Jazz Memories

“ The double album, "Jazz Memories" really is a perfect introduction to the Ultimate Jazz Experience. "Jazz Memories" is an extraordinary compilation of works from all the great jazz the masters including jazz divas Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, with jazz legends "Satchmo" Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington, to name a few. "Jazz Memories" is yet another Amie Street solid gold sleeper. These are all clean tracks of major hits—not muddied side B recordings. Blue Monk is my fave, and Art Tatum's Willow is a close second. No, make it Firenzie...aww, just buy the whole album. OOPS! For the record: I RECd the wrong song in that Lennie Tristano was on track 29/13, "Judy," not 28/12, "St. Thomas" by Sunny Rollin. Maybe my mind was on the tropical sun (for it's raining today). The only excuse I can give is that I'm dyslexic and distracted by problems downloading the album... Then I found I'd RECd the wrong song! They're both great songs. Tristano's " Judy" is downtempo with some lovely ivory trillings (New York in the snow?) while Sonny Rollin's mellifluous sax in his famous calypso, "St. Thomas," is steamily tropical. But now I gotta make amends and REC the right song, "Judy" (for Lennie Tristano's vocalist Judy Niemack?) My story remains the same: In the late '50s, I went to Lagunitas School out in the wilds of West Marin with Lennie Tristano's son, Steve, who, during recess, played us "Tea for Two" and the rockingist "Boogie Woogie" you ever heard, by heart. The ivories trilled. Steve pounded it down. The ebonies remembered their tropical homeland. We could literally see the cenozoic dust motes rising up and in the sun from the top of that old blond upright piano that never played anything racier than "America the Beautiful." Eight year old Steve, the piano prodigy, was standing on the piano bench hammering out a progression of locked hand chords by ear before Elton John knew there was an Elvis and we were all dancing and rocking out like American Bandstand. When the recess bell rang, our 2nd grade teacher, the matronly Miss Burge opened the classroom door and had a fit of absolute and anacreontic apoplexy replete with vibrato shriek (she was the school music teacher). But the damage was done. We were Boogie Woogied by the blind piano man's son, Steve. Sadly, Miss Burge did NOT see Steve's obvious inherited talent. I remember meeting the blind piano man. I thought you had to be blind to play the piano as Scott Weaver's older brother, the Valley piano tuner, was also blind. but Steve had eyes to see with. Fine eyes, his father's brow. We lived charmed lives. Then the 60s happened... Last time I saw Steve was at the Forest Knolls bus stop. He boarded the magic bus, he saw something on the horizon and like so many of our generation, and never came back.Steve's best friend, Pete Sutton was in our class too. Alas, their fathers, Tristano & Sutton may have been great NY jazz legends, posthumously inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame, but they were among the vast the army of invisible dads... I saw them maybe once or twice. But we children of the Beat generation were all mostly fatherless living out so far from town. ”