I passed this flugelhorn player on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 39th street in Manhattan yesterday. He was playing Miles Davis' "So What?"
The guy was well equipped, with a portable speaker and a microphone coiled over his music stand. He used a CD to play the song minus the trumpet solo.
He reproduced Davis' solo admirably. I should have dropped a couple of bucks in his tin can, but I was in a hurry to visit a client. (Well, that's not much of an excuse.)
The guy switched between a trumpet and the flugelhorn. You can barely see the trumpet on a stand near his right knee.
“So What?” was on the “Kind of Blue” LP, recorded in New York City in 1959, not so far from where this guy on the street was playing.
This was probably the most important record in the history of Bebop. The drummer on the record, Jimmy Cobb, lived in Woodstock for a long time. Might still live here for all I know. Back in the day, I played in a jam session with Jimmy. Woodstock used to be good for that. I played with everybody, just for the thrill of playing, before I became a cynical old man.
My first instrument was the trumpet. Well, to be precise, it was a cornet. My high school music teacher introduced me to Dixieland and jazz. I drove my parents nuts with that cornet, sitting up in my bedroom playing along with Miles Davis records. God bless them, they didn't complain unless I played too far into the night.
My neighbors had to wonder what in the hell it was all about... Bebop floating out over the cornfields of central Illinois on a hot, humid summer night.



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