matters: the music. I‘d thought I was more "musical" than Bill Watrous. Ha!

I was really sorry to see you go, Bill. Thanks for teaching me so much, even if not one iota of it was about trombone. Also: you played your ass off. You were absolutely the best Bill Watrous ever!

Lorraine Gordon

I eagerly greet hurricanes on the infrequent occasions when they manage to reach New York. You're supposed to stay indoors, I know, but I always go outside to sniff the air, which I know will carry the evocative scent of the Caribbean. Lesser weather systems arrive from that zone, as well, but only a hurricane - a tightly-wound and highly self-contained system - preserves that essence.

With similar trepidation, and in similarly low doses, I enjoyed Lorraine Gordon, legendary proprietress of the legendary Village Vanguard. Lorraine would freely acknowledge that she was a brassy lady, a character, a loudmouth, a real ball buster. If those terms seem antiquated, well, so was she. When I knew her, a bit, in her 50s and 60s, she seemed like a character straight from an Ernst Lubitsch film. You could smell the 1940s on her. Not a sad, moldering vestige, but the living sizzle of the era. As a tightly-wound and highly self-contained system of her own, Lorraine preserved that essence.

I played at the Vanguard a number of times in the late 1980s with Illinois Jacquet (here's an anecdote about one such night), and Lorraine would always chase me around the club with scissors, trying to tame my "crazy haircut". Maybe she had a point (here I was in a relatively groomed period...it got way bigger):

Not long after, I found myself running to Spain a few times per year to play gigs under my own name; high pressure engagements in well-known venues. On one such tour, students of mine asked me to make an appearance with their semi-professional dixieland band way the hell out of town, in the boonies, playing for farmers. We'd begin at 10am, and I'd be playing the night before until 3, so the 8am pickup would be a crusher (they'd offered more pay than I could possibly refuse). There was no time to shower or shave (at that age, it could be chalked up to bohemianism), I was deathly hungover, and I didn't bother to warm up. When the music started I simply slammed horn to face and proceeded to phone it in. It was more than good enough for the circumstance, but I was far from my best.

In my boredom, I scanned the crowd - from the stage crowded with a motley crew of well-meaning but really-not-even-close-to-competent musicians - taking in the non-comprehending stares of Catalan villagers who'd never heard a note of jazz in their lives. There were a few dozen of them standing outdoors in the morning heat, plus - wait, what? - Lorraine Gordon. Who I later learned had a brother who lived in this village. This stupid village. Because of course he did, and of course she happened to be visiting at that moment, and of course I'd just taken perhaps the worst solo of my life on some humiliatingly cornball washboard-and-spoons Dixieland anthem, looking like a wino.

Lorraine either didn't recognize me (I'd cut my hair by then) or politely pretended not to. I'm still not sure which. Not that I, in my abject mortification, let myself get anywhere near her. I looked nowhere but down at the floor for the subsequent two hours, and I never ever "phoned it in" again. Ever. A lot of what I write in this Slog about commitment stems from that Catalan Mortification (Mortificació Catalana), a pivotal event that haunted me for years.

Lorraine took this story with her to the grave yesterday, at age 95, and, finally detached enough to fully own that ghastly experience, I thank her for being party to a life-altering moment. I'm also thankful for her less-than-nimble athletic skills (in spite of her sensible shoes). She never managed to shear a solitary lock. I thank her for the visceral whiff of 1945 that I never experienced from any other human being, and I tip my hat to the tight-woundedness that preserved it. And, not incidentally, I thank her for doing as much as anyone in the past half century to preserve the heart and soul of a great art form.


For more on Lorraine, check out Ted Panken's terrific interview here. Definitely also read this link, starting from "On a frigid afternoon in January" (and you can stop when it moves on to other topics), wherein Ted magically evokes the evocative flavor pouring out of Lorraine!

Anthony Bourdain

A lot of people don't know that Anthony Bourdain was a Chowhound regular back in the late 90s, just before his first book came out. He showed up blasting with self-promotion. We politely asked him to stop, and he politely agreed to knock it off...and did. No problem. He eventually split, along with a small circle of malcontents who felt I was too uptight in how I ran the community (everyone loves a moderated discussion but nobody likes to be moderated; it's like smokers requesting no-smoking hotel rooms - 'cuz they smell better - and then smoking in them).

I didn't hear from him until years later, when I was invited to appear on his "No Reservations" show. I declined, and was glad I had when I discovered that it was an episode about "food bloggers" (I'd written/cowritten nine books and columns for Newsweek, Newsday, and many more), where I'd have appeared in a roundtable discussion with those very same malcontents. Shudder.

In the early 2000s, I was recruited by a publishing legend who wanted to pluck me from my Chowhound mire, rescue me from the insanely awful (but lucrative) music gigs I'd resorted to to keep my lights on, and make me a national sensation. If I'd say the word, I'd have a multi-book contract and frequent mass media appearances. I turned it down, as I wasn't prepared to close or neglect Chowhound. Very shortly afterward, the same fellow signed Bourdain.

Not exactly treasured memories. But through it all, Bourdain himself was always nice to me. I was snarled at by a lot of people back in the day while I killed myself throwing a great free party for a million strangers on zero budget via my indefatigable adrenal glands. But in every exchange I've ever had with him - sometimes telling him things he didn't particularly want to hear - he was unfailingly polite, and respected the fact that I - a near stranger - was a human being with feelings. That doesn't sound like much, but when you've managed a million people on the Internet you really notice when someone acts surprisingly.

That guy you saw on the screen, who was sarcastic and brashly negative, was apparently almost incapable of disrespect. You might have picked this up from his programs, perhaps not realizing he was the same even with cameras packed away. To be sure, he could hurl criticism and bile-filled invective. Ask his nemeses like Rachel Ray! But that's a different thing. Amid the slow grind of the day to day, as he interacted in his various circles, a person was always a full person to him.

That's rare. I myself didn't grow up in an environment where folks behaved like that. I've since been reforming myself, but it's a work in progress, and it's hard. The usual technique is to tamp down one's disrespectfulness beneath a veneer of corporate politesse, but that's the ultimate dehumanization; forcing interlocutors to engage with you as if with a voice mail prompt. But Bourdain was genuine and respectful with everyone, even when he reached a position where he sure as hell didn't need to be.

This isn't something I've seen pointed out about him, and, to me, it was even more impressive than his fast wit. And it was especially remarkable considering that he was a person who was so admittedly unhappy, and so full of oft-confessed demons. That sort of internal landscape isn't normally a springboard for deeply-committed humanism. It is with utmost respect that I observe that Anthony Bourdain played his best possible hand with the cards he was dealt.


"A Surprisingly Uplifting Examination of Suicide"