Music Memory is a Powerful Link: Rediscovered Artifacts Leads A Walk Down Memory Lane to Jazz, Blues, & Rock N'Roll

Art of Gathering

Mar 30

Do you believe in music “miracles?”

It’s hard not to make a link or connection that there is a manifestation of some divine intervention when more than one vintage music memory makes an encore appearance in your life.

Right?

Here’s what made center stage this week…

To those of you remarkable readers (thank you!) who subscribe to my Garden Glamour blog, you’ve seen my Music as Muse tablescape (hope you found it as delightful as it was to “orchestrate.”)

You’ll forgive all the musical puns here; too irresistible.

The musically-themed table design was also the “stage” for my interview with the musician, composer, pianist and curator of ZSALON, the award-winning Andrea Clearfield, for my videocast, Ladies Who Lunch Conversations.

That was all rhapsodic, marquee entertaining-at-home and showcased performance art.

After all, we did premiere Andrea’s “Earth Door/Sky Door” during our Conversation! So exciting.

And then, afterwards, while I was looking in some treasured files for family things, what popped up ~ was a truly unexpected ~ a seeming two-step in the art of timing.

Incredulously, I read a letter from a man I worked with in Copenhagen many years ago, at the Huset.

I searched for the Huset and it is still in business! According to their website, the Huset “is Denmark's first culture house and has existed since 1970. A cultural platform where volunteers and alternative cultural environments create events and artistic projects.”

Wow!

Primarily, my “work” at the Huset was to assist Michael, who was writing a book on jazz and “older” blues arts “from around my country” as he characterized it.

His passion and goal was focused on the original “negro” ~ black artists who he had met when they performed at the Huset.

I remember that Michael seemed to work at a fever-pitch.

He was keen to interview the performers in-person and get their stories before they died. Many were already old at the time and he told me they had been through so much racial discrimination, including being labeled communists… Which made them all the more persona(s) non grata at that time in America.

He was casting a wide net to garner his interviews. He wanted to travel to the United States and interview as many jazz and blues artists as he could cram into his dream research trip.

Mainly, our work sessions would be him telling me about the artists who were jazz legends but not yet recognized and the reasons for his desire to include them in his book that he hoped to have published.

I would write his correspondence ~ Americanizing his queries a bit, so as to make them resonate with the artists. (I should’ve seen my future as a speech writer and PR professional!)

By the end of that summer I returned home to the States before I again would head to Europe, for my last year of school in Switzerland.

Michael did indeed organize and schedule his in-person research trip to America, making stops in New York, Chicago, Washington DC, New Orleans, Memphis, and hoping for St. Louis.

Here below was Michael’s letter to me, inviting me to join him in New York for a concert at the Biltmore featuring a solo performance with Eva Taylor, the “old lady of jazz” who had performed at the Huset the year before. He had even arranged to stay at Eva’s home while in NY.

You can hear Eva here on a YouTube ~ featuring her singing "I'm Busy and You Can't Come In." I gotta get this posted in my office!

Michael provided me with Eva's 516 telephone number so, given the exchange, I assume she then lived on Long Island.

As you can see in the letter, Michael says it would be nice to meet while he is in New York and he thinks I would also enjoy the Happy Caldwell concert.

This link I found is to a Blue Note recording. In another kind of coincidence, I worked with Blue Note in my Sony days on several successful cross promotions. Great label. Great artists.

And you can’t help but smile with Michael’s signature sign off:

“Your jazzy friend”

I love it.

Regrettably, I lost touch with Michael and don’t know if he did indeed publish his book of dreams about the great American cultural artists he so clearly admired. Worshiped, really.

I’ve done some preliminary research and searching but have come up empty.

If any of you know anything about Michael and his book, please let me know?

Besides the Scandanavians who are so clearly jazz and blues aficionados, I have experienced few others who revere our musical heritage so much besides the French and the Japanese.

And then, just like that, I came across the framed playbill from the last show at the Fillmore East that I attended with friends.

We all knew it was the end of an era. Folks were taking stuff right out of the theater as souvenirs.

Don’t hate me ~ but we took/pried off our seat numbers. It was a kind of a jewelry charm I later wore for fun…

I truly bemoaned the disappearance of the poster I had from that night that was lost to a move when Bill and I left our condo life for our now/present home. I always wondered why that treasure was missing…

Who performed at the last show?

I broke the seal on the frame and took out the program.

You see it was The Allman Brothers, J. Geils Band, Albert King ~ half brother of BB, Joe's Lights.

I also appreciated that today, in context, the Fillmore thanked everyone involved ~ from the press representative (always key!) to the Erteguns to the lighting and stage crew to the maintenance staff.