Flying Home

Yardhog is going through some serious chemical changes. Tittering on the precipice of a panic attack. Too much pent up energy and no immediate outlets. It will pass.
Illinois Jacquet the great tenor saxophonist died of a heart attack in his home in New York yesterday. He was 81 years old and had been leading a band nearly up until the end. He was mostly known for his famous boisterous solo on "Flying Home" with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. The song was a national hit and Jacquet was forced to play it almost every night with the Hampton Band. According to the article this morning that's what made him leave the Hampton Orchestra two years later claiming physical exhaustion. He said later in an interview. "I had to quit. Hamp was getting rich and I was dying." Jacquet and drummer Joe Jones had trio with my friend organist/pianist Milt Buckner in the 1970s. Milt died around 1975, lugging his Hammond B3 organ down the steps of Joe Segal's Jazzshowcase in Chicago, but Jacquet seemed to go on and on. According the obituary this morning he was born in Louisiana, the son of an American Indian mother and a French Creole father. Can you think of a better lineage for a jazz musician? Heard about his death this morning after hearing him on a 1956 recording with Ben Webster entitled "The Kid and the Brute" they were playing on WNOZ New Orleans radio. Jacquet was one of the last great Texas tenors that included the likes of Arnette Cobb and Buddy Tate. Ain't none of them left now.
     Got an email the other day from the president of the Louisville Bicycle Club. The young man I saw in the accident Monday night is apparently doing okay. He broke several bones in his arms and hand. Thanks to the gods.

RANE-ING IN JIMMY

         The jazz guitar duo had just completed their last set at the Twice Told Coffee House when one of the guitarists came over to my table with some exciting news.

         “You won’t believe what I just discovered,” he said, taking from his guitar case a piece of notebook paper on which was a hand-scribbled note.

         “Shakespeare sonnets are constructed like a 12 bar blues. Listen,”

He said.

         Then, Jimmy Raney, 65, one of the world’s greatest and most influential jazz guitarists, played and sang the blues, lyrics provided by William Shakespeare.

         That kind of spontaneous imagination has always been part of Raney’s character. It led him to leave his Louisville home in 1944 and travel to New York City, and later Chicago, to play with some of the world’s best jazz musicians like saxophonist Stan Getz and band leaders Woody Herman and Artie Shaw, to name but a few.

         In 1954-55 he was voted best guitarist in Downbeat Magazine’s Critics Poll.

         Along the way he and guitarist Tal Farlow managed to transfer saxophonist Charlie Parker’s convoluted bebop jazz style and phrasing over to the guitar.

         Farlow and Raney have a lot in common. They both played with vibraphonist Red Norvo and Artie Shaw. And they both name each other as their favorite guitarists.

         But Raney is much more than a great musician. He is also a painter and his eclectic interests range from writing to quantum physics.

         During the 1950s, while Raney was living in New York City, he used to hang out at the Cedar Bar, well-known gathering spot for modern painters.

         It was there he became friends with artist Ray Parker, who he later dedicated an original song to, “Parker 51.”

         Raney said he became so obsessed with painting at one point in his  career he worried that he was devoting to much time to it.

         “I had to make up my mind what I wanted to be a musician or a painter,” he said.

         Raney still paints occasionally. One of his works, a self portrait, was recently on display at Twice Told Coffee House.

         This has been a good year for Raney. Despite a hearing loss which has plagued him for several years, his playing is as eloquent as ever.

         His newest recording, (he’s recorded over 40 albums), “But Beautiful,” Criss Cross Jazz 1065 was hailed in “Jazz Times” as “the most important guitar recording of the last decade.”

         Critic Doug Ramsey goes on to say that Raney is and has been since the late 1940s “the very model of the complete guitarist.

Danny O’Bryan

Leo Magazine

May 26, 1993

From the up-coming book “Derby City Jazz”