Shortest day of the
year. For every day hereafter till the
end of June the daylight will just keep waxing. More light, more warmth and eventually, shed
these clothes. Everyone else will too. The solstice must have been miraculous
for primitive people in northern and southern climates. Persphone’s off to the underworld, Demeter is
sulking. Yet every year she
returns. You can begin to sense it in
the day light, if not the temperature right about now. Modern
people migrate away from the inconvenience and relocate somewhere temperate.
Modestly positive economic news announced for the U.S.
economy, which President Obama referenced today. He too wants to see the days getting brighter
on his second term. My perspective is
hopelessly skewed by the tech sector.
Valuations are soaring, enormous expansion round investments on incredible technology, everywhere
you look. Rather than modest the growth it seems like a torrent. Is the tech sector
in general and the Valley in particular really speaking to disruption that the
whole country will benefit from? As
always there’s a lag on impact of these new technologies, (cloud, big data,
software as network) here in Asia that creates an opportunity to pause and
consider.
My stepson is back home for Christmas last night. He flew in from Tokyo with his girlfriend
late last night. They’re downstairs with
my daughter who is laughing uproariously.
We create our own little mini-holiday tradition in Beijing as we all
can’t reasonably head back to New York.
The kids in particular get no holiday. They’ll have five, yes five, weeks off next month for Chinese New Year. But for Christmas we’ll have to take them out
of school for a day or two. The young couple have
both brought fancy masks with them from Japan to protect themselves from the infamous Beijing air.
Tina Brooks on the mix here.
Hard bop tenor player from Fayetteville, North Carolina. Absolutely beautiful session on his 1961
date: "The Waiting Game." It was recorded when he was down
and fairly desperate and then, never released till 2002. How under appreciated these sessions were at
the time. Apparently Tina Brooks was shy
and withdrawn by nature, and people took advantage of him and later his habit on account of
it. But then he’d put the reed to his
lips; soaring confidence. The Wiki
page on him is fairly bland. We learn
how he went from Harold to “Teeny” to Tina.
But not why it was he died in New York so young, at the age of
1974. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Brooks
A richer account is the from this blog post, provocatively
entitled “Who Killed Tina Brooks.” http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~chambers/tinabrooks.html
The author Jack Chambers suggests that, unfortunately by the
time Brooks recorded this fine album at the age of 28, his career was
essentially finished. Blue Note execs Alfred
Lion and Francis Wolff held him in disregard, because of his meek persona, his dependency
and shabby condition and paid him for the session but then shelved it. Tina
Brooks was stooped and timid. He was 羞于启齿[1] in a tough world where silence and weakness were exploited. He’d get stuck up for his sax on the
street would be forced to get a new one. The heroine habit though, was central
and exacerbated his problems and accelerated his demise. By the end of the decade, he couldn’t even
hold his horn.
There are some fascinating anecdotes by guitarist Grant Greene and alto player Jackie Mclean. The latter actually
compared working at Blue Note as working with a Nazi regime. As Chambers points out both Lion and Wolf
were ironically German Jews who escaped the Nazis.
The piece I liked the most was by the fiery trumpet player Freddie
Hubbard who describes Tina Brooks, before he was strung out, cap in hand,
shaking, begging but when he was creating, sharing, innovating:
"I loved Tina," "He had a nice feeling.... He would write
shit out on the spot and it would be beautiful. He wrote 'Gypsy Blue' for me on
the first record, and I loved it. I just loved it. Tina made my first record
date wonderful. He wrote and played beautifully. What a soulful, inspiring
cat."
It makes me think of older guys I’ve passed on
the street in New York, playing on the street for coins. Tina Brooks passed too early for me to have
seen, but who are the other jazz veterans I may have passed and assumed were
‘nobodies.’ What a
shame that the world couldn’t be more accommodating to this shy, diminutive,
yet masterful player. Out in that bare knuckled scene, he held the world at bay long enough to create something eternal. We’re very lucky it wasn’t simply left on the
catalogue shelf.
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