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  1. Happy birthday and congrats on award for 20 years of service to
  2. Bertrand, I just sent an email to your email address used for the suggestion on lunch "get together". I fear I am not "sophisticated" enough to launch a PM. John.
  3. May Borders reward you on your birthday with coupons and pastries beyond any amount previously bestowed.
  4. Bertrand, Have a happy, if not blessed, birthday. John.
  5. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7073001633.html Life Is Better With Butch Warren on Bass By Raw Fisher From Marc Fisher's Blog Tuesday, July 31, 2007; Page B03 Thanks to Butch Warren, the barkeep at Columbia Station in Adams Morgan can make her car payment this month. Thanks to Butch Warren, the sounds of surprise are wafting out of an 18th Street saloon once again, offering an alternative to the thump-thump pulse of disco nights along the strip. Butch Warren, one of the lost giants of jazz's great mid-century burst of creativity, has been through rough times for all too many years. When I last visited him, it was a year ago at Springfield Hospital Center, the Maryland state mental institution in Carroll County. Warren was, by his own account, "really out of it" then. But he's back, living in a boarding house in Prince George's County and playing bass once again, drawing people off the street and into another place Wednesday nights at Columbia Station. Last week, under the supportive wing of pianist Peter Edelman, Warren showed he can still bring it. He halted conversation throughout the restaurant with a couple of solos that displayed the energy of a 25-year-old, the swing of a musician so well trained that he knows how to make it look effortless, and the encyclopedic jazz knowledge of a pro who worked with Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock, Dexter Gordon, Donald Byrd and Jackie McLean -- as Warren, indeed, did. Now he is scraping by, desperate for more gigs, eager to find a place to live in the city, somehow managing to survive on a Social Security check and the kindness of jazz lovers. They were out in force last night -- a devoted collector of Warren's work who has volunteered to try to get Butch the royalty checks that are due him for works he wrote back in the early 1960s; a TV producer gathering string for a piece on Warren's journey; a smattering of others who know enough about the music to realize that this man in the crisp white shirt, conservative gray suit and spanking new sneakers is a living legend. And all around the rest of the room, casual barhoppers found themselves hushed by the experience of stumbling upon a great. The room was full of people who just wandered in to grab a drink with a date, hang out with friends or celebrate a birthday -- which is exactly what Warren plans to do. On Wednesday, Aug. 8, the night before his 68th birthday, Butch Warren expects to be playing at Columbia Station, celebrating a birthday he never quite expected to see, reunited with his instrument after too many months apart from it, doing the one thing that really still makes sense to him. "Jazz," he says, "is playing two songs at once." For a gent who has had too much trouble keeping one thing in mind, what's freeing, somehow, is the chance to slip into a world where so many things are going on at once. You can hear what that sounds like on Wednesday nights in a dark, rich room on 18th Street NW.
  6. Happy Birthday to my fellow G-Man who told me something about Wayne Shorter some time ago.
  7. http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/16378739.htm Posted on Thu, Jan. 04, 2007 Kansas City arena operator woos Penguins STEVE BRISENDINE Associated Press KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Pittsburgh Penguins could play rent-free and be equal managing partners in the new Sprint Center if they move to Kansas City, under an offer unveiled Thursday by the arena's operating group. Tim Leiweke, president of Anschutz Entertainment Group, said the Penguins would not have to buy into the management agreement. The $276 million Sprint Center is scheduled to open in October. The Penguins' owners, unhappy with the 45-year-old Mellon Arena, the NHL's oldest venue, have been exploring a move since a new arena deal fell through last month. "We are not trying to steal the Penguins," Leiweke said. "We have been very respectful of their process. We understand that this is Pittsburgh's to lose, and we respect that." Anschutz officials, including former Pittsburgh star Luc Robitaille, met Wednesday and Thursday with Penguins owner Mario Lemieux, his partner, Ron Burkle, and other team representatives. "They have told us they will make a decision within 30 days," Leiweke said. "We will know within 30 days whether they are going to work out their issues in Pittsburgh and get an arena built, or whether they will ask the NHL for permission to move the team to Kansas City." Pittsburgh has been trying to keep the Penguins in town with a Plan B agreement involving Detroit-based gambling company owner Dan Barden. Lemieux and Burkle were scheduled to meet late Thursday with Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato and Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. Finding a permanent tenant, either in the NHL or NBA, has been a priority for Kansas City. Officials are counting on the Sprint Center and an adjoining entertainment district to anchor downtown revitalization efforts. But so far, the arena has commitments only for the 2008 Big 12 men's basketball tournament, which was once a fixture in Kansas City, and the annual BCE Classic, a four-game tournament sponsored by the National Association of Basketball Coaches. The association's hall of fame, which will include a 40,000-square-foot interactive exhibit dubbed College Basketball the Experience, is being incorporated into the Sprint Center project. Last month, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board denied a slots contract bid by Isle of Capri Casinos that would have guaranteed the construction of a $290 million arena. And William "Boots" Del Biaggio III, the venture capitalist who has an agreement with Sprint Center management to own any NHL team that relocates to Kansas City, co-owns a minor league hockey team with Lemieux. Kansas City has not had an NHL franchise since the Scouts - now the New Jersey Devils - left town in 1976 after two seasons in Kemper Arena. The NBA's Kings, who relocated from Cincinnati in 1972 and spent three seasons splitting their home games between Kansas City and Omaha, moved to Sacramento in 1985. End of Article
  8. http://my.execpc.com/~billp61/dates26.html#0328 I am not sure if this helps. Perhaps you have seen this schedule for Bob's tour. My reading of this is that there is NO opening act. I was one to attend his shows whenever he came to DC area. This stopped after April 2004 when voice was really failing and the first of two top notch guitarists left the band. The fan reviews of late seem inconsistent. (Using the link above, scroll all the way down, then click on older tour guides to get numerous fan reviews) The link below is for last year's tour which displays opening act: http://my.execpc.com/~billp61/dates25.html#0509
  9. http://www.amazon.com/Footprints-Life-Work...TF8&s=books There is an interesting thread on Organissimo based on the hardcover version released circa December 2004.
  10. Buck Hill is scheduled for Twins on U Street for New Year's Eve.
  11. Good news (for the individuals falsely accused). Edited in reaction to subsequent posts.
  12. Posted on Fri, Dec. 08, 2006 JAY McSHANN | Legendary pianist and bandleader dies Pantheon of jazz loses a pillar His style, sophistication and energy spread KC’s musical heritage around the world. By ROBERT TRUSSELL The Kansas City Star “He was always thinking through his fingers.” (Bruce Ricker, filmmaker and friend). Jay McShann, an internationally recognized giant of Kansas City jazz, died Thursday. Books, official records and other sources disagree on his date of birth, but he was thought to be 90. The legendary bandleader and composer was one of the city’s last living links to its glory days as a jazz town. “Jay is the last of his generation,” said jazz historian Chuck Haddix, co-author of Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop. “His passing really marks the end of an era.” McShann reportedly had been feeling well and enthusiastic about music in recent months. Within the last few weeks he had granted an interview to a correspondent working on a jazz documentary for the BBC. But he was admitted to St. Luke’s Hospital on Nov. 27 because of breathing problems. With a performing career spanning more than 70 years, McShann established himself as a versatile musician who was equally comfortable with the blues, ballads and bebop. His piano technique revealed a delicate and sophisticated sensibility, but he could pound out driving blues and boogie-woogie in the best tradition of barrelhouse piano players. “I think he served as a bridge between swing and bebop,” said saxophonist Bobby Watson. “He was open to young people coming with new ideas that weren’t traditionally thought of as swing. He was really a man with an open mind to all styles of music.” Watson, who had performed with McShann periodically through the years, said sharing the stage with McShann was “big fun. Just the flavor and the swing and the voicings, his blues sensibility — it’s like being in heaven. It’s like I’m touching history.” McShann also possessed a rich, honey-flavored singing voice that brought out the poetry in such standards as “Georgia” and gave authority to blues numbers, such as his own “Hootie’s Ignorant Oil.” Like his fellow Kansas City jazzman, the late Claude “Fiddler” Williams, McShann was born in Muskogee, Okla., where he taught himself to play piano by ear. It was only after years of performing and leading a nationally known band that included the young Charlie Parker that McShann decided to take lessons to read music. McShann was on his way to Omaha, Neb., when he stopped off in Kansas City in 1936 and discovered the city’s smoking jazz scene. “My bus stopped in Kansas City, and I knew the Reno Club was just a few blocks away, so I went and checked it out,” McShann said in an interview in 1998. “Bus Moten had a band. I went in, and I knew most of the cats. Bill Hadnott told me I shouldn’t leave here. He handed me his keys and said, ‘Stay at my place until you get a gig.’ I did two days later.” During that stopover he first heard boogie-woogie piano and was stunned to see pianist Pete Johnson and singer Joe Turner play entire sets consisting of one tune. “Joe would keep singing for 30 or 40 minutes straight through,” McShann once recalled. “And maybe between times he’d tell Pete to roll ’em on piano for maybe 10 minutes, then Joe would come back and sing 10 or 15 minutes. You know, they’d play one tune, and it’d last 45 to 50 minutes, and that was the set.” Musicians gravitated to the city from all parts of the country during the 1920s and ’30s, attracted by the jobs created by the proliferation of gambling joints, dance halls and ballrooms. McShann said it paid for a musician to learn many styles. “If you wanted to learn, you could learn,” he said. “If you played a gambler’s tune, that was a money tune. … This was a hustlin’ town. Everything’s a hustle. That was another thing that made musicians keep up. They had to learn a lot of tunes because it meant money.” Although jazz in Kansas City long teetered along the racial divide, McShann helped bridge the gap in the late 1930s when his seven-piece band played extended gigs at Martin’s Cafeteria and Plaza Tavern, also known as Martin’s-on-the-Plaza. McShann’s group was one of the first African-American bands to play on the Country Club Plaza. The club had a cafeteria in back that doubled as a little dance pavilion. “We played soft music from 8 to 10 o’clock,” McShann’s bassist Gene Ramey once recounted. “Then the waiters moved the chairs and tables in the restaurant, and we played dance music.” McShann, backed by a wealthy Kansas City insurance man named Walter Bales, formed a big band in 1939. Among the players was the young saxophonist Charlie Parker, who was with the band when it cut its first records in Dallas in 1941. Thanks to a record producer who insisted that the band record only blues and boogie-woogie, McShann’s band became known principally as a blues band. In fact, the band had arrangements that prefigured the modern strain of jazz that would become known as bebop. Yet those sessions established McShann nationally because one cut, “Confessin’ the Blues,” became a hit. Many of the band’s tunes were “head” arrangements that existed only in the band’s collective memory. Others were written, although McShann played simply by consulting chords jotted down on paper. In 1944, McShann’s big-band career came to an abrupt halt when Selective Service agents literally drafted him off the stage of Municipal Auditorium. After World War II, McShann put together another big band, but the business had changed. A big touring band was too expensive, and McShann had to settle for playing in small groups. After a stint in California, McShann settled in Kansas City permanently in the early ’50s. Although he was never forced to take a day job, he once ran a trash-hauling service and owned a limousine that he rented out. “Jay never got the economic rewards commensurate with his talent,” said friend and filmmaker Bruce Ricker. “But other musicians certainly knew and respected him — Wynton Marsalis, Dave Brubeck, people like that.” In the ’60s, McShann began touring as a solo act and frequently performed with small groups, setting the pattern for the rest of his professional life. “Jay had this inner strength, leadership strength,” said Ricker, who more than 30 years ago used McShann as the central character in “The Last of the Blue Devils,” his documentary about Kansas City jazz. “He was the last important band leader coming out of Kansas City in the ’40s, a guy able to understand Charlie Parker’s genius. He was absolutely at home with the blues, but he also had the sophistication of an Oscar Peterson, a fast mind hidden behind a very deliberate, calm exterior. That was exemplified by the way he played the piano. He was always thinking through his fingers.” In his later years McShann rarely played in Kansas City, mainly because he was in such demand around the world. He toured extensively from the 1970s to the ’90s, often in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. When he did perform locally, jazz fans viewed it as a major event. He played the Kansas City Jazz and Blues Festival in 1992, the Kansas City International Jazz Festival in 1996; and in 2003 played the Folly Theater, the Kansas City Spirit Festival and the second annual Coda Jazz Fund concert. In 2005 McShann opened the Folly Jazz Series at the Folly Theater. McShann recorded scores of albums for various labels, from Decca in the ’40s to the Canadian roots label Stony Plain in recent years. Many of his early recordings have been anthologized and repackaged. He was nominated for Grammys (but didn’t win) in 1992 and 2004. In 1988 McShann’s music was introduced anew to dance audiences when choreographer Alvin Ailey created “Opus McShann,” a series of dance pieces set to some of McShann’s recordings. The 30-minute ballet was commissioned by the Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey and received its world premiere at the Folly Theater. In addition to appearing in “The Last of the Blue Devils” (1980), which captured a reunion of old-time Kansas City musicians at the Mutual Musicians Foundation at 1823 Highland Ave., McShann was the subject of another film, “Hootie Blues.” He was one of many noted jazz figures interviewed for “Jazz,” the Ken Burns documentary miniseries for PBS. And McShann was featured in “Piano Blues,” a 2003 documentary directed by Clint Eastwood that was part of another PBS series called “The Blues.” McShann, through his popularity in the world jazz community, kept the legend of Kansas City jazz alive. But McShann put little stock in labels and saw music in philosophical terms. “Music is music,” he once said. “Music is just like a big river, and it’s got a lot of tributaries. When the river gets too full, it empties into the gulf, and when the gulf gets too full it empties into the ocean. “It’s all music.” McShann is survived by three daughters, Linda McShann Gerber, Jayne McShann Lewis and Pamela McShann, and his longtime companion and manager Thelma Adams, known to many as Marianne McShann. The Star’s Robert W. Butler, John Mark Eberhart and Steve Paul contributed to this report.
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