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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Correspondence: About Gil Coggins

October 16, 2007 by Doug Ramsey

Rifftides reader Sam Stephenson writes from North Carolina:

I’m excited to hear this new Gil Coggins record. Thank you for the tip.
I only wish it could have been released before he passed.
In 2002 I interviewed Gil as part of my loft project. He was a veteran of the 6th Ave. loft I’m researching and is recorded on a few of W. Eugene Smith’s tapes circa 1960-61.
I went to hear Gil at his regular gig in the East Village, where he played beautifully the night I heard him, and a few days later we met for the interview. He met me on the sidewalk outside his apartment, also in the East Village, where I think he’d lived for several decades, and he was
dressed impeccably in a suit, vest, and tie, topped off with a fedora.
His gigantic car – I think it was a late 1970’s Cadillac – was parked out front and he needed to move it, so we got in his car and drove around lower Manhattan for more than an hour. We were talking and listening intermittently to Freddy Cole on a cassette he had in the car. Gil wanted to stop at a McDonalds somewhere down below Canal St. and I watched him parallel park his car in a spot where I was sure the car wouldn’t fit. He did it without even turning his head, using only the mirrors. I couldn’t believe it. Then, we drove back to his place and he did it again in a new spot. He was definitely the best parallel parker I’ve ever seen, especially among folks who used only their mirrors to do it.
We talked more and afterward he drove over to Smalls to meet Jimmy Wormworth and some others. I was sick to have another appointment that night and miss that gig. When I listen to this record you write about I’m going to pretend that it was the gig I missed.

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Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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Doug’s Picks

We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside

As Rifftides readers have undoubtedly noticed, it has been a long time since we posted. We are creating a new post in hopes  that it will open the way to resumption of frequent reports as part of the artsjournal.com mission to keep you up to date on jazz and other matters. Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s stunning new trio album […]

Recent Listening: The New David Friesen Trio CD

David Friesen Circle 3 Trio: Interaction (Origin) Among the dozens of recent releases that deserve serious attention, a few will get it. Among those those receiving it here is bassist David Friesen’s new album.  From the Portland, Oregon, sinecure in which he thrives when he’s not touring the world, bassist Friesen has been performing at […]

Monday Recommendation: Dominic Miller

Dominic Miller Absinthe (ECM) Guitarist and composer Miller delivers power and subtlety in equal measure. Abetted by producer Manfred Eicher’s canny guidance and ECM’s flawless sound and studio presence, Miller draws on inspiration from painters of France’s impressionist period. His liner essay emphasizes the importance to his musical conception of works by Cezanne, Renoir, Lautrec, […]

Recent Listening: Dave Young And Friends

Dave Young, Lotus Blossom (Modica Music) Young, the bassist praised by Oscar Peterson for his “harmonic simpatico and unerring sense of time” when he was a member of Peterson’s trio, leads seven gifted fellow Canadians. His beautifully recorded bass is the underpinning of a relaxed session in which his swing is a force even during […]

Recent Listening: Jazz Is Of The World

Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano, Jan Lundgren, Mare Nostrum III (ACT) This third outing by Mare Nostrum continues the international trio’s close collaboration in a series of albums that has enjoyed considerable success. With three exceptions, the compositions in this installment are by the members of Mare Nostrum. It opens with one the French accordionist Galliano […]

Monday Recommendation: Thelonious Monk’s Works In Full

Kimbrough, Robinson, Reid, Drummond: Monk’s Dreams(Sunnyside) The subtitle of this invaluable 6-CD set is The Complete Compositions Of Thelonious Sphere Monk. By complete, Sunnyside means that the box contains six CDs with 70 tunes that Monk wrote beginning in the early years when his music was generally assumed to be an eccentric offshoot of bebop, […]

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Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
On An Overgrown Path

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PressThink: Jay Rosen
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