Visual Sound: Issue 14
Dizzy Gillespie
“Salt Peanuts”
Dizzy Gillespie [1917-1993] was one-of-a-kind. He revolutionized jazz by leaving swing in the dust for a kind of music that you couldn’t dance to…a kind of music that traditional jazz fans hated at first…but, ultimately, a kind of music—BEBOP—that stood the test of time to usher in a whole new world. Like the beginnings of rock’n’roll or hip-hop, this was RADICAL.
He always had a smile on his face. He was a great entertainer, composer, bandleader, trumpet player, educator, humorist and pioneer of not only bebop but Afro-Cuban music as well. He played a funny bent horn and his cheeks would distend when he played like no one else ever. With his ever-present beret, horn-rimmed glasses, larger-than-life personality and smarts, he directly influenced Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, Freddy Hubbard, and all the generations of jazz musicians who came after him no matter what instrument they played. In fact, an argument could be made that he was the greatest jazz man of all. And he lived in Englewood, Bergen County, for many years.
Bruce Springsteen
CBS Sunday Morning featured Bruce recently. If you missed it, here it is. Interestingly enough, out of all of his albums, he considers Nebraska his masterpiece.
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Hot Tuna
“I Know You Rider”
Formed from the ashes of Jefferson Airplane, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady have been playing blues, country, folk, swing, pop, rock’n’roll and jazz within Hot Tuna for years. Check out their great mandolin player, Barry Mitterhoff, from Scotch Plains in Union County.
Phoebe Snow
“Poetry Man”
One of the greatest voices to ever come out of Jersey, she was raised in Teaneck, lived in Edison, was criminally under-rated and misunderstood, put in a jazz bag that she hated. The girl just wanted to rock’n’roll. “Poetry Man,” in 1974, was her biggest hit but also a noose around her neck. She had a daughter, Valerie Rose, who was born with severe brain damage. Phoebe refused to institutionalize her, caring for her alone as a single mom at the expense of her own career until Valerie Rose finally died at age 31. Buddhism brought her some solace late in her life but Phoebe died in 2011 at the age of 60 from a cerebral hemorrhage.
I got to know her from a series of interviews we did at her home where I met Valerie Rose and we bonded over our love of parenting and the Rolling Stones. Her passionate vocals on Paul Simon’s “Gone At Last” made that song what it is. In one of our interviews, she confessed to being an introvert, self-conscious about her looks, her weight, her health, while resolving not to ever play the show-biz game of press parties and events that her label demanded. In other words, she was real. I’ll never forget her.