2009, AMF

I don't know anyone who will miss 2009. It hasn't been the best of years. Most people claim that they are not superstitious. But in the same breath, they will own up to saying that a year has been bad. Think of it. A segment of time a line is unlucky? That's pure superstition. But being an old sailor, I can be as superstitious as I care to be. We sailors are, after all, a superstitious lot.

For me, 1981 was way worse. My father died that year. I was diagnosed with cancer. It was a false alarm, but needless to say it scared the crap out of me. My second marriage did die. I was trying to sell real estate and the prime rate rose to 23%. Try selling that. My 1979 diesel Cadillac turned into a rolling time bomb, literally. But I did quit smoking and I moved aboard my boat, so it wasn't all bad.

But I digress. Now, all we have to do is muddle through the next five days and by magic, it will all be over. The sun will come out from behind the clouds. People will start spending money again. Businesses will start hiring again. And then plastic forming machines will start selling again.

It could happen.

The British are coming.

In 1963, we heard about the Beatles, and later the Rolling Stones. To use the terms English and Rock & Roll in the same sentence seemed to be an oxymoron. The Brits were so, reserved. Guess again! The Beatles and the Stones and The Who were really good as were the other groups. But I stuck to my Jazz guns. I was living a half hour away from San Francisco and some of the best Jazz clubs on the planet were in North Beach. I went to town as often as I could considering I was carrying a extremely heavy academic load as a student at the Navy's Missile Technician's B School. It was an Electrical Engineering curriculum without the humanities crammed into nine months of 40 hour a week classroom time. Five years later, when I did get to go to college, a 14 hour week was a walk in the park. About November of 63, the Beatles and right behind them came the British Invasion. I was stationed on an aircraft carrier in San Diego, the USS Constellation, and spent a lot of time at sea. Still listening to Jazz.

Six months later in February of 64, I was sent up to new construction at Todd Shipyard in Seattle and found more Jazz clubs up there in Washington state. By November we were back down in Long Beach and life in So. Cal. kicked the pace yet up another notch. We found a lot of good Jazz clubs around.

From Pomona to Indiana

As I was saying, the Ed Sullivan Sixties retrospective took me back to that era which was unlike nothing before, or since. Music for me and probably most other folks is the definer of the various periods of our lives. Music up to about 1956 consisted of either old Swing Era stuff, Pop and Hill Billy Country with a little Western. There was some really good black R&B and Jazz around, but for the average white boy from Cleveland, it was hard to access. Although Allen Freed, the Moondog, was in Cleveland and started playing R&R in 1951, a term which he coined, he was long gone by 1956. Having moved on to New York.

All of a sudden, here was Elvis & Chuck Berry & Little Richard & Fats Domino & Buddy Holly and Bill Haily with his Comets. As quick as they came, they seemed to fade away. Elvis was drafted in 1958. Buddy Holly along with Richy Valens and The Big Bopper died in that plane crash in 1959 and things seemed to fade. Ray Charles started doing Country & Western and other things that lost my attention.

So I got hooked on Jazz. the Jazz of the late fifties and the early sixties is the best, in my humble but expert opinion. The names are to numerous to list right here. Maybe I will in another blog, but right now, I don't want my train of thought derailed.

After three months in Pomona Calif., the Navy stationed me at NAD Crane Indiana. One hundred and ten square miles of explosives in underground magazines situated in southern Indiana. Smack in the geographic center of nowhere. We were too far to get decent radio reception from Indianapolis or Louisville and the local stations aired more pork belly futures than music. It wasn't all that bad because when we were out and near a station, the radio sucked anyway. So when I was near a city, I stocked up on more Jazz LPs.