Salute to My Mother

I don't know if I've ever gone this long without doing a blog post. This is the kind of gap that makes you think, "Looks like that blog isn't coming back." But the past couple months had a lot of writing going on in other places, which left little brain space for here. Though I often had germs of ideas for quick album write-ups, I have been psyching myself out when I realized the albums were six months old, and came out in 2024. 

For anyone who isn't familiar with my latest journalistic escapades, here is the lowdown and some links:

For the first time in seven years, my byline appeared in Pittsburgh City Paper in May. It only ran on their website, but I wrote a preview feature on James Brandon Lewis' show in the Jazz Poetry Month event at City of Asylum. 

Then, a dream came true and I got to interview Beth Kaplan and Judy Grunwald from Salem 66 about the band's history and the compilation of their music that just came out. It marked my writing debut for The Big Takeover. 

Before I even pitched The Big Takeover on that story, I talked to them about a story on Fly Ashtray, a long-standing New York which was once on Shimmy-Disc and continues to make music over 40 years after they got together. It was such a detailed piece, it ran in two parts. 

Part One is here. 

Part Two is here. 

Somewhere in there, I managed to find time to interview Marc Ribot for JazzTimes. 

Then my son graduated high school. 

Then, my mom died. It's hard typing that. Not because I'm a complete mess now that she's gone. It's just a big thing to throw at people. And, I think, I'm doing okay. My mom had dementia for several years and while the changes in her were hard to see, she kept plowing on, like the force of nature that she was. The longer she stayed around, the more I tried to adapt to her world. She remembered me and my four siblings and our spouses, but the day-to-day stuff slipped away. She went peacefully, drifting off in the house I grew up in, and where she wanted to be.  

One thing about my mom that came up during the viewing, talking to longtime friends and relatives, is how she could be a catalyst for things to happen. I always viewed her more as someone who was a little underconfident, and saw a big gap between her and other people. But that wasn't always the case. For one thing, she talked two members of the Four Freshman into coming to a party at her house, after seeing them perform. They didn't stay too long, and years later, Mom said she wondered if the guys thought they were going to get some action and, when that didn't happen, they split. But that doesn't matter - she got welcomed them to her house - the house where she lived with her parents, by the way.

In going through papers at the house last week, we came across an envelope with two letters from composer/bandleader Neal Hefti. If his name doesn't ring a bell, just think of the themes to Batman and The Odd Couple. That's his work. 

Mom told me the story when I was a kid about how she wanted my dad's group to play the Hefti song "Falling In Love All Over Again," for what I think was a fashion show at our church. They couldn't find charts for the tune so somehow, she got Hefti's number and called him. "May I please speak to Neal Hefti," she asked. "SPEAKING," the voice on the other end replied. Maybe she called a hotel room when he was in Pittsburgh for a gig. Or maybe my uncle (her brother) got her the number. Regardless, she called ("the bold thing," to borrow a phrase of hers) and he sent her the music - two different versions of it, as you'll see below. 

Unfortunately, the sheet music that Hefti enclosed is long gone, which is too bad because the song is a beautiful ballad. Phil Woods recorded it on his album Woodlore (Prestige), which I got for my birthday from the folks when I was high school. To this day, that's the only version of the tune I've heard as well. 

But the story doesn't end there. Five years later, she received another letter from him. (By then, I guess they were old pals since he addresses her as "Martha," rather than "Mrs. Shanley.") I'm pretty sure my mom's letter was related to the purchase of the Count Basie album Basie Plays Hefti, which she and/or my dad picked up around that time. 

I love the sincerity in Hefti's tone: he's grateful that my dad was still playing his tune, which he'd like to hear someday, and hopefully he'd also meet my mom someday. Not for any reason other than the fact that he appreciated her enthusiasm for the music. She was like that. It was all about sharing. And her energy was contagious.