My post count shows I come here infrequently, but since Bill was one of my closest friends I needed to resurface. I was Deke Thornton on Jazzcorner and Huck Hausmaus on the AAJ board; Bill got me involved with those in the early 200s, and I had goofy fun contributing to the collaborative stories, some of which he started.
Bill and I met in Fall ‘75 when we worked at the University Square Four theaters in Madison, Wisconsin. We started socializing after a little while, and started talking about music. He was a rocker then; I was listening to some jazz. By the end of that school year he’d begun to navigate the jazz waters, and it didn’t take him long to eclipse me in his interests and knowledge. At a desultory party in the apartment I shared with two other people he tried to persuade me to give up trying to invigorate the partygoers with Motown and instead put on Cecil Taylor’s Silent Tongues.
He often cited the Ann Arbor Festival of September 1978 as one of his greatest concertgoing experiences. He’s left Wisconsin to attend Michigan law school, and I, along with two other guys from Madison, made the trip and joined him. It was a fantastic lineup: Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Max Roach, Mary Lou Williams, Stan Getz, the Messengers with a young Bobby Watson, many more including his beloved Sun Ra (the first time any of us had seen the Arkestra).
We saw much more jazz over the next few years, in Wisconsin, in Ann Arbor, a few times in Chicago. He stayed with me and my family a couple of times in DC, where we caught some music, and I spent one night in his family home in Northern Wisconsin, where there was no music that appealed to us at the time.
The last time I saw him was Summer 1995, when he visited DC with his wife and son. His free time was limited but we managed to spend part of a night at the One Step Down - conveniently close to their hotel. We remained in contact, though - he was second to none as a correspondent. Even after he went to the hospital he texted me that he’d quit spotify because of Joe Rogan’s b.s. and transferred his (9,580 songs!) to Apple. When the texts stopped coming I learned he’d been put on a ventilator and sedated.
I miss him a lot.
_forumlogo.png.a607ef20a6e0c299ab2aa6443aa1f32e.png)
