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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Lawrence Lucie At 100

December 19, 2007 by Doug Ramsey

Following a succession of deaths in the top ranks of jazz, it is a pleasure to tell you about an elderly musician who is getting attention because he is alive.Lucie.jpgThe veteran rhythm guitarist and teacher Lawrence Lucie has passed the century mark. Here is an excerpt from today’s New York Times story about Lucie.

On the eve of his 100th birthday on Monday night, Mr. Lucie, sitting in a wheelchair, could not go 20 seconds without receiving an embrace, a pat on the back or a handshake from one of the many jazz connoisseurs gathered at the offices of the musicians’ union in Midtown Manhattan. The well-wishers were there to pay homage to his legacy.
And it is quite impressive.
He is the last living person to have performed with Duke Ellington at New York’s legendary Cotton Club. He played with Benny Carter at the Apollo Theater in 1934, the year it opened its doors to black customers. He played with Louis Armstrong for several years and was the best man at his wedding.

To read the whole thing, go here.

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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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All About Jazz
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Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong
Don Heckman: The International Review Of Music
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Cyber Jazz Today, John Birchard
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Bill Crow
Easy Does It: Fernando Ortiz de Urbana
Bill Evans Web Pages
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Ronan Guilfoyle: Mostly Music
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Jan Lundgren (Friends of)
Willard Jenkins/The Independent Ear
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Tarik Townsend: It’s A Raggy Waltz
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DevraDoWrite
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
On An Overgrown Path

Journalism
PressThink: Jay Rosen
Second Draft, Tim Porter
Poynter Online

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