I think many of you are familiar with the Jimmy Raney Legacy site by now. However I’ve noticed that certain features of the site don’t get much traffic and perhaps on first glance seem a bit under the hood. Basically the site is constantly evolving. Here are some items that you may not know about: Everybody Digs Jimmy  – Quotes by famous jazz guitarists about Jimmy Transcriptions and Fan Transcriptions – Contains downloadable PDF as well as reference tracks Jimmy Raney Forum – I expected a lot out of this feature but it seems to have fallen out of use. Feel free to post questions and topics and interact with…

Many people have bad driving habits. Giving the finger, blabbing on the cellphone, fiddling for a station on the stereo, etc. Aside from the obvious vehicular dangers created, this doesn’t seem like very worthwhile behavior. Dad was very good driver but one day he became intrigued by the low pitch he always heard when passing over the bridge. It was at a definite pitch and it was created by the tires passing over those little spaced rivets found on many bridges. Given his fascination for physics he set out to figure out how far apart these rivets were in order to produce the pitch he was hearing at the speed…

In suburban Louisville where Jimmy Raney lived, there were a lot of crickets out at night. But at some point one of them managed to find a home right outside his front door of the apartment complex (perhaps in a door frame or nearby hallway plant). In the beginning he was curious how this cricket came to be displaced but with a small hallway as a sounding board, and with the cricket showing no signs of leaving, this nightly sound became quite irritating.

Continuity of Conception In the last post Bill Evans Explained Part 2, we were discussing the groundbreaking solo “Re: Person I Knew”.  The hallmark of that solo and many others is the continuity of Bill’s conception. As he explained previously, “…he has a reason for every note he plays.” Evans ponders carefully the concept he is using when recording, often working out specific details meticulously between takes. Tony Bennett talks about it in this video in their collaborations with Bill in the 70’s (around 3:58 in).

I’m participating in an interesting discussion concerning Red Garland’s solo to “Billy Boy” from Miles ’58 record at my sometime forum haunt, All About Jazz It’s really for pianists concerning technique and how to go about learning these solos and the right fingering to choose. Here is the discussion thread And this is the solo on you tube:

Yesterday morning I had a flood of ideas entering my head about jazz piano. A full blown post in my head. Video clips, music clips, explanatory text, etc. So much that I thought I had better not commit it to one post but a planned series. What better idea than to pace things out and have continuous content, right? Of course I needed to get to work and it was getting on the late side. This morning (Saturday) I get up. I have no idea what the F$$k I was thinking about

Wish a happy 58th birthday to my brother. He is not too active now due to ill health but is one of the best to ever play. I knew it first hand of course. As is usual per this time of year I am on vacation right now with limited access to my usual blogging tools. However I will be doing a follow up blog with the last installment of the”Blast from the Past” recordings from our 1996 Birdland gig that included Doug, myself and the late Dennis Irwin on bass. Cheers Jon

Today marks what would have been his 87th year had he lived. His birthday sneaks up on me because it’s two days before mine. He is still with me all the time.