Memories of The Legend, the Myth and the Man (Happy Birthday Jimmy Raney 2020)

Each year on the August 20th, I struggle a bit with what to say about Jimmy Raney that I or his most ardent fans haven’t said already. The music of course, speaks for itself and thank God for that. But there are some things I perhaps haven’t shared chiefly due to my pack rat tendencies. The Featured image above shows just some of the fun things I’ve found in the closet recently. I will be adding these and others gradually on other pages of the site.

The small photo shown is likely from ~1952 taken from his apartment in Sheridan Square. It’s really a wonderful snapshot of him and the time he was living in – where abstract expressionism was all the rage and Picasso & Braque were the relatively new masters of the prior cubist period. He is posing with one of his creations where the 3 dimensional “challenge” of cubism is solved by just up and grabbing the glass with his hand.

The main item in this memory lane collage is the actual section of Downbeat Poll Winners from September 8th, 1954. Jimmy won Best Guitarist and came in second in the “New Artist” category (Tal Farlow took 1st place honors). At that time it was done as a centerfold. It’s just amazing the jazz legends you see there, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum, Louis Armstrong, among others, along with some of the “new kids on the block”, Jimmy, Buddy DeFranco and Stan Getz.

At the upper right, mostly obscured is one of the best photos ever taken of him – by Doug, during their week woodshed in Louisville for their Duets and Stolen Moments records in 1979. You can see the full photo below. Doug was a wonderful photographer.

The hand-typed story near the top is a funny musing, In Dixieland I’ll Take My Stand done in the late 80’s when writing became one of his primary hobbies. For those of you who might think he’s poking fun at Dixieland he’s really poking fun at the “mannerism” aspect of jazz music, pedagogy and himself, in addition to some of his chief signature concepts and those of bebop. He had a real penchant for humorous writing, influenced by some of his favorites, James Thurber and Ogden Nash. I posted a humor piece recently, “How I Became a Living Legend“. If you missed it definitely worth a read.

As I recounted in one of my very first blogs, “Growing Up Raney” he developed a very retiring, sedentary lifestyle in the 80’s in Louisville. He spent most of his time interacting and observing the little odd behaviors of his cats, He had decidedly perfunctory names for them: Felix, Blackie, Grey Kitty (shown below top right) Yellow Kitty and some others I’ve long since forgotten.

Felix (below left) was his favorite. Once a day, Dad would go for a little rest on the couch and Felix would come along at the appointed time and “make bread”. He would knead his chest and purr, and this would go on for several minutes. It would end with a little “rub-nosey” and be done with it. While Felix was working his shift, Dad would look over at me a few times with a look that almost said, “Don’t you wish you were me?” (I did)

One of the most hilarious things Felix would do was, over a half hour or so, traverse the entire living room – from above – never touching the floor. He’d go from the couch – to the chair – to the ottoman – to the side table – to the credenza ending up at the top of the bookshelf (As shown below perched atop next to the bust of Franz Liszt). I didn’t believe Dad when he told me until I saw it for myself when I stayed in Louisville in ’85 and saw the whole thing. Cats are something. What goes thru their minds. We’ll never know.

Another of his pastimes was keeping his cars in shape and devouring his subscriptions to Consumer Reports cover-to-cover. He was very frugal and would go on and on about the great deals he would get on his highly sought after items. Also how well has well his cars were holding up.

I recall him going on at length of how he had solved the issue of car maintenance. Accordingly to him, the secret is owning two cars and alternate driving each of them, sparing the wear-and-tear on both cars. Almost 1+1>2 in a sense. And always do your regular oil change religiously (Ola his companion used to drive him nuts as she drove her Mercedes Sedan to ruin). To a car, oil change is like brushing your teeth. And trusting your car guy is akin to your dentist or your barber. And a dishonest mechanic was worthy of his merciless derision while a trustworthy mechanic is worth his weight in gold. He had one and he trusted him implicitly.

To a certain extent in his latter years, he missed the excitement of New York: the activity, the culture and the music. But at the same time he didn’t have much use for the business of music and in truth he didn’t like the demands of having to play every night as is necessary to keep up in the Big Apple. He often commented that his ideal was to play a few times a month, or a stint for a few weeks then a break for a while then another stint. Again a little engineering logic there. He would be at his peak by the end of the 2 weeks and then he could relax and rejuvenate his creativity.

He said he would get bored with himself if he had to play too frequently with the onus of being that “on” all the time. It was suffocating, creatively speaking. So having his occasional gigs, his writings, his magazines, his 2 cars, his cats and his companion were enough for him. Though I sense there was a little quiet desperation there under the surface.

Happy Birthday Dad, I can still see and hear you clearly in my mind. And, hygiene notwithstanding, I still have a lot of stuff in the closet to share.