Tom in RI

The most constructive thing in this thread, for me, was Sangery's link to Howard Wiley (although I find it a little amusing that he works in Lavay Smith's band who I enjoy personally but who would probably be excoriated for being too derivative here). Allen Lowe, nice Pres reference at the top of this page. Clementine, do you talk to people that way in person, if so, you must get into a lot of beefs.

Here's a quote from Preston Hubbard's website which speaks a bit to the nature of Hamilton Bates and the Blue Flames, there's also a picture of the band there, When I graduated high school, I worked in a warehouse to save money for RISD, where I had been accepted on partial scholarship and would later attend for two years with Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz, from the then not-yet-formed Talking Heads. I started the Blue Flames, a quartet, with my high school friend Scott Hamilton, who has gone on, after taking New York by storm, to be an international jazz star and Concord Jazz label's biggest selling artist. We began as an R&B band, but over a five year period metamorphosed into a straight up mainstream jazz band. Standards and ballads. We turned our backs on rock music, cut our hair off (it was not a fashionable thing to do then), and became total jazz Nazis. It was all good, though, because we were focused, and I really cut my teeth on that shit and got serious about the bass, especially the upright bass. We were thrilled and honored to back Roy "Little Jazz" Eldridge for a week once, with Charlie Watts in attendance one night, and I even got to smoke weed with Roy in his hotel bathroom! I would later be lucky enough to play with many greats and idols of mine. Scott Hamilton guested on Roomful of Blues 1st lp. I saw him as part of a band backing Helen Humes in the mid 70's in Providence which I remember enjoying quite a bit. I last saw Hamilton playing with Roomful founder Duke Robillard at Chan's in Woonsocket, RI maybe 4-5 years ago. It took Scott a couple of tunes to get warmed up but it was a very enjoyable evening. I understand Larry doesn't care for Hamilton and I think his explanation why is quite articulate but I don't think its necessary to take it a step further and label his work as "wrong" just cause you don't like it.

By NATE CHINEN Published: February 21, 2008 Not quite a month ago the alto saxophonist Andrew D’Angelo had a major seizure while driving his elderly landlady to a store in Brooklyn. “I was convulsing all over the place,” he later wrote on his blog, “grabbing onto the steering wheel violently, biting my tongue and basically acting crazy.” Fortunately, the driver behind him recognized what was happening, and after quite a bit more drama — in the ambulance, Mr. D’Angelo apparently tore through the straps of his gurney and tried to strangle an emergency medical technician — he underwent testing that revealed a large tumor on his brain. Within days he was scheduled for surgery and had started writing about the experience at andrewdangelo.com. He was clear about the fact that he had no health insurance. The health of jazz, as a topic of conversation, has long inspired a lot of hand wringing among sympathetic parties. When the focus turns toward the health of jazz musicians, the discussion assumes a different, less abstract character: solicitous and supportive. Most people who play jazz for a living are accustomed to self-reliance. When that system fails, they lean on one another. “Since I’ve been on the scene, there have been benefits for musicians that were in need, unfortunately, because so many of us are,” the guitarist John Scofield said in the rear stairwell of the Village Vanguard on Monday night. Along with the tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano and the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, he was playing a benefit for the bassist Dennis Irwin, who has recently been struggling with a spinal tumor. “I’m lucky enough that I can afford health insurance,” Mr. Scofield continued, “but a lot of people can’t. On a jazz musician income they’re getting by from gig to gig, keeping the roof over their heads and feeding a family, and insurance doesn’t happen for them.” Mr. Irwin, the regular bassist with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and a seasoned sideman who has logged extensive time with Mr. Scofield and Mr. Lovano, is another uninsured musician. The sudden struggles of Mr. Irwin, 56, and Mr. D’Angelo, 41 — musicians equally beloved in different sectors of the New York jazz grid — have abruptly brought the issue of health care to the foreground within jazz circles. Their stories have resonated with musicians, who tend to absorb news of this sort with a tribal concern: jazz is a collaborative art, after all, even if its artists are the ultimate individualists. It may seem negligent that so many jazz musicians lack basic health-care coverage, but monthly fees through an organization like the Freelancers Union easily run to several hundred dollars, and these days many gigs in New York literally involve a tip jar. The Vanguard sets were a great success, financially as well as musically (it was Mr. Scofield’s first time performing with the orchestra, and he nailed it). There will be another, bigger chance to support Mr. Irwin on March 10, when Mr. Scofield and Mr. Lovano spearhead an A-list benefit concert in partnership with Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center. Proceeds will go to the Jazz Foundation of America, a nonprofit organization that provides aid to jazz and blues musicians. Mr. Irwin, speaking this week from his Manhattan home, said he had just completed radiation treatments. His ordeal began in December with a mysterious back pain. The Jazz Foundation referred him to the Dizzy Gillespie Cancer Institute and Memorial Fund at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in New Jersey, which regularly provides free treatment to jazz musicians. (Dr. Frank Forte, the institute’s director and a jazz guitarist, treated Gillespie there during the final months of his battle with pancreatic cancer in 1993.) The Jazz Foundation does considerably more than steer musicians toward services. Its mission also involves protecting musicians from eviction, malnutrition and other misfortunes. “We get 60 cases a week like this, each having its own urgency and desperation,” Wendy Oxenhorn, the executive director, said. Referring to Mr. Irwin, she added, “I’ve never seen an outpouring of so much for one musician.” If that’s true, Mr. D’Angelo runs a close second. “I knew that I was loved,” he said this week, “and I knew that this musical community was close. But I had no idea the compassion ran this deep, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.” Mr. D’Angelo is a key figure in Brooklyn’s underground jazz scene, and part of a peer group that includes the guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, the drummer Jim Black and the saxophonist and clarinetist Chris Speed. He has a strong new album, “Skadra Degis,” on Mr. Speed’s label, Skirl, with Mr. Black and the bassist Trevor Dunn. Its release party had long been scheduled to take place Friday at the Tea Lounge in Park Slope. The gig is still on, but now it will be one of more than a dozen benefits for Mr. D’Angelo, spread across the United States and Europe. Mr. Black, Mr. Speed and Mr. Dunn will perform, as will the multireedist Oscar Noriega and the drummer Matt Wilson, two more of Mr. D’Angelo’s close compatriots. A separate benefit is scheduled for next Thursday at Barbès, also in Park Slope. Mr. D’Angelo has received financial support from both the Jazz Foundation and the MusiCares Foundation, a program of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. His operation was a success in the sense that most of the tumor was removed, with no adverse effects. But further analysis revealed that he has an especially serious form of brain cancer. “The doctor said that without treatment, I will live for five years,” he wrote last Friday, after receiving the news. “Seems dismal and I’m unwilling to accept it.” He is likely to begin radiation treatment shortly, having ruled out further surgery. Apart from the dramatic nature of their stories, Mr. Irwin and Mr. D’Angelo are sadly not exceptions. A few years ago, for instance, the tenor saxophonist Michael Blake had two operations for a ruptured appendix. Having no insurance, he chose Bellevue Hospital Center for its sliding-scale fee; he also received assistance from MusiCares. He still has no insurance, though he is obviously aware of the risks. (He just spent the weekend at Bellevue watching over Scott Harding, a prolific record producer and engineer who was critically injured in a car accident last week. Mr. Harding does not have insurance either.) The situation is the same for Mr. Speed, who has spent a lot of time visiting Mr. D’Angelo in hospitals lately. “A lot of my friends, myself included, don’t have insurance, which seems really idiotic, especially now,” he said. “But it’s also very expensive to get coverage.” It should be noted, too, that even musicians with health coverage encounter serious financial needs; this is one of the major areas of concern for the Jazz Foundation. The costs associated with an illness can go well beyond the literal costs of treatment, because a musician who is not working usually translates to a musician without an income. Last October the pianist George Cables, who does have private health insurance, had simultaneous transplant operations, receiving a new liver and kidney. While the procedures were covered, he has not been able to earn a living during his recovery. So he was fortunate to have two all-star tributes presented in his honor recently, in San Francisco and New York. He received about $12,000 from each, he said. But the money wasn’t the only benefit, so to speak. “One of the best things for me was how people came together, and expressed their concern, and expressed their support by coming and playing,” he said. “That was better than anything.” Benefits for Andrew D’Angelo: Friday at the Tea Lounge, 837 Union Street, near Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 789-2762, tealoungeny.com; Feb. 28 at Barbès, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 965-9177, barbesbrooklyn.com. Benefit for Dennis Irwin: March 10 at the Allen Room, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 721-6500, jalc.org.

My favorite Leo Parker is on the Chess lp "The Late Great Baritone" which has sessions from 51-53, good sessions and better fidelity than his dates from the '40's. I don't think this has been out on cd. Back to Back Baritones on Collectables is also worth getting, it can be had for cheap, although I never listen to the Sax Gill sides.

Extra value is what you get When you play Coronet!

If you have seen Roomful of Blues in the last 27 years chances are you saw Bob Enos play. http://www.projo.com/music/content/lb-enos...16.13e1d16.html

Co-founder of Jazz Festival dies at 93 01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 By Richard Salit Journal Staff Writer The Lorillards, Louis and Elaine, and George Wein, right, in 1954. The Lorillards founded the Newport Jazz Festival and hired Wein to organize it. Journal FILE PHOTO NEWPORT — Elaine Lorillard, who has been credited with founding the Newport Jazz Festival, died Sunday at a nursing home a few miles away from the grounds where the summer festival continues to thrive more than a half-century later. She was 93. While George Wein is often considered the festival’s founder, it was Lorillard and her former husband, Louis, who hired him to run it, according to histories of the jazz series. The festival was bittersweet for Lorillard. In a 1997 interview with The Providence Journal, she complained that Wein has described himself as the founder and that, despite its ability to attract big name sponsors, “I never saw a penny from that festival.” “I am proud of what I did, but it’s brought me great unhappiness,” she said. Lorillard, who was born in Maine, died at Heatherwood Nursing & Subacute Center, not far from her longtime home on Dennison Street. She had just moved to the nursing facility recently. “She died in her sleep,” said Christine Lorillard, a daughter-in-law, who is married to Lorillard’s son, Pierre. They live in Los Angeles. Lorillard’s only other surviving child is Edith “Didi” Cowley, of Newport. Lorillard never lost her passion for jazz or ceased seeing herself in relation to the festival. “She took pride in it. She talked about it all of the time,” said Christine Lorillard. “It was one of the highlights of her life.” Her house was adorned with festival memorabilia and plaques given to her commemorating her contribution to jazz. Among them was a White House invitation from 1993 when President Bill Clinton held a jazz concert to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the festival. She also held onto a copy of the original festival charter: The only names on it are the Lorillards and three lawyers. In a book called Newport Jazz Festival: The Illustrated History, author Burt Goldblatt quoted famed music producer John Hammond as saying, “As far as I’m concerned, Elaine Lorillard should have the whole credit for the concept of the Newport Jazz Festival.” Lorillard’s husband was a descendant of the original owner of The Breakers mansion and the founder of Lorillard Tobacco Co. In Louis Lorillard’s 1986 Providence Journal obituary, Elaine Lorillard traced the festival’s origin to “when I thought of the idea and he said he would back it.” Her husband hired Wein, of Boston, and cut him a check for $20,000 for expenses. The couple left town and returned for the festival. “We were absolutely floored by it,” she said. “We thought it was going to be just a local kind of thing, and people came from all over the world.” Lorillard divorced her husband and broke from the festival, eventually suing it in 1959. But she and Wein reconciled and in 1992 the two appeared on stage together on the festival’s opening night. In 1997, she was honored at the Jubile, Franco-Americain, in Woonsocket. She served on the board of directors of the festival and pushed the organization to feature jazz during its concert. In the early years of the Newport festival, musicians would hang around her house. She always remembered sax virtuoso Gerry Mulligan sleeping on her lawn during the festival. But it was the music as much as the players that she long revered. “She had an original collection of albums that she gave to us that she prized,” said Christine Lorillard. “And she was passing that on as a legacy to her son.” She said that the family will have a private memorial service at an undetermined date. rsalit@projo.com

Scotty Moore John Ore Les Paul

Jimmy and Doug Raney play Stolen Moments on a Steeplechase release of the same name.

As to times on lps, the longest at the time of its release was a Todd Rundgren lp that, if memory serves, had sides of 38 and 37 minutes. A jazz release that stands out in this regard is the Milt Jackson reissue on Savoy, Second Nature, with 4 sides over 25 minutes each.

I am not sure I follow this, are you saying its best to buy from the ignorant? I have mixed emotions if that's the case as my heirs will, in all likelihood, be disposing of my music. While no one will get rich from my collection I wouldn't want my children taken advantage of. I am curious as to what arrangements people have made for disposing of their records and cd's. If I were to die shortly my wife knows who to call to get a reasonable amount for my stuff. However, he's older than I am and I expect that I will need to get a Plan B at some point. I like to think that my kids would keep a few of my lp's but neither shows any interest in the format (at least my son tolerates jazz and blues well, though).

I imagine that's the Chris Byars from the Small's label: http://www.smallsrecords.com/art-byars.htm

I have only recently (in the last few years) started listening to Brazillian music, primarily through Adventure Music releases. This week I picked up the Joyce disc Astronauta, her tribute to Elis. Great stuff with Rene Rosnes and Mugrew Miller guesting on a few cuts (Joe Lovano, too). Are any of the Elis discs mentioned similar to this one?

I have the film on VHS, it can be a little arty in spots. There is not much in the way of Wardell in action, one clip is repeated quite a bit in the film. However, there is a lot of oral history and I am glad I bought it for that reason.

Billy Harper's Destiny is Yours, which was the 1st disc with Harper as leader that I picked up on.

Email sent.

I was in Boston a few weeks ago with my wife and daughter daughter picking up a cello for my daughter at Rayburn Music (it could be so much worse, it could have been a trumpet, or even worse, drums). While there I heard a guy helping a clarinet player adjust his instrument, it was Emilio Lyons.

Someone should grab the Edwards/Person disc, Horn to Horn. A very nice session and generally listed online for more than $11.

If you like the Tab Smith's you will probably also like the Paul Bascomb, United Sessions. I'd also like to second Ken's (KH1958) recommendation for Robert Ward's New Role Soul. I also would like to recommend blues guitarist Dave Specter's Speculatin', Blues Spoken Here, and last year's Dave Spector and Steve Freund release, Is What It Is. Funny, even though I am a big Ronnie Earl fan, I didn't care for Specter's release with Earl.

I love the session with King Curtis, Oliver Nelson and Jimmy Forrest together.

JAZZ Greatness that's hard to find Charles Gayle's trio recorded one of the best CDs of 2006. So where is it? By Steve Greenlee, Globe Staff | April 8, 2007 Six seconds of drum roll, a saxophone's shriek, a fast-thumping bass, and the trio is off. Charles Gayle is blowing mad phrases out of his little white alto saxophone, Gerald Benson is walking up and down the neck of his bass, and Michael Wimberly is letting loose on his kit at breakneck speed. Someone is moaning along with the notes. There's just the hint of melody, but the music invigorates and lifts the soul. This is "Cherokee" like you've never heard it -- 5 minutes and 47 seconds of tension, anguish, and adrenaline. Before the hour is up, the trio will have turned the lovely standard "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise" into 14 minutes of free jazz, ruminated beautifully on the old standby "What's New," conjured a hurricane out of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps," brought out a few of Gayle's own fire-and-brimstone compositions, and ended it all with Albert Ayler's "Ghosts," as if to remind us who the group's forebears are. "It was cold that night," Gayle recalls in a phone interview from his home in New York. "People came in early to eat dinner. I thought, 'Maybe these people are here to eat dinner and they'll leave.' But nobody left. I had my special white saxophone, and I took it out, and it was magic. There was something in the air that night. The people, they were enthusiastic before we even got into it. We played whatever we played, and they just went crazy." The date was Feb. 12, 2006. The place was a tiny jazz club in Stockholm. The concert was recorded, and the result is the Charles Gayle Trio's "Live at Glenn Miller Café," released last June on the Swedish label Ayler Records. It may have been the best jazz record of 2006, and most of us missed it. Finding it is nearly impossible. Good luck searching Borders or Amazon.com. Gayle, 68, has been a significant figure in jazz only since the late 1980s. His music is fiery and wholly improvisation based, the stark cries of his sax invoke Ayler and Coltrane, and his message can be overtly religious. He mostly performs his own works -- songs with titles like "O Father," "Repent," and "Jesus Christ and Scripture" -- and he's been known to go on 45-minute improvisations. He's been homeless at times, and he occasionally performs in grease paint, under the name Streets the Clown. His tenor sax has been recorded prolifically, but he recently switched to a softer alto, and he is also an interesting pianist. His 1991 album, "Touchin' on Trane," is considered an essential document of free jazz. Yet most people -- even many jazz fans -- have never heard of him. His style of music can be an acquired taste, harsh on the ears. He's not heard on jazz radio, and he's recorded only for out-of-the-mainstream labels such as FMP, Black Saint, Silkheart, and Knitting Factory Works. Few stores stock such labels, and even many of the bigger Web-based outlets fail to carry them, so aficionados are left to scour obscure jazz websites and online auctions. To understand why it is all but impossible to get your hands on what may be the best jazz record of last year, it helps to know a little about the economics behind such CDs. And the economics are this simple: A disc like Gayle's would sell maybe a copy or two in any given city. So why in the world would a record store -- especially a chain like Barnes & Noble or FYE -- bother to carry it? "The chain stores basically are pushing numbers. They're run by computers that tell them what to order and how many to buy," says Bob Rusch , CEO of North Country Distributors, which handles 1,300 independent labels, including Ayler Records and the "Live at Glenn Miller Café" disc. "We're basically a distributor that specializes in unpopular music that most stores will not handle. There is a market out there, but it's diffuse." Jan Ström , the head of Ayler Records, said he presses anywhere from 100 to 3,000 copies of each album he produces. The trick is getting them to stores where they might sell -- places like Downtown Music Gallery in New York, whose Web store is a haven for fans of outsider jazz. "Every year I go around to the record shops in what they call the home of jazz -- New York -- and I have great difficulty finding any of my CDs there," Ström says. "You have all these young people who become purchasing managers, and they hardly know who John Coltrane is, so how can you expect them to buy one of your CDs by Henry Grimes or Charles Gayle?" This may sound discouraging, but some people think the jazz business is ahead of pop and rock in this regard. Digital downloading is rocking the industry, and music blogs are giving wide exposure to indie bands and labels. It could be a return to the past, when all labels were independents trying to make a small profit selling a few records. "The ability to make a couple of million dollars off of a single recording artist is long gone," says Phil Freeman , author of the free-jazz guide "New York Is Now." "Big record companies have to learn to adjust their expectations. The indie labels came into the marketplace with their expectations already adjusted." A label like Ayler Records knows it's going to sell only 1,000 copies of a particular CD, so it makes only 1,000 copies. None of this does anything to help a gifted musician like Gayle, whose music -- especially his stunning recording from the Glenn Miller Café -- deserves a wider audience. But he gets it. He understands that the music he has chosen to make will never make him wealthy, and he sympathizes with the people who put out his records. The small labels put all their money into recording and producing a CD, he points out, leaving nothing for advertising and marketing. It is almost as though they assume the people who enjoy this music will seek it out and find it. For Gayle, that seems to be reward enough. "I'm amazed people even listen to me," he says. Steve Greenlee can be reached at greenlee@globe.com.

Sax, bass duo, Ron Carter and Houston Person.

Regardng the Quebec Hardee set, I seem to remember a comment from Stereo Jack about this set that there were more lp sets than cd sets made. If memory serves, it was one of the first Mosaic sets to be available in cd. It may have already been issued in lp when Mosaic started issuing cd sets (I can't remember). edit, maybe it was Kevin Bresnahan http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...c=12676&hl=

Front page article examining the relationship between Patrick and his son, the governor of Massachusetts. Boston.com THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING The Boston Globe Patrick shaped by father's absence By Sally Jacobs, Globe Staff | March 25, 2007 It was supposed to be Deval Patrick's day of triumph. He was 18 years old and his family was gathered in the crowded Milton Academy gymnasium on a rainy summer morning in 1974 to watch him graduate. Suddenly, his father, who had largely abandoned the family 15 years earlier and had seen his son rarely, showed up unexpectedly. Deval was not happy to see him. Patrick's family -- his mother, grandparents, and sister -- sat though the ceremony rigid with tension, angrily eyeing Pat Patrick at the end of the row. And then as they all drove in his grandfather's Buick toward a restaurant to celebrate, his parents began to fight. They screamed at each other, and curses flew. Patrick senior, an emotional man who had opposed his son's attending the elite private school, broke into tears. Through it all, Deval sat quietly in the front seat. When the car stopped at a light he got out, slammed the door, and stamped back to his dorm. "It was a disaster," the governor recalled in an interview in his State House office. "I am thinking, this is supposed to be my day. . . . I just bailed." Over the course of a career that would take him from Milton to the governor's office, Deval Patrick has said little about his father. Nor has he been asked much about him. It has been a very private corner of a most public life. But in fact, he had a complex relationship with his father, one that would ebb and flow over the years, ultimately shaping in part the man Deval Patrick is today. As a child, he knew his father largely by his eloquent absence. Laurdine "Pat" Patrick, a gifted baritone saxophone player who traveled the world with the legendary Sun Ra Arkestra and a host of jazz greats, was often on the road. As he grew into adulthood, Deval would confront and ultimately come to know the passionate, often mischievous man who was his father. By the time Pat Patrick died of leukemia in 1991, the two men had found a certain peace. Deval's experience of his father, as he sees it, motivated him "to be a better man than in some ways I think my father was as a father and as a person in relationship to his wife." But some family members speak of something more than that: They believe it galvanized him and taught him to rely, from a very early age, on his own judgment and ability. And it all began, in a way, when he chose to attend Milton Academy despite his father's stern opposition to a school so identified, in his mind, with the white power structure. "If anything about my father helped shape the man who Deval is now maybe it is that he was rebelling against his father in doing what he has done with his life," said Rhonda Sigh, the governor's older sister. "I think everything he has done since then has been a way of saying: "I don't need your approval. I can do this on my own.' " His parents' marriage ends, and the family struggles on The end came with a phone call. It was 1959 on the South Side of Chicago and Emily Patrick, Deval's mother, answered the telephone. A woman on the other end was asking for her husband, Pat. Emily did not recognize the caller. "He's not here," Emily said, as Deval recounts it. "Can I take a message?" The message was this: "Tell him our baby needs shoes." When Pat Patrick returned to his furious wife that evening, the marriage was over. Pat left home that night. He would not see Deval and Rhonda, then ages 4 and 5 respectively, for more than a year. Emily struggled to make it on her own, working at a dry cleaners and taking welfare for a while, before moving into a two-bedroom apartment with her parents. She and the children shared a set of bunk beds in one room. Not having a father around was hard for them all, but hardly unique in the neighborhood. "There were a number of other families who were headed by women, like ours, so the model was not unfamiliar," recalled Deval. Emily's anger at her husband simmered for years, but she went out of her way to cultivate a relationship between her children and their father. She encouraged them to write him letters. When he passed through town on a gig or to visit his mother once or twice a year, little Deval and Rhonda were dressed and ready for an outing. And every now and then, at Pat's urging, she dropped them off to play at the home of their half sister, La'Shon Anthony, who lived with her maternal grandparents in Chicago. "I knew their mother knew about my mother," said Anthony, 47, a self-employed consultant in Chicago. "But whether the two of them ever saw each other face to face I don't know. It was not my place to ask." Pat , meanwhile, moved to New York to pursue his passion. Music, he once told his sister is: "My life. My drug. My habit." The son of a trumpet player and a native of East Moline, Ill., Pat played not only the baritone and alto saxophone, but was also skilled at the flute and clarinet. Famous for the astonishingly deep resonance of his sax sound, he was also valued for his compositions. In the early 1950s he was much sought after on the burgeoning Chicago music scene, and he played with many of the big names, including Sammy Davis Jr. and Eartha Kitt. And in the mid-1950s, he signed on with an eclectic African-American group that came to be known as Sun Ra Arkestra. At its helm was an eccentric pianist known as Sun Ra, who claimed he was a missionary from outer space come to save the human race. Their music evolved over the years from cosmic jazz arrangements to a radical, electrifying sound characterized by exotic instrumental combinations and pioneering musical technology. Often the performances were accompanied by a spectacle that even the audiences of the 1960s found far out. There were Egyptian robes and headdresses, models of the solar system, fire eaters, and smoke. Often, the musicians would crawl through the audience chanting. Although he would come and go over the years, as the group became increasingly popular, Pat remained one of its principal players throughout his life. "Here is someone who is definitely different," Pat said of Sun Ra in a 1987 interview with WKCR radio in New York. "He's beyond category in a lot of ways." A slender man with an impish grin, Pat was known as much for his good nature as for his musicianship. He was, as John Corbett, a Chicago-based jazz writer, described him, "a spectacular baritone sax player . . . an invaluable soloist." In the 1960s he played briefly with Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, and served as musical director for Mongo Santamaria, the legendary Cuban drummer. In the 1970s, he traveled with several Broadway shows around the country. An accomplished arranger, Pat wrote more than half a dozen songs, including a fast-paced bebop tune he coauthored called "Yeh, Yeh," which was released in 1963 on Santamaria's album Watermelon Man and became a huge hit. It was ultimately featured in commercials for such giants as Chrysler and AT&T. "Pat could have had his own band. He was not shy, but he liked to stay in the background," said Danny Ray Thompson, who continues to play sax with the Arkestra. "Pat worked all the time. If you called Pat, Pat was on the job. You didn't have to worry about him coming in drunk." In 1970, jazz pianist Thelonius Monk tapped Pat to fill in on tenor sax one night at the Village Vanguard. For Pat, who wound up playing with Monk for five months, it was one of the high points of his career. That first night, Terry Adams, one of the founders of the rock band NRBQ, with which Pat also played periodically in the 1980s, was in the audience. "At one point Monk played something new, which completely threw everyone off," Adams recalled. "But Pat got it just like that. Didn't even have to turn the horn." Pat was also a sports fanatic, recording baseball and football scores, as well as playing card debts and musical tidbits in a small book called "Pat's Stats." Once, while playing with the musical "Bubbling Brown Sugar" in 1976, he was admonished by the band's director who found his lead sax player in the pit listening through earplugs to a baseball game on television out of one ear and another on the radio in the other ear at the same time he was playing. "Never missed a cue!" Deval said, recalling the story. Sun Ra demanded an unwavering commitment from his musicians. Members of the Arkestra, which ranged from half a dozen to 30, were forbidden to do drugs and discouraged from drinking and even having girlfriends. In the 1960s, the main players, including Pat , lived in a house in the East Village known as the Sun Palace. In 1968, they moved to a tired Philadelphia row house where Sun Ra dished out directives along with steaming bowls of his vegetarian "Moon Stew." Rehearsals in the cramped living room were relentless and sometimes began before dawn. Pat greatly admired Sun Ra's discipline and cosmic Afrocentric philosophy. "I just feel very fortunate to have been able to be around him, as tough as it's been," Pat said in the radio interview. "He has given me a knowledge and understanding of my roots and who I am." Like Pat, several other band members had children back home whom they saw infrequently. "All of us who stayed with Sun Ra had a long distance from our kids," explained Marshall Allen, 82, a sax player and director of the Arkestra since Sun Ra died in 1993. "It's a musician's life." Gap widens as years pass and their ambitions grow To young Deval and Rhonda, living in a tenement on the South Side of Chicago, their father was an ephemeral figure. The first vivid memory that either one of them have of the man they called Pat, is visiting him in the summer of 1964 when he performed at the World's Fair in New York. Each day, Deval and Rhonda, then 8 and 9 respectively, would wander the Africa Pavilion where the Arkestra was playing. "We were in awe of the Watusi dancers," recalled Rhonda, 51, who is a hair stylist. "Over the summer we learned all of their dances. In the end they wanted to put us in grass skirts and put us in the show, but we were too shy." Deval does not recall a great deal about his father before that summer. What he does remember is that Pat "was cooler than I. He was hip. Being a musician was a cool thing." And he remembers how awkward he felt when his father dropped by for a visit. "I remember how much tension was created because my mother was still working all that out," said Deval. "It was enormously uncomfortable." They saw him rarely: a brief visit when he was passing through town, a week or more in the summer. Once, when a snowstorm stranded the band in Chicago unexpectedly, Pat took his young son to meet Ernie Banks, the Chicago Cubs' first black player, who was Thompson's uncle. In the 1970s, he took Rhonda on tour in Europe with the band for the summer. When he was flush, Pat would send the children some money. One month it was $50. Another time if was $100. Then a year would go by and there was nothing from Pat, who sometimes supplemented his income by chauffeuring a limousine. Nor did the children hear their father perform much when they were little. Although they came to appreciate his huge talent, neither thought much of the Arkestra at the time. "I was a Motown kid like everyone else," said Deval. "I never acquired a taste for Sun Ra, with all due respect." Only 11 months apart, Rhonda and Deval had distinctly different relationships with their father. Of all three children, Rhonda was the closest to Pat. Rhonda describes herself as "more patient with my dad. I let him in more than my brother did. Deval had a much closer bond with our mother. . . . Deval was heavy burdened about the fact that our father was not there for us." So, too, Rhonda has had a closer relationship with their half sister and still communicates with her regularly. The three siblings talk on holidays and exchange e-mails. But visits are rare. When Anthony went to a Patrick fund-raiser in Chicago last year, she had not seen her half brother in more than 15 years. She was invited to his inauguration but couldn't make it. Deval acknowledges that he was angry about his father's absence. "But you save the place for a parent who is gone or who disappoints you," he explained. "You feel the absence, but you save the place. I think what you are doing is constantly re-evaluating or sorting that out, helping you to understand." It is a process that some close to him feel continues to this day. "I think Deval found it hard to understand his father's choices or to respect them," said his wife, Diane. "He felt his mom had been left to take care of the kids and worry about it on her own. . . . I am not sure he has gotten fully through that, frankly." One way he did communicate with his father was by letter. Pat, a notorious packrat, kept the many letters they exchanged and they sit now in the attic of the governor's Milton home. He also has his father's saxophone, flute, and piccolo. The letters are a part of their relationship he wants to keep private, and he declined to let a reporter see them. By the time he was 13, Deval was awarded a scholarship to Milton Academy. Pat was not happy about it. He refused to sign the application, according to Rhonda. "He thought [Deval] would lose his African-American identity," she said. Pat took pride in the color of his skin and a layered lineage that included Native American and African-American blood. His paternal grandfather was a white Irishman, according to Pat's half sister, Sheila Miles-Love of Silvas, Ill. Asked whether he knew of this, the governor responded by e-mail: "No idea." Even after Deval arrived at Milton Academy in 1970, his father continued to object. "I would say, 'Gosh, I just met this person whose father is ambassador to Mali and they go in the summer to this other house they have.' To me, this is fascinating. They have this whole other world," the governor recalled. "But just in describing it to him, he was immediately full of value judgments. 'That's just the Man. You don't want to be part of the Man. Those people don't want you or like you, and you need to be conscious of that and protect yourself.' " Pat visited his son at Milton a few times, but their different feelings about the school loomed large between them. Once, Deval went to Harlem to hear his father play, but he found the music painfully loud and said so. "My father was so disappointed that he thought I was so disapproving," he recalled. "That was the stage we were in. I thought he was disapproving of me, he thought I was disapproving of him. Those were our Milton years." By the time he was a senior, Deval had found other father figures. One was his maternal grandfather, a janitor in Chicago. Another was Guthrie Speers, a retired minister and the father of one of his closest friends at school. At the time he graduated, he had not seen his father in more than a year. He certainly did not expect him to show up. "I would not say I wanted my father to be there," he said. "My mother and grandparents and sister are over the moon about my graduating and here he comes, and there is this pall that is put on the whole thing. So, sure, I think I blamed him." Long road to reconciliation started in New York City Deval went on to attend Harvard University and saw little of his father for several years. If it was difficult for Deval, it was also hard for Pat. "My brother was very hurt about not having his children with him," Sheila Miles-Love said . As his children grew older, Pat began to try to explain his long absences. Often he would cry. "My father wept so much," Rhonda said . "Every time we got together it was like: 'I really wanted to be there for you. I really tried. And I am really just sorry.' As we got older we tried -- I know I tried -- to say: 'Let it go. It's alright. We have forgiven you.' " For his son, forgiveness came harder. After he graduated from Harvard in 1978 -- Pat did not attend the ceremony -- Deval moved to New York for the summer to work in a bank training program. When the rooming situation he had arranged fell through, he moved in, somewhat apprehensively, with his father for the summer. It was the longest time they had spent together since Pat left home. They talked. A lot. "We covered a lot of ground," said the governor, laughing hard. "We had a lot of unfinished conversations that summer, and not all of them in a civil tone of voice. But they were important conversations for us to have had. What the relationship was or wasn't between him and my mother. His issues about my being at Milton. All that stuff." Although progress had been made, a silence yawned between the two men. As Deval was consumed by law school and a judicial clerkship in Los Angeles, his father was often on the road. At times, Deval had no idea where he was. In 1983, Deval and his bride-to-be, Diane, moved to New York. One day, he saw in the newspaper that his father was playing at a small club in town. Although he had not seen his father for a long period, he suggested that they go. It was time, he said, for Diane to meet Pat. Diane agreed instantly, but she knew her fiancé was anxious. "Deval was, frankly, worried whether his father wouldn't respect him," said Diane. "Did Deval turn into the person that his father feared he would turn into? He didn't. . . . But Deval's father wasn't around to know that." That night, they slipped into the club where Pat was performing with two other musicians. Within minutes, Pat caught sight of them in the audience. He stopped dead in the middle of the piece. He laid down his instrument, strode into the audience, and threw his arms around his son. And then he put his arms around Diane. The couple stayed the rest of the night. "Deval's relationship with his father changed right then and there," declared Diane. "We got him caught up in about fifteen minutes and we vowed to stay in touch." They did. Pat helped them set up their new home in Brooklyn. When he wasn't traveling, he would sometimes stay with them. But the slowly blossoming relationship had its wrinkles. In 1984, Diane and Deval were married in their home. Diane had planned on a reception with lots of dancing. She had a special dance tape made and cleared all the furniture out of the second floor. But just as the party was getting going, Pat arrived with a local band in tow and announced his surprise wedding gift: his music. The band began to play. Then Diane's father, John Bemus, took the microphone and began to belt out some Frank Sinatra tunes. Diane, her dance tape idle on the shelf, sighed. "Our fathers became the entertainment so there was no dancing," said Diane. "I was not very pleased. But Deval thought it was great." One year later, the couple were expecting their first child. Pat was thrilled. Every day he called to check in. The one day he did not call, Sarah Patrick was born. Deval called his father, who at the time was driving a limousine in the city, but could not reach him. Later that day, Deval hurried out of the hospital to get some food for his wife and a small rattle for his new daughter. As he was crossing Park Avenue, his arms filled with packages, he heard a loud honking. He looked up to see his father, a chauffeur's cap on his head, waving beside a gray stretch limousine. He told Pat the baby had been born. "He said, 'Come on, come on," the governor recalled. "And he drove me to the hospital and we pulled up in this long limousine. He told me to sit in the back. It was hilarious." Pat had six more years to live. Although he spent his last year at his mother's home in Illinois, he came to know his children better. And he talked about his son to his friends. Once when Adams, the NRBQ keyboard player, had some legal issues, Pat suggested he call Deval. "He told me his son was a top lawyer," said Adams. "Then he said, 'You know, my son is going to be big one day, really big.' "He made a real point of it." Pat Patrick died on the last day of December in 1991 at age 62. At his service in East Moline, all three of his children were present. Deval was one of the last people to speak. 'If my dad was here, I know he would be very proud of me' Early in 2006, 15 years after Pat Patrick died, David Hirshland, the president of Bug Music, which collects the royalties to the song "Yeh, Yeh," realized that $45,000 was owed to Patrick's estate. Who should it go to? He called Terry Adams who called Danny Ray Thompson. There was a boy, they recalled. A lawyer somewhere. But what was his name? Thompson got on the computer and Googled lawyers named Patrick. And up popped a website for the gubernatorial candidate, Deval Patrick. "I said, 'WHOA!,' " exclaimed Thompson. "Pat's boy is running for governor!" The day after Deval was elected, Thompson called and left a message congratulating him on behalf of the Sun Ra Arkestra. Deval he says, called him back and left a message. He said: "Thank you for keeping the memory of my father alive. If my dad was here I know he would be very proud of me." Sally Jacobs can be reached at jacobs@globe.com. © Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Here's a link to a story about a musician in similar circumstances who opted for implants. Meant to post it last week. http://www.projo.com/music/content/Dickie_...HL.2d0fbc0.html