Pete C

Freddie Hubbard John Fred Hugh Hefner

Henny Youngman Gary Oldman The Ancient Mariner

Harold Z Zorro Zora Neale Hurston

Hey Joel, did you ever meed Jimmy Smith?

Piney Brown Pliny the Elder Joycelyn Elders

Leo Parker Leon Parker Leonard Parker

Dylan will be performing near my neighborhood, at the new Barclay's Center, the night before Thanksgiving. I'd-a gone, but I'm flying down to Rio that night.

I love the range of Cherry's projects--and for collectors of unissued concerts that range is even more evident. Art Deco is a great album, and definitely the most straight-ahead. Sheila Jordan has had the title tune in her repertoire for years, with her own lyrics. One of the biggest disappointments is the album with Trane, a weak link for both of them. Does anybody know if it was originally planned with Cherry as leader, or was it indeed co-led, as released some years after it was recorded and put in the can?

Glad to hear The Quest is officially available these days. I didn't know it had ever made it into the digital age.

King David Goliath Gumby

Joel, you know exactly what I was getting at. I do, however, indulge in logorrhea on occasion: http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_23.html?page=14 And here's a little piece about my relationship with Beckett's work: http://sixsentences.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-style.html

I did a graduate degree in creative writing, but my only real writing teachers were the writers I learned from by reading, especially Pinter, Beckett and Gertrude Stein as a young adult. I also learned a lot about writing from the music of Thelonious Monk and Anton Webern and the paintings of Barnett Newman and Mondrian. I think this piece of mine, from 1980, part of a series, is an illustration of the above. http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/113.html This was the first piece I wrote for a series called Bagatelles, which started as an attempt to come up with a "geometric" literary style inspired by Mondrian, and named after Webern's Six Bagatelles for String Quartet. It was a breakthrough for me as a young writer.

In the best of all possible worlds we're all teachers. I'm a great fan of the social theorist Ivan Illich.

In the U.S. we pretty much use the terms "grammar school," "elementary school," and "primary school," interchangeably to refer to grades 1 through 5 or 6. We don't have the same distinctions as Europe or even Canada. I take it you lived in Ethiopia at some point? Or was it Washington, D.C.?

Super Chikan T-Model Ford R.L. Burnside

I think we say "I studied dead languages." I don't know if we have a term, actually. We normally just use classically trained for musicians. I had this very histrionic and entertaining theatre history professor, Benito Ortolani, an Italian who was a specialist in Japanese theatre as well as classical theatre. A student once asked him, "Professor Ortolani, how many languages do you know?" He replied, "Seven living-a ones and two dead-a ones."

Johnny Mercer Mercer Ellington Duke Snider

Carpe Diem. Wasn't he the leader of Vietnam at some point?

Richard Alpert Herb Alpert Peaches

I don't know why, but we definately do. I've learned to accept Miles' '80s music on its own terms, and nobody could say that within those terms it wasn't well executed by some pretty heavy musicians. But that won't make me choose, say, Amandla over On the Corner in most situations.

Karl Rove Dick Cheney George W. Bush

Nick Danger Porgy Tirebiter Mudhead

I just saw Porter do a talk on Don Byas at the Detroit festival, and the guy who introduced him said the book was coming out next year. That's been quite a wait... ... ...

Ramon Novarro Fatty Arbuckle Kenneth Anger