In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed actor Dennis Quaid for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Dennis talked about his early love, Gertrude, and why she went missing for so long. Dennis is in a new movie, I Can Only Imagine, which opened yesterday. [Photo above from YouTube] Here's the trailer...
Also in the WSJ, my interview with artist Duncan Hannah for my "Playlist" column (go here). Growing up in Minnesota, Duncan dreamed of coming to New York to be a painter. The song that inspired him was the Velvet Underground's Rock & Roll and the New York sound of Lou Reed's voice. When Duncan arrived in 1973, he encountered Reed at Max's Kansas City. Reed was nasty, and as Hannah told me, he stopped listening to Reed's solo album. Now he regrets meeting him. Here's Lou Reed performing Rock & Roll...
Jean-Michel Basquiat. Following my post last week on Jean-Michel Basquiat's painting, The Horn Players, photographer and author Hank O'Neal sent along an image he took recently of the exterior of Basquiat's studio in New York (above).
Hank's new book, Preserving Lives: An American Family's Scrapbook, 1920-1950, is due in May. [Photo above courtesy of Hank O'Neal]
Calypso bop. Following my post last week on Justin Hinds, Sid Gribetz added a few of his favorite Calypso bop tracks:
Here's Lord Kitchener's Bebop Calypso...
And here's Young Tiger's Calypso Be...
Gene Lee's Jazzletter was published monthly from 1981 to 2008. Now you can read them all online for free here.
What the heck. Here's Elton John and English pop singer Kiki Dee on Don't Go Breaking My Heart...
Oddball album cover of the week.
Jazz artists including Shorty Rogers, John Coltrane, Buddy Collette, Sun Ra and many others were obsessed with space in the '50s and '60s. As you can see, Woody Herman is on that intergalactic list as well. Though I wonder if the title of the album above has more to do with Albert Marx's Mars label that Herman was on for a period in the 1950s vs. the red planet.
