As I close out the first three months of the beginning of my 66th year, the most significant importance of what I have done, do and will do with my time here now has never been more clear to me. It is clear to me that now is particularly the time of opportunity for individuals to create our personal mythologies, using all available knowledge from experience, studies, research, MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS (<By C. G. JUNG). 

In conjunction with which, as I heard or read Alice Walker say a few years ago in a THINKING ALLOWED radio interview or NEW DIMENSIONS magazine interview with her (I do not recall the year, but more than a decade ago, and I think it was in the magazine.) - "We are all dying, but not before we tell our stories." If any of us can not, or choose not to, then those individual stories will not be told here this time, or some other's will tell their bits and pieces version's when we are gone - without the individual's authorization or approval. 

[Note] Dr. June Singer -- Jungian analyst, prolific author: (Excerpt from pages 237 and 238 of COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS: Do-It-Yourself Manual)  "I was living in Sunnyvale, California in the late 1980's when I read, for the first time, a book, Androgyny, by Dr. Singer. I was pleasantly surprised to find that she lived in Palo Alto, a few miles from where I was living, and that her home telephone number was listed. I mustered the courage to call her. A man, I think was her husband, answered the telephone, and called her tothe phone. She and I had quite a pleasant conversation, at the end of which I asked her if we could have lunch, to which she agreed and said that I should call with a time for us to meet.

I wrote her a love letter and wanted to deliver it to her when we had lunch. Because of my insecurities and apprehensions, along with some other adverse circumstances in regards to my personal life at that time, I never called her to meet. I deeply and profoundly regret not following up on that opportunity. 

[10/2/04 - I've just read that Dr. Singer passed on out of her human form suddenlyon January 29, 2004. She was 85 years old. At the time of her death, Dr. Singer had been partially retired, and was still seeingseveral clients at home, as well as painting, and finishing her first novel, Solomonand Shiva.] 

Dr. Singer: "I was in Zurich. It was my first year in the TrainingProgram. My analyst phoned me early in the morning and told me in a heartbroken voice that Jung had died last night. His body would be at home and if students at the Institute wanted to, they could go there on this day. I had never been in Jung's home though I'dpassed by it often. Now I approached the door and passed under the inscription "Vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit."* I felt I was entering a holy place. As I entered I saw off to the side very few people, and one of them, I don't recall who it was, asked, "Wouldyou like to go upstairs?" I replied that I would, and no one offered to accompany me, so I walked up the long stairway alone. Upstairs in the empty hall I saw that all the doors were closed except one, from which a soft glow fell across the floor. 

Hesitatingly I approached and stood in the doorway. I saw an old man lying on his bed, clothed in a white nightshirt. His waxen face was lit by two candles, one on each nightstand beside the bed. He seemed so frail, so slight. So deeply at peace. As I waited there, unable to move, I felt a strong wave of something coming toward me almost like a sound, saying, "this is what you are meant to carry on." And strangely, that burden seemed to be very light. I waited, but there was nothing more. And since then that image of the very old man, Jung, returns to me from time to time." From C. G. Jung Page

Knowing the truth of all of this, as Jack Johnson said "I got my chance, and I'm taking my chance" to create my mythology and tell as much of my story as I can. Albert Einstein is quoted as having said "Imagination is more important than knowledge." It's real to me.

Actually, this is not the beginning of this way for me. Prompted by serious personal circumstances and conditions while not living with my daughter, Tanisha Rasanna Dyushambee for a time when she was 9 years old and I had serious doubts about ever having time again, one to one, with her at some later time, I wrote the draft for my autobiographical "QUEST FOR THE VEIL" so that she could, at least, read some of my life story directly from me. I included the "Introduction" from that draft in my published COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS: Do-It-Yourself Manual .

Tweaking my conscious awareness and body frequency attunement to "The Magnitude of the Universe" (quote from Rahsaan Roland Kirk)

In terms of the current symbolic worldwide God of this Earth, MONEY, relative to the majority of the 6 billion humans here, I am abundantly prosperous. By the standards of the USA economic system, I am borderline poor with low income. I AM most thankful for what I have, particularly current mental, physical and spiritual well being, and do much with my 'chump change,' and opportunities - including solely funding the endeavors of YOUtopia INstitute, mostly comfortably and somewhat leisurely.

My main itinerary for 2010 is to visit one or more of the caves in México, reported to have cave dwellers' drawings from about 10,000 years ago, and prepare to visit the areas of  Yucatan, Oaxaca and Chiapas, States in southern México, and some of the ancient Inca, Mayan pyramids there, such as The Temple of the Sun, and as much else as I can get to, some time around January 2011.

Beside my top priority of staying physically, mentally and spiritually healthy, I'm doing some shedding to get my chops back. Otherwise, my main work and play project for 2010 is  my Billy Colwell Band project, along with as much of his life story as I can piece together. As such,  I have started the Yahoo Group BillyColwellBand_ Live at http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/BillyColwe llBand_Live. I invite YOU to subscribe to that group where YOUR comments, questions, suggestions and related input are welcomed.

 

I moved to Boston in 1970 to go to music school, and met Billy in 1973 when I was directing a local production of Jesus Christ Superstar. Billy was the guitar player in that band. One week before that scheduled opening date, a federal court injunction was issued against the performance of any productions other than the original Broadway people. Our Boston production - as well as numerous other local productions throughout the USA - ended.

 

With no job and no band, Billy formed the Billy Colwell Band from some of the people in that Boston Jesus Christ Superstar band. We had been paid for several weeks to rehearse that music five days a week, so we all had played together a lot, knew each others playing and had gotten to know each other, as for people to work and hang out with.

 

Although I have read a published comment from a person who appreciated and enjoyed the music of Billy, in which comment the person described Billy as "a hard ass"  - my description of him is, he was a gentle, sensitive and very musically talented man who "swilled heavily," as he referred to heavy imbibing of mostly whiskey or vodka, to dull the emotional pain and suffering from his fragility in functioning with the cold-blooded, self-serving, cruel to vicious music industry 'Deciders', in particular, as well as too many incompetent, envious, jealous, phony and pretend 'friends,' along with the unfair to brutal circumstances and conditions of most gifted and talented individual's human lives. We were one of the most popular bands during those times, and one of the lowest paid.

 

The closest that I know of that would put him in a category of being "a hard ass" was that he enjoyed prank verbal "torturing" as he referred to that kind of playing - and when the band was on peak fire, he would stretch out some ending of tunes, with horn lines, until my lips could barely seal around my mouthpiece.

 

It is true that Billy had the funk in his genes and his jeans. The music from his guitar truly had the booty bump to sweet tender funk to it - from his Soul and genes. He did not like to take baths or change his jeans, so he was truly funky like that, too.

 

He had a deep sense of humor. For a time, on some particularly heavy 'swilling' jam session occasions and light local gigs, he would put on a white wig and do his impersonation of Johnny Winters, who was another of Billy's favorite influences. And, he loved Chinese food. We often when to China Town in Boston after gigs. He once spent several weeks trying to get the recipe for Black Bean Sauce from the cooks at the China Town restaurants where we ate. He told us when he got the 'secret' recipe right, and successfully made it at home, after several unsatisfactory attempts.

 

When I last saw Billy in 1975 or '76, he was alone in a coma in a hospital room. In a waiting room I saw some people that I was told were some of Billy's family members who stayed  there through the days and nights until he came out of the coma, and they took him home. I was in the Boston area for a few days some years later, and wanted to find and visit Billy. I asked some people but never found where Billy was at that time. A former member of our band told me Billy was in a bad way, and advised me not to find and visit him. I somewhat regret that I took that advice, and never saw Billy again. Maybe that was best, with my memory of how sad I was being in that hospital room with him incapacitated in a coma.

 

In my way of thinking, my time and experiences, with Billy and the Billy Colwell Band, was with a man and band with the range of a delicate flower-dynamic machine, and all else that was included.

I think the invisible influences are the most powerful and, ultimately, not negotiable.

 

B. B. King was Billy's major influence, which can be heard in Billy's guitar playing. We once opened for B. B. King at the Boston Garden arena After we played, we went and sat in the bleachers to listen to B. B. who was a couple of hours late because of an airport delay. 

From my memory I reflect on some of the other most important musicians that I have had personal experiences with. The named people in the following short list I either met, shook hands with, talked with, studied with, worked with or otherwise interacted with live. 

Edward 'Duke' Ellington: After I moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1970 , I met Marie O' Brian who was working on her doctorate degree in sociology at Tufts University, and taking piano lessons at the School of Music which Jack Wertheimer then had upstairs from his Jack's Drum Shop* on Boylston Street, across from the Boston Common that I walked through daily from where I lived in a basement room of a building on Tremont Street. I took Marie there for our first date, after I invited her 'for tea'. Some time later, Marie took me to hear the Duke Ellington Band at the Paul's Mall club on Beacon Street. During an intermission, I saw Marie talking to Maestro Ellington near the bar, they then came over to our table with Harry Carney, sat and talked, and Duke and Harry gave me their autographs. (<Click thumbnails)

Two to three years after that meeting, I played in that club, on the same stage, with the Billy Colwell Band, as well as next door at the Jazz Workshop. *[In the 1970s the owner, Jack Wertheimer, had a school of music upstairs from his Jack's Drum Shop music store. That music school was staffed by teachers from the Berklee College of Music. I enrolled and studied there for a couple of years. Claudio Roditi was there and the band he had then with the saxophone player Victor Brazil played some concerts in one of the school rooms. My roommate, Hayward Blackledge was the drummer in that band. I was know then as Eddie or E. D. Harris.]

Marie told me that her father had been the Head Master at the Boston Latin School for Boy's (the oldest school in America). Marie was of Irish descent and, O' Brian was her married last name. I never asked her what her father's name was, but now I see that in the chronology of Boston Latin School's Head Masters, her father would have to have been "John Joseph Doyle, '12, who became Head Master of his alma mater in 1954" - until 1964. 

From my memory about direct personal information to me from Marie about her relationship with her father, and husband, it seems to me unlikely that her father was "Dr. Wilfred L. O'Leary,'25, a veteran of World War II, who was appointed Mr. Doyle's successor in September, 1964"- and "...welcomed women students for the first time in September, 1972."  That Marie's father was "John Joseph Doyle, '12, who became Head Master of his alma mater in 1954" - until 1964 - it seems to me that the chronology for Marie's father being a Head Master for Boston Latin School would not fit with any other Head Master dates and, I do not doubt that Marie told me the truth about her father having been the Head Master for Boston's Boy's Latin School.

With consideration of the fact that none of that was particularly important to me in our 'skin to skin' relationship, during that time, now that I am thinking about all of this it all seems profound and rather astonishing. I don't remember ever drinking tea with Marie. I welcome any affirmations for, or correction about any of that.

I last saw Marie in Hopewell, Virginia in the summer of 1983 when she drove through, and stayed a couple of days. Marie had received her doctorate degree in sociology, been on the staff of Tufts' Sociology Department, left Tufts and Boston, was relocating, and stopped in Hopewell on her way to live in New Orleans, Louisiana. I had moved back to Hopewell that summer with my daughter, Tanisha Rasanna and her mother Carol Porter.

Harry Carney: "A swing baritone saxophonist, clarinetist, and bass clarinetist best known for his 45-year tenure in Duke Ellington's band. Carney started off in Ellington's band playing alto, but soon switched to the baritone. His strong, steady saxophone often served as the anchor of Duke's music." Harry was born in Boston, and said he was visiting with his mother while he was there. [Meeting described above, and autograph photo.]

Johnny Griffin: While I was a student at Laney College, in Oakland, CA,1978-79, and playing tenor saxophone with the Big Band, Johnny's brother was there and gave me a music sheet with saxophone exercises that Johnny had hand written.

John Coltrane: In 1964 while I was stationed at the Bethesda, Maryland Naval Hospital, before being honorably discharged in October of that year, some of us from the base were often at Jazzland, which was a club on 14th Street in Washington, DC that featured local musicians, before it was destroyed by fire during the riots in 1968 that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I met a waitress there who introduced me to Coltrane's music when she took me to the Bohemian Caverns Nightclub to hear Trane with his band. The club was downstairs with cave like ceiling and walls. We sat on the floor at a low table. The music was so new to me, and intense, as I remember, it seems to me that I was somewhat in a trance like state while the music was playing. During an intermission, I went to the men's room and passed closely by Coltrane who was sitting on the one step to the band stage. The walkway to the men's room, passed beside the band stage, as the men's room was in an area behind the stage.

Arthur Smith, Founder for the Modern School of Music_Washington, DC, where I studied full time for 3 years, from 1967 to 1970. It doesn't seem to be there anymore - I've found no web site or current information on the Internet about that school. The most recent information I found is that Ruby Hayes was a student there "Modern School of Music - Washington, DC (1975)" http://www.jazzconnect.com/rubyhayes/bio.htm

Mr. Smith-Maestro/Teacher at the Modern School of Music_Washington, DC

Harold Chavis, whom I met at The Modern School of Music: A Master/maestro drummer, as well as proficient and accomplished multi-instrumentalist, who took me, and others, 'under his wings' and generously spent personal time with us, Jazz neophytes, and helped us stay mellow- my initial personal musical and life style mentor who personified 'the real deal' as much or more than he talked about IT.  

Harold took me to Howard University to meet Donald Bird in a class room where Maestro Bird had begun teaching, and was working on his Doctorate degree, sometime between 1967 and 1970. I have been out of contact with Harold for many years, and the only Internet info I've found about him is a reference from Bob Bruno "..returned to DC and in the summer of 1964 and played with Charlie Hampton and Harold Chavis at "The Brass Rail"." The Brass Rail was the last club I saw and heard Harold in. Charlie Hampton had been a student at the Modern School of Music, and was the leader of the house band at the historic Howard Theatre, when I lived in DC from 1964 to 1970. the Howard theatre originated in 1910, and is being restored.

If YOU are in DC, FIND Harold, give him my contact info and send me his!

Donald Bird: From Harold Chavis having taken me to meet Donald Bird in his Howard University classroom, I only remember one of the statements from Maestro Bird. He said "I don't believe in paying dues." in reference to having to suffer in order to be an authentic and genuine Jazz musician. The reason I remember that so clearly is because from all that I had previously heard, hanging out with musicians and wannabes on the local jazz scene, "paying dues" was an absolute requirement. 

Maestro Bird and Chavis* certainly personifies, in every way, the falseness of that illusionary thinking and way of living. The late 1960s were the last days of many aspiring jazz musicians believing they needed to be poor heroin addicts to be "real" Jazz musicians. Those were the times when Miles Davis and numerous other Jazz Giants were kicking their heroin addictions and cleaning up there lifestyles from the time of the 1940's and '50s. Many did not make it, and over dosed out of this life. *[Harold was always impeccably groomed and dressed, drove a Mercedes, stayed fit riding his bicycle in the parks, and was at school practicing on the double bass or piano in the mornings when the rest of us arrived for scheduled classes. He was also enrolled in a computer course, before the others of us had ever seen a computer - before the existence of the WWW, while he was studying at the Modern School of Music. ]

Herbie Lewis: While living in Washington, DC, I took a bus to Baltimore, Maryland for a McCoy Tyner gig at a club there. I did not know my way around Baltimore but found the club. I think that was 1965 or '66. Herbie was then the bass player with McCoy, After the gig, Herbie and I talked, had drinks at a bar on the corner from the club while McCoy took care of business at the club. They were traveling in a Station Wagon driven by McCoy, carrying Herbie's bass in the back. Their next gig was in North Carolina. When Herbie and I went back to the club, he introduced me to McCoy and asked McCoy if he would drop me off in DC. McCoy said yes, and I rode in the back with Herbie's bass to Washington.

McCoy Tyner: During the ride in McCoy's Station Wagon from Baltimore to Washington, I heard Herbie complain to McCoy that the club owner would not give him any more drinks. I didn't know it before, but that was the reason Herbie and I went to the corner bar for drinks while McCoy finished up business at the club. I listened to McCoy calmly explain to Herbie that the club owner was in the business of selling drinks and therefore limited free drinks to musicians who worked in his club. I don't remember any other conversation after that.

Earl Kenneth 'Fatha' Hines His remains are buried in the Oakland Cemetery. When I lived in Oakland, I stood in line with him at an event in the Bay area, was introduced to him and, maybe , shook his hand. A few years later, after his transition and his remains were buried in the Oakland Cemetery, I work for Neptune Society cremation service picking up the remains of deceased persons which I transported to the refrigerator in the Oakland Neptune Society building before transporting a van full of deceased persons remains to the crematory located on the grounds of the Oakland Cemetery where I drove pass the grave of Fatha Hines remains which were interred next to the road leading to the crematory.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk: Two of the first albums I ever brought were Rahsann's WE FREE KINGS and Inflated Tear, in the early 1960s when I was in the Navy.

The first time I heard and saw him live was at the Jazz Workshop in Boston within months after I moved there in the summer of 1970. Following which I was at some of his other gigs - again at the Jazz Workshop when he played Miles Davis' sound on the tune Bye Bye Blackbird - on a trumpet with a saxophone mouth piece, another time at a club in New York with sawdust on the floor when, while he and his band continued to play, he led members of the band down one isle out the front door around to another door back into the club up the other isle back to the bandstand, at University of California, Berkeley's outdoor Greek Theatre after he had a stroke that paralyzed one side of his body - recovered and "continued to perform and record, modifying his instruments to enable him to play with one arm. At a live performance at Ronnie Scott's club in London he even managed to play two instruments, and carried on to tour internationally and even appear on TV. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Kirk

I finally met him and shook his hand in the summer of 1977, in the dressing room of Todd Barkan's Keystone Corner in San Francisco where Rahsaan had recorded Bright Moments live there in 1973. A big band I was playing with was scheduled to play one night there the week following Rahsaan's week long gig.

On Monday night of the week we played there, I went to the club with Mcheza (sp.?), the leader of the band I was playing with. Rahsaan happened to still be there, and was being interviewed in the dressing room with members of his band. Mcheza (sp.?) introduced me to Rahsaan, we shook hands, and Rahsaan asked if I had been there for his previous week gig. Shamefully I answered that I had not. To which he responded with "I'm not going to be here always."

Rahsaan passed on 5th December 1977 from a second stroke, on the road in a car after performing in the Frangipani Room of the Indiana University Student Union in Bloomington, Indiana.

He was a man of miracles/extraordinary human accomplishments who did things no other human had done before, like playing three woodwind instrument simultaneously out of one mouth while continuously circular breathing for 20 minutes or more, and much more.

When my daughter was born I named her what I consider to be the feminine derivative of  the masculine 'Rahsaan': Tanisha Rasanna Dyushambee - January 9, 1981 to April 9, 2001. I had and will always have many 'Bright Moments' from my time with Rasanna, and Rahsaan.

Sir Miles Dewey Davis III  ["Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music including cool jazz, hard bop, free jazz, and fusion. Many well-known jazz musicians made their names as members of Davis's ensembles, including John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Cannonball Adderley, Gerry Mulligan, Tony Williams, George Coleman, J. J. Johnson, Keith Jarrett, John Scofield and Kenny Garrett. On October 7, 2008, his album Kind of Blue, released in 1959, received its fourth platinum certification from the RIAA, signifying sales of 4 million copies.^[1] Miles Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006,^[1] noted as "one of the key figures in the history of jazz".^[2] On November 5, 2009, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan sponsored a House measure to recognize and commemorate the album Kind of Blue on its 50th anniversary. The measure also affirms jazz as a national treasure and "encourages the United States government to preserve and advance the art form of jazz music."^[3] It passed, unanimously, with a vote of 409-0 on December 15, 2009.^[4]"]: I first saw and heard Miles Davis live in the late 1960s at a club in DC. I was quite surprised, I imagine we all were, when after the gig Miles stood in the doorway, with another man, as the audience, pretty much in a single file, passed within 3 feet of where he stood looking at us as we left. The next time I saw and heard Miles live was when he, with his band, and I, with the Billy Colwell Band played next door to each other for 7 days -  us at Paul's Mall, with Miles and his band at the Jazz Workshop next door of the two adjoining clubs, below the street level. 

When I played the first time with the Billy Colwell Band at Paul's Mall for one night , the club was full to standing room. The second time we were booked for 7 nights the same week Miles was playing at the Jazz Workshop. Our starkly bare dressing rooms were directly across from each other on the Paul's Mall side, so Miles walked through Paul's Mall, or through the inside walkway behind the public areas to the break rooms.

During one break the trumpet player, George DeCarolis, and I were sitting and talking at a table in the now empty Paul's Mall. We heard Miles uniquely quiet voice ask "Which one of you was playing the trumpet?" We looked to the sound and there stood Miles looking at us. When one of us was able to speak, I looked at George and said "He was." Miles just smiled and walked to his break room.

Many years later the thought about that encounter came to me with this clarification; the quiet 8 word question followed by nonchalantly walking on smiling to his break room was Miles, well known minimalist, way of saying to us that he had seen and listened to us playing. I am reasonably certain about this, partly because he obviously knew that we were the two horn players, and also because George is a White Italian and I am a brown African-American - we look nothing alike, so there is no way the virtuoso trumpet player master of nuance musician and visual artist, as Miles was, could not have seen and known which one of us was playing the trumpet. 

Miles Ferrari was parked in front of the clubs the first night. Some years later I heard that somebody shot him in one of his legs while sitting in his car in New York During the 60 Minutes interview, on the subject of racial prejudice in the USA, with his very direct to the point sense of seriousness mixed with his particular sense of humor, Mile gave the example of how he would be pulled over by a White police person on the highways of California driving his Ferrari because having seen a Black man driving a Ferrari they would think he must have stole it.

I saw and heard Miles the last time in 1981 at the Concord, California Amphitheatre. He had a small group with Bob Berg on the sax, and he and Berg alternated playing the electric keyboard. It was the first time I had seen a wireless microphone used on a horn, and during the concert Miles, while playing, stood in different areas, and walked slowly, comfortably and freely all over that large stage, with a slight limp from the gun shot to his leg. My daughter, Tanisha Rasanna Dyushambee, was then less than one year old, a baby carried in our arms, and that was the first music she heard live at a concert.

Shirley Horn [Miles Davis "discovered" Shirley and initiated her first record contract; later played on her recording session for the 1990 released YOU WON'T FORGET ME Miles was also a painting and sketch artist. He drew the sketch on the cover of  I REMEMBER MILES (<Click thumbnail), which Miles presented to Shirley at the 1990 recording session for YOU WON'T FORGET ME at Clinton Records, New York. I have a video copy of the 60 Minutes - TV program feature and interview with Miles where he talks about his creative process, and shows some of his canvas works - and much more] Lady Horn "...kept for twenty five years the same rhythm section: Charles Ables (bass) and Steve Williams (drums). Don Heckman wrote in the Los Angeles Times (February 2, 1995) about "the importance of bassist Charles Ables and drummer Steve Williams to the Horn's sound. Working with boundless subtlety, following her every spontaneous twist and turn, they were the ideal accompanists for a performer who clearly will tolerate nothing less than perfection"." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Horn#Biography_and_career: 

I heard the music from, saw and experienced the entrancing energy radiated from the ultra-sensual enchantress Shirley Horn, with Charles Ables and David Williams, for the first time in a small upstairs room, where metal folding chairs had been lined up in rows for the audience, in a building in Washington, DC for a Sunday afternoon concert in 1969. The next time I saw and head her live was in 1990 in San Francisco, California. 

While listening to the now defunct Alameda, California KJAZ* radio station, it was announced that caller number (?) would win 2 tickets for a Shirley Horn Trio gig in San Francisco. I called and won the tickets, took my brother Bryant with me, Shirley autographed my albums sleeve for us, and following the performance we waited for Charles and I drove him to where he was staying that night. Harold Chavis had introduced me to Charles before I left DC, and Charles remembered me from then. (<Click thumbnails) *

["When San Francisco's (The broadcast studio was in Alameda, CA) legendary jazz radio station KJAZ FM went off the air in August of 1994 the silence was deafening. Operating for 35 years, since August of 1959, KJAZ was hailed as "The greatest jazz station in the world" by the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Ahmad Jamal, Carmen McRae, Tony Bennett, Stan Getz, Bill Cosby and Herbie Hancock. In a failed last-ditch effort to save KJAZ, loyal listeners contributed an unprecedented 1.5 million dollars to keep their favorite radio station on the dial. No public radio fund drive had ever raised that kind of money and yet KJAZ was a commercial station that had never asked it's fans for a dime in the past.

Now, what thousands of listeners and millions of dollars couldn't do is being done inexpensively and efficiently as a result of the technical breakthroughs of internet broadcasting. The 24 hour jazz sound of KJAZ is back, in the flesh and most importantly in "The Spirit". Using the facilities of SHOUTcast.com, three former staff members of KJAZ have combined their efforts and their personal libraries to celebrate the history and tradition of KJAZ via the internet Shoutcast station called "The Spirit"." http://timhodges.net/SPIRIT/index1.html]

Pharaoh Sanders: In 1978-79 when I was a student at Laney College, in Oakland, CA, the magnificent Pharaoh was there most every day practicing in the practice rooms, checking out classes and performances and/or studying with his friend Ed Kelly. I saw him there often but never met or talked with him. Once he and a friend sat directly behind me at some performance. During those times I remember hearing him once jammin' in a club with a group. Currently amazingly playing with all of the influence from his time with John Coltrane, yet with his own distinctive sound, and chops on the level of Trane - sweet to furious.

Ed Kelly: I had classes at Laney with the broad spectrum music educator, pianist and organist. I visited his home and met his wife and one of his sons.

John Lee Hooker: (From page 185 of COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS: Do-It-Yourself Manual ) "I also had a job playing alto saxophone and percussion, and composing and arranging with The Bill Colwell Band, and I developed and taught an improvisation and Black Music History course at the Palfrey Street High School in Watertown, Massachusetts. During this time, our band was the back up band for John Lee Hooker on his Boston area gigs."

I last saw John Lee in 1976 when I moved to California, and spent an evening with him at his house in the South San Francisco Bay area, after dinner with he and his wife at that time-she was a photographer from Canada.

Big Mama Thornton: I was invited to her 1976 birthday party in Oakland, California. After being introduced to Big Mama, she choose to have me sit at the head of her table. She was in a wheel chair at that time. After the dinner party, I walked with her to a waiting limousine. 

Claudio Roditi: (Excerpt from page 185 and 186 of COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS: Do-It-Yourself Manual ) "Trumpeter Claudio Roditi was at JDS* at that time with the goal of playing with Horace Silver, which he did. Claudio later toured with the 'Dizzy' Gillespie All Star Band, among numerous other musical career accomplishes, and still doing it." Now a well established Jazz Giant in his own right. *[Jack's Drum Shop School of Music]

Dr. Eddie Henderson: I first saw and heard the extraordinary person, Eddie Henderson, in 1963-64 jam sessions at Jazzland on 14th St. in Washington, DC, when he was in Medical School at Howard University. I never met him then. I later learned that we had a mutual non musician friend, in DC, named Ella. In the late 1970s we both lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, frequented and jammed in some of the same Bay Area clubs, hung out a little, and talked on the telephone once. One of my Oakland neighbors was Dr. Henderson's paitent.

Roberta Flack: I was the only person to video and sound record the entire event and happening at the historic launch of the Operation Push Rainbow Coalition's "Voter Registration Drive" led by Rev. Jesse Jackson, which resulted in the registering of more newly registered voters than any other Presidential candidate in the history of the United States of America. That event took place at the "back woods country church" of Mount Hope in Prince George, Virginia. The pastor of that church, Rev. Johnson and his wife, had adopted Roberta Flack. I recorded Ms. Flack there in the church's pulpit ("the gospel side") playing the piano and singing gospel music with The King Sisters and the church choir. 

Rev. Jackson preached a stirring sermon speech, to an overflow crowd that extended out into the church yard, for the launch of the Voter Registration Drive, described by Rev. Curtis Harris, who introduced Rev. Jackson, as "...a country preacher in a country church preaching to country folks." This YOUtopia INstitute video is 1 hour and 39 minutes for a requested, tax deductible, donation of $50.

Rev. Harris organized and led the "Sit ins"  in Hopewell, Virginia where I was arrested when I was 16 years old for sitting at the counter of George's Drug Store to place an order. I pleaded "No contest." a year later so that I could enlist in the US Navy, and left Hopewell for Boot Camp in Greats Lakes, Illinois one month after graduating from high school. [Note: the "Sit ins" were started when Rosa Parks, "Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement." sat in the "White seats" of a bus* in Montgomery, Alabama, and later expanded throughout the segregated Southern States of the USA during The Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An undated file photo of Curtis Harris with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Click thumbnail)

*"On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks, age 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Her action was not the first of its kind: Irene Morgan, in 1946, and Sarah Louise Keys, in 1955, had won rulings before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Interstate Commerce Commission respectively in the area of interstate bus travel. Nine months before Parks refused to give up her seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to move from her seat on the same bus system. But unlike these previous individual actions of civil disobedience, Parks' action sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

(<Click thumbnails)

Watermelon Slim: Bill Homans and I met and became friends in Boston, MA in 1973, when Bill/Slim mostly played harmonica and sang - before he began using the name Watermelon Slim some years later after he moved to Oklahoma and grew and sold watermelons for a while. I was then a member of the Billy Colwell Band, and Bill had recorded and released his first vinyl album, MERRY AIRBRAKES, in 1973, which he gave me a copy of.  

• "Returning home an fervent anti-war activist, Slim first appeared on the music scene with the release of the only known record by a veteran during the Vietnam War. The project was Merry Airbrakes, a 1973 protest tinged LP with tracks Country Joe McDonald later covered." http://www.watermelonslim.com/

·         "...the only one of my contemporaries in young-white-man-playing-the-blues I would grant that to. Billy Colwell, who made that awesome Colwell-Winfield Blues Band album of about 1968, was an awesome player I hung out with and watched several times in the early 70s in Cambridge. He drank an awful lot, and one day shot himself - and lived, paralyzed. He's gone now."  http://www.barrelhouseblues.com/watermelon_slim.htm

Jimmy Hayes: Jimmy and I grew up in Hopewell, Virginia, began the 1st grade of elementary school together and graduated from Carter G. Woodson High School in June of 1961. In high school, we briefly sang in an a cappella group before I went into the Navy and Jimmy moved to New York.

Our high school singing group of five (four males and one female) were scheduled in the summer of 1960 to sing one night during intermission of the Ike and Tina Turner show at a 'Negro' recreation area with a swimming pool deep in a rural woods location in Prince George, Virginia. We bought new matching clothes, practiced a bit while listening and watching most of the Ike and Tina Turner Band's first set.

We did not get to sing during the intermission because, just before intermission, as the band played, Ike left the bandstand. When he went back to the stage, he stopped the band and told them to pack up. There was confusion in the crowd. Eventually we learned that Ike left the band playing while he went to check with the owner about getting paid, and found that the owner had left with all of the money collected at the entrance. A light riot started, someone called the police, a police car was turned upside down, and we escaped unharmed, as well as Ike, Tina and their band in the  bus in which they were touring/working "The Chittlin' Circuit."

The original Persuasions group no longer is together after 40 years and recording over 20 albums. Jimmy is freelancing with The Jimmy Hayes Quintet, the current Coasters, etc.

Okay, that's enough of my memories, dreams and reflections from 'my little world,' for now.

As I write this, and for the first time remember and reflect on the particulars of the chronological time frames (with much more not mentioned or referred to here),  it is ALL mind boggling and unbelievable to me, but then, I do not need to believe it, with consideration of the fact that I KNOW it is all true.

"An unexamined life is not worth living."-Socrates in Plato's Apology

"YOUR best is not my best, and my best is not YOUR best, but we ALL got a best." Rev. Jesse Jackson

One 'thang' leads to another.

Jammin on...maintaining, sustaining, pursuing and attaining my IMP/Individual Maximum Potential - with Death as my ally.

Original SUFFERHEAD MUST GO if there is to be most desirable future life habitation on this planet.