24 YARDHOG HOURS

The last several hours have been very interesting. It all began yesterday afternoon with a private consultation with a man Yardhog many years ago dubbed in an article in the Louisville Times "the Guru of Bardstown Road," one Harold Maier, the owner and "OPEN EAR" of Twice Told Books.
Yardhog usually drops by his shop on Saturday afternoons when Maier is leading a circus of loquacious individuals in a roundabout of verbiage. This obviously isn't Yardhog's favorite environment considering his solipsistic nature so, he was more than pleased to have the Masters' full attention for over an hour.
This morning Yardhog was primed for his 11 mile Saturday bike ride to Cox's Park on River Road. When he arrived at the boat ramp he was shocked to see the river banks clogged with the detrius of last week's storms. Layers of driftwood competed with old tires and bottles, to clog the mighty Ohio. Weren't no speed boaters are bikini babes to be seen and the air had a distinct sour smell.
Yardhog parked his bike and stood for a while watching an intrepid fisherman with one of those heavy duty, salt water rod and reels designed to catch 300 pound Tarpon or Sail Fish, when all of a sudden a car pulls up and out pops a good natured looking middle-aged black man who moseys on down to where Yardhog is standing and says, "This is all a gift. People don't realize everybody doesn't have all this beauty."
Meanwhile the river is churning and looking very ugly hardly reflecting the beauty of the early summer sky.
"You see all that drift wood piled up out there. It's dead like we're all going to be one day, but it will be pounded into sand and clay by the river and come back. This was all given to us by God and we should appreciate it."
Yardhog realizing that this cat was on some kind of a roll began a extemporaneous interview. Almost immediately the man revealed that his name was Lester Goin and he was one of the first inter-racial graduates of Jefferson Community College in 1969. "My name and several others is on a plaque in the entrance hall of the College."
He was an only child born to a poor farmer in Tennessee, five miles outside of Middlesboro, Ky.
"Four states converge at that point of the country and I used to sit in my back yard and look out at the Blue Ridge Mountain range," he said wisely, ever now and then looking over at Yardhog's tattooed arm.
"There was a GreyHound Bus that used to pass on the Highway down there everyday and I said one day I'm going to be on that bus out of here. And I did it. I've been a lot of places in my life."
One of those places was Vietnam where he served a full term before being discharged and finding work as an electrician. "I learned a lot about people there. We are all alike just different."
Much of Goin's conversation concerned religion, so Yardhog asked him if he belonged to any certain denomination.
"No, I just read a lot. I read the Bible and Spinoza, Kant, a lot of the Philosophers."
Did that all begin in College? "No my family was religious we all went to church together and they encouraged me to read."
He paused and pointed out to the muddy river. "You know, there is a war going on out there. Nature isn't pacific.
Baby Boomers don't want to face death. They think they're going to live forever."
luv, yardhog

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”