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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Other Places: Pat And Deval Patrick

March 17, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Deval, Pat Patrick.jpgGovernor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts grew up apart from his father, Pat. His dad was a saxophonist who devoted most of his adult life to the music and spacebound teachings of Sun Ra, the band leader who for many devotees of the avant garde epitomizes freedom and adventure in late 20th century jazz. Patrick’s wild baritone saxophone solos, often played far above the horn’s normal range, were forpatpatrick.jpg more than 30 years rousing components of Sun Ra’s concerts and recordings.
Governor Patrick has seldom spoken about his father, but nearly twenty years after his death, the governor and his family have donated Pat Patrick’s collection of scores, photographs and recordings to Berklee College of Music. In today’s Boston Globe, David Abel reports on the donation, the contrast between the free-spirited father and his studious son, and their spotty relationship. The online version of the story includes a video clip with the voices of father and son and samples of Pat Patrick’s playing with Sun Ra. To read it, go here.
This clip of the Sun Ra Arkestra in Berlin in 1986 will give you an idea of the difference between Pat Patrick’s working environment and that of his son in the statehouse. Patrick, Sr.’s baritone sets the riff :40 into the video. Don’t miss his duet with the trombonist beginning at 4:00. Take a deep breath and click on the Play symbol.

For quieter moment’s in Patrick’s career, you will find him in the reed section on Jimmy Heath’s Really Big CD, Blue Mitchell’s rare A Sure Thing and John Coltrane’s Africa Brass Sessions.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

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Comments

  1. Ed Leimbacher says

    March 17, 2010 at 2:21 pm

    Hmmm… do you reckon that’s how Patrick got to be a saint, playing with Trane and Sun Ra both? and that regular immersion in his dad’s music would make son-of-saint pol a better guv?

  2. Ariel says

    March 18, 2010 at 10:21 pm

    Seems pretty studious to me!

  3. Paul Lindemeyer says

    March 24, 2010 at 2:44 pm

    Saxophonists, or their progeny, in high office are nothing new of course. Did you know Crazy Al Greenspan did a cuppa joe stint on the Woody Herman band? But he and Clinton basically read the spots.
    The son of an Arkestrian, OTOH…yes, I think he could potentially be a person of expanded consciousness, but it strikes me that that’s not the kind of person we vote for. Too kum-ba-ya. Too highfaluting. Spiritual unity was all right for the Back Bay transcendentalists, but it don’t cut no ice in Southie or Roxbury.
    One of the things we insist a chief executive do is to wade head-on into the bull—t – to cut thru some kinds, to reinforce and validate other kinds. If he negotiates this right AND looks to his public image (more bull, you could say), he may be kept on.
    But I don’t know that a playful, crazyass, Ra-like perspective is compatible with those goals. We not only demand that leaders wade into the bull, but that they take it seriously.

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 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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