I love the B3/Leslie sound! I gigged in rural Michigan with a B3 player during the mid-60s. Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, South Haven. These gigs had a tendency to get kinda red neck. The crowd messed with us. We played our asses off to grudging applause.
I don't know where to put this so I'll put it here and over on Medium. Maybe.
Chapter Twenty Three
1967: Somewhere on the Road between Detroit and Chicago
“Why are so many jazz musicians heroin addicts?” This problem has beguiled Aaron for years. He wants Zoot’s insight. There are different cultures, different compartments in the world of drug use. Marijuana is a staple of the music business: jazz, rock, blues, country, it is a universal unguent and lubricator. Aaron has never experimented with cocaine or opiates, but has seen the porosity of the soft/drug-hard/drug barrier and keeps careful distinctions in his own mind about what kind of drug use is permissible.
The road seems to slide beneath them like an infinite conveyor belt. Its perfectly measured white lines dash at right angles to the chrome front bumper as Zoot passes trucks and sedans, headlights blinking.
“Because they’re weak and greedy,” Zoot pronounces emphatically. He applies pressure to the gas pedal and honks his horn in response to the airhorn blast of a semi whose headlights vanish in their wake.
Aaron waits for further discourse. When none comes, he asks, “Is that it? Weak and greedy? All of them? Bird? Dexter? Jackie? Elvin? Art Blakey? Gene Ammons? Sonny Rollins? Weak and greedy?”
“You ever see pictures of Bird?” Zoot asks impatiently.
“Sure, lots of them.”
“Take a good look at that face. Have you ever seen a more guileful, deceiving face?”
“Now that you mention it.....yeah, Bird does have a kind of weasly expression.”
“Naw, man, not Bird,” Tyrone protests.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Zoot replies, “Look under the seat, I got a couple albums there. Turn on the light for a second.”
Tyrone digs in the space under the front passenger seat. Aaron reaches up and clicks the little black rectangle that controls the inside light.
“Yeah, here’s ‘April in Paris’”. Tyrone brings the record up and holds it close to his face.
Charlie Parker looks as if his cheeks are stuffed with fried chicken, he has just downed eight cups of coffee and is doing a mock ‘Uncle Tom’ mug for the white photographer, who will have no clue as to the mockery implied by the eyes-wide, toothy shucking smile.
“Yeah, I see what you mean,” Tyrone concedes, “he look like one devious motherfucker.”
“Okay, okay,” Aaron leans over to examine the photo, then turns off the light. “But that’s still not satisfying to me. How can such brilliance be merged with such flaws of character? How can Bird achieve the discipline required to become a virtuoso, how can he be dedicated, original, uncompromising and still be weak?”
“Man, you are very naive,” Zoot says. His left hand is at the bottom of the steering wheel, resting languidly in the hard plastic ridges that are designed for grip in this top-end Chrysler product. His jade ring catches the glint from the sickly blue road lamps that flick by, every thirty seconds.
Zoot’s comment makes Aaron a little angry. At twenty he is making a valiant effort to be tough-minded.
“Well, I fucking want to know. I still can’t figure it out. Avian Coulter tried to explain it to me, but I didn’t understand then and I don’t understand now.”
“Okay, I’m being harsh,” Zoot explains. “Bird ripped me off for a horn. I was dumb, I was young, I was honored to be lending Bird a horn. He really betrayed me and it pissed me off. Think of it this way. An addiction is always a symptom of pain. Some people deal with pain intelligently, they cope, they find ways to comfort themselves, they learn skills from their parents, from being raised well. But there are some kinds of pain that are overwhelming. If you take a black man who has talent, deep sensitivity, who has worked for maybe thirty years diligently to become a tremendous musician, who has all the ambition and technique of the finest classical virtuoso, and you stick him in a funky nightclub where people talk over his deepest inspiration, where whores are making change at the bar, where booze and dope are being consumed in copious quantity, where the money he takes home is barely able to keep him and his family in a rotten tenement, where booking agents and club owners take thirty percent of his wages, where cops hassle him just for existing, where white musicians rip off his compositions and turn them into sterilized money makers, yeah, you might, just might, get consumed with frustration, you might have the makings of a teeeny little bit of self destructive impulse.”
Aaron almost has to lean sideways to escape Zoot’s sudden vehemence.
“Oh,” he says, stupidly.
In the back seat, Tyrone murmurs something in Swahili.
I love the B3/Leslie sound! I gigged in rural Michigan with a B3 player during the mid-60s. Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, South Haven. These gigs had a tendency to get kinda red neck. The crowd messed with us. We played our asses off to grudging applause.
One of my favs.
Had the good fortune to do a reissue when I was with Dreyfus Jazz
Eddy Louiss - Kenny Clarke - René Thomas – Trio
You introduced me to a guy I would otherwise have missed. Gracias.
I don't know where to put this so I'll put it here and over on Medium. Maybe.
Chapter Twenty Three
1967: Somewhere on the Road between Detroit and Chicago
“Why are so many jazz musicians heroin addicts?” This problem has beguiled Aaron for years. He wants Zoot’s insight. There are different cultures, different compartments in the world of drug use. Marijuana is a staple of the music business: jazz, rock, blues, country, it is a universal unguent and lubricator. Aaron has never experimented with cocaine or opiates, but has seen the porosity of the soft/drug-hard/drug barrier and keeps careful distinctions in his own mind about what kind of drug use is permissible.
The road seems to slide beneath them like an infinite conveyor belt. Its perfectly measured white lines dash at right angles to the chrome front bumper as Zoot passes trucks and sedans, headlights blinking.
“Because they’re weak and greedy,” Zoot pronounces emphatically. He applies pressure to the gas pedal and honks his horn in response to the airhorn blast of a semi whose headlights vanish in their wake.
Aaron waits for further discourse. When none comes, he asks, “Is that it? Weak and greedy? All of them? Bird? Dexter? Jackie? Elvin? Art Blakey? Gene Ammons? Sonny Rollins? Weak and greedy?”
“You ever see pictures of Bird?” Zoot asks impatiently.
“Sure, lots of them.”
“Take a good look at that face. Have you ever seen a more guileful, deceiving face?”
“Now that you mention it.....yeah, Bird does have a kind of weasly expression.”
“Naw, man, not Bird,” Tyrone protests.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Zoot replies, “Look under the seat, I got a couple albums there. Turn on the light for a second.”
Tyrone digs in the space under the front passenger seat. Aaron reaches up and clicks the little black rectangle that controls the inside light.
“Yeah, here’s ‘April in Paris’”. Tyrone brings the record up and holds it close to his face.
Charlie Parker looks as if his cheeks are stuffed with fried chicken, he has just downed eight cups of coffee and is doing a mock ‘Uncle Tom’ mug for the white photographer, who will have no clue as to the mockery implied by the eyes-wide, toothy shucking smile.
“Yeah, I see what you mean,” Tyrone concedes, “he look like one devious motherfucker.”
“Okay, okay,” Aaron leans over to examine the photo, then turns off the light. “But that’s still not satisfying to me. How can such brilliance be merged with such flaws of character? How can Bird achieve the discipline required to become a virtuoso, how can he be dedicated, original, uncompromising and still be weak?”
“Man, you are very naive,” Zoot says. His left hand is at the bottom of the steering wheel, resting languidly in the hard plastic ridges that are designed for grip in this top-end Chrysler product. His jade ring catches the glint from the sickly blue road lamps that flick by, every thirty seconds.
Zoot’s comment makes Aaron a little angry. At twenty he is making a valiant effort to be tough-minded.
“Well, I fucking want to know. I still can’t figure it out. Avian Coulter tried to explain it to me, but I didn’t understand then and I don’t understand now.”
“Okay, I’m being harsh,” Zoot explains. “Bird ripped me off for a horn. I was dumb, I was young, I was honored to be lending Bird a horn. He really betrayed me and it pissed me off. Think of it this way. An addiction is always a symptom of pain. Some people deal with pain intelligently, they cope, they find ways to comfort themselves, they learn skills from their parents, from being raised well. But there are some kinds of pain that are overwhelming. If you take a black man who has talent, deep sensitivity, who has worked for maybe thirty years diligently to become a tremendous musician, who has all the ambition and technique of the finest classical virtuoso, and you stick him in a funky nightclub where people talk over his deepest inspiration, where whores are making change at the bar, where booze and dope are being consumed in copious quantity, where the money he takes home is barely able to keep him and his family in a rotten tenement, where booking agents and club owners take thirty percent of his wages, where cops hassle him just for existing, where white musicians rip off his compositions and turn them into sterilized money makers, yeah, you might, just might, get consumed with frustration, you might have the makings of a teeeny little bit of self destructive impulse.”
Aaron almost has to lean sideways to escape Zoot’s sudden vehemence.
“Oh,” he says, stupidly.
In the back seat, Tyrone murmurs something in Swahili.
I wasn't hip to him...merci d'avoir retiré mon manteau!