re: #14 Barefoot Grin

Today my 15yo asked if I could pick up some CDs that he requested through our local little library (meaning that they all came from other libraries in the network). I got there to find that he had ordered 63 CDs. The librarian let me spread them out between mine and my wife’s accounts, then overrode the system to allow me to check out the remainder. I think he’s just going to do a marathon download to his computer. But it’s an impressive range: lots of Dylan, but also Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind, and Fire. Ornette Coleman, but also the earliest Replacements stuff. A bunch of Coltrane and Monk, but also Joy Division. He’s a super talented clarinetist, but I’ve been encouraging him to take up sax, too, because that’s the only way he can play in the school jazz band. So far, he wants to focus just on clarinet.

Get him to check out Don Byron’s CD “Bug Music”. It’s frantic jazz which we all know from 60’s cartoons, but hails from the thirties. Byron is a magnificent clarinet player and the band he built around him is killer bee.

The album includes Raymond Scott (who invented many of the modern electronics still in use today, a musical and electronic legend- wiki him!), Bill Kirby, and Duke Ellington. I saw his band live fifteen or so years ago at UT, and they were tight as a tick. Great show.