Larry Kart

Check sent to Jim's home address.

As good as Joplin but different. https://www.amazon.com/Classic-Ragtime-Rare-Piano-Rolls/dp/B0015LBBE2/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1542076599&sr=1-2&keywords=james+scott

Vey nice -- the shot and the view.

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

The sheet music says 4/4: https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0077772

The rep on Mendelssohn 2 is that it's the epitome in music of Victorian religioslity (it was a big hit in England). But while the would-be triumphant final chorus is along those lines to some degree, I found the work as a whole to be remarkably graceful and subtle.

Listened to this work tonight for the first time, and to my surprise was entranced by the sheer logic and harmoniousness of Mendelssohn's thinking, plus his often exquisite craftsmanship. Excellent performance; Flor really knows how to handle Mendelssohn; Lucia Popp sings like an angel.

Good stuff, huh? Smith of course, but Wallace Bishop is quite something, Hill too.

As Stan Kenton As Stan Kenton used to say: "THIS is an orchestra!"

As I may have said here before, I played a peripheral role in Hawkins' final days -- peripheral but it looms large in my memory. Dan had brought Hawkins to Chicago to play with Roy Eldridge, Barry Harris, Truck Parham, and Bob Cousins for a Saturday public TV show taping, to be followed by a Jazz Showcase performance on Sunday afternoon -- a great idea, but Dan had no idea of in how poor a shape Hawkins was. Upon arriving at O'Hare, Hawkins collapsed, was taken to a hospital but insisted that he wanted to and felt well enough to play, and both the Saturday taping and the Sunday Showcase performance went on as planned, with Hawkins in poor shape. I was assistant editor under Dan at Downbeat at the time, and he asked me to take Hawkins to the airport on Monday morning because Dan had DB obligations that prevented him from doing so himself. I went to the hotel, the Executive House on Wacker Drive, carefully ushered Hawkins into a cab and to the airport, where a red cap recognized him and supplied a wheelchair. We were early for his flight, of course, so I asked Hawkins if there were anything he wanted. He said "The airport bar," and when we got there he ordered a Courvousier or two. When we got to the gate, the attendants blanched -- here was a strange-looking uncommunicative man, wearing a much-rumbled but originally elegant pin-stripe Hart, Schaffner, and Marx suit, and with a long scraggly beard and in a wheel chair. They wanted to put him in coach, but I knew he had a first class ticket so I kind of threw a fit, insisting that he had a first-class ticket and that's where he was going to sit or there was going to be trouble. And that's where he sat. As he was being wheeled backwards onto the plane, he looked at me with what seemed to me to be an expression of some gratitude -- or perhaps it was a look of "justice has been done." This I will never forget. When he got back to his NYC apartment, I think he was visited by a few friends, probably Barry Harris and Tommy Flanagan, but despite their best efforts he wouldn't eat, and he didn't last much longer -- maybe a month.

Great concert from Zurich, 1949, on two CDs (with bassist Ernest Hill and drummer Wallace Bishop). https://www.amazon.com/Live-Zurich-Switzerland-Willie-Smith/dp/B004O0UQWY/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1541481495&sr=1-2&keywords=willie+the+lion+smith+storyville

Another thought or two about Eager. Ira Gitler, who knew him as the best 52nd St. Lester Young disciple who also was knowledgeably into Bird, told me that when he heard Eager at the Umbria Jazz Festival in the '80s he was at once saddened and angered at how Eager had wasted/dissipated his gifts over the years. Ira IIRC said that he knew that it was somewhat unfair of him to think that -- a man lives his life as he does/as best he can -- but he had been shocked by how far below what he had heard at Umbria was from any of Eager's previous latter-day performances. Ira added that on the 52nd St. scene Allen had been known for behaving like an arrogant jerk -- in particular, dissing other tenor men whom he felt were not up to his level. When I heard Al Cohn seemingly go out of his way to destroy Allen musically at the Showcase (I think there also was some facial expression/body language coming from Al along those lines), I thought that Al might have been one of the players Allen had dissed and that he was, in effect, taking revenge. At that point, for one reason or another, Eager could barely play on changes anymore. IIRC, he kind of got through "down" versions of "Invitation" and a c. 1959 minimalist Coltrane blues line ("Equinox") in both cases doing little more than sounding out the pieces for a chorus or two. I taped the opening sets from my seat in the audience but erased the cassettes, never wanted to hear them again. Forgive me if I've said some or all of this before here, but it hit me hard at the time and it remains in my memory.

Actually, IIRC, when I tried to do that phone interview with Eager he was working as a night desk man at a Miami area hotel, which might have affected his willingness,ability, or desire to participate. The occasion for the interview BTW was Eager's coming to Chicago to play at the Jazz Showcase with Al Cohn.

As I've said here before, Eager in the mid-'80s was in grim shape, both as a player and FWIW as someone who could not coherently participate in a phone interview -- I tried to do one with him. I think that Allen Lowe had the same experience. But then both Allen and I are impossible people.

No intent to be snarky, believe me, but just about everybody who knowns anything about Eager knows this. Pretty sure that it got a fair amount of coverage at the time, on a jazz musician wins at Sebring basis. Also, McCluggage's name certainly rings a bell for me, speaking as someone who paid some attention to auto racing at the time. As for Eager, later on he was part of Timothy Leary's circle at Harvard when LSD research was going on. Eager, with his bebop attitude, reportedly said, "To hell with 'research' -- let's get high!" And there ya go.