Too hot for words

Digitizing the four albums from Columbia called The Quintessential Billie Holiday- spanning 1933 to 1937, when she was 18 to 22 years old. This early period is not as well known as her Lady in Satin agonies. Amazed by the strength and spirit in her voice and the generally jaunty and untroubled or even outright upbeat subject matter (the usual Tin Pan Alley romance). Also some great playing from Roy Eldridge, Ben Webster, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, Cozy Cole, etc. 

A real reminder of the ravages of heroin and booze, as well as how disposable all of America's great geniuses have been when it comes to black music. 

Also from the vaults, I finally transferred from VHS to DVD a video of a performance I was part of back in the summer of 1991(I think), Jazz in the Sangres, a festival that used to be put on every year in Westcliffe Colorado. With bassist Zimbabwe NKenya, John Baldwin on cornet, me on drums and piano and Steve Feld (MacArthur genius grant winner for his ethnomusicology of the music of Papua New Guinea) on low brass.

I continue mining, digging out ruthlessly and working on transmuting what I find. Mostly getting rid of anything and everything that I can condense, digitize, replace, make useful again in some other way. 

It's not exactly fun but it feels absolutely essential somehow. And it is an externalized version of exactly what's going on "inside." One thing that will be strange: revisiting the writing I did from about age 18 to 25 or so, that I have been carrying around but not re-reading for the past 3 decades. I'm thinking I might scan some of it-- but otherwise, I imagine a ritual fire of some kind.