Tag Archives: music

The Talent Scout

It was three o’clock in morning, a cold winter day in New York City, he had left the Jazz club, and turned on the radio in his car.

He scanned the radio stations, listening.  Then he heard it.

It was something new.

He knew natural talent when he heard it.

His ear was incomparable and he knew who and how to promote them.

From Billie Holiday to Bennie Goodman to Pete Seeger to Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen: generations of musicians. The Ultimate HIP.

But he looked like a square.

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What a Wonderful World

His singing was gravelly and raspy.

He hadn’t been allowed in the front door of opportunity.

I see trees of green…….. red roses too 
I see em bloom….. for me and for you 
And I think to myself.… what a wonderful world.

He had worked hard all his life.

But he didn’t care

His work was fun, for he was the ultimate Entertainer.

He sang and played in a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue….. clouds of white 
Bright blessed days….dark sacred nights 
And I think to myself …..what a wonderful world.

For a man who knew the Blues…  The Blues of the Segregrated South.

And Boy, that man could blow that Gabriel horn.

Where in the world did all that Jass come from?

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The Natural

Most of us struggle to find what we do best: natural talent and circumstance is not aligned.

But on this rare occasion, he could hear it, clearly — from the beginning.

There is geometry in the humming of the strings,
there is music in the spacing of the spheres.
Pythagoras

For he was a Natural.

A Composer that became a composer, from the start.

God  bless the child,
who’s got his own.
Billy Holiday

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Supplying the Cool

It’s cool daddy-o.

Have you heard the expression?  If you have, when?

If you haven’t, it says something about you.  Maybe your age and where you were born.

He had heard it, and really had a subtle influence on the lingo as the 50s and 60s as they progressed.

As the host of the television after-school dance program “American Bandstand” he made an ideal surrogate chaperone: a wholesome, polite, honorary adolescent. Although he was 27 when the program was first broadcast nationally on Aug. 5, 1957, he could have passed for 17. At the time he seemed the sort of mild-mannered superannuated boy who might once have served on the school safety patrol and been elected class treasurer. In fact he had been the president of his high school student council in Mount Vernon, N.Y. [Wikipedia]

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