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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Correspondence: A Book Deal

May 1, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Following Gene Lees’ passing, the Canadian tenor saxophonist, pianist, composer, arranger and educator Phil Dwyer sent a story about how he acquired one of Gene’s books.

In the spring of 1990, I was playing in New York, at a club call Visione’s (in the Village) with David Friesen and Alan Jones. It was the middle of a long (seven Phil Dwyer.jpg weeks) tour. It would ultimately be the last tour for the group, which had formed in 1987. For me, the New York stop was a highlight not only because it was New York, but also because my new girlfriend was traveling down from Toronto to meet up with me for the two days we were there. The tour had been a little tense, so it was great to have someone else to talk to for a few days!
Anyway, we’re playing at Visione’s and I popped across the street on the break to grab a slice, I don’t remember which place (50/50 chance it was some kind of “Ray’s”) and was standing on the street eating it when this twitchy fellow approached me….”Hey, man, where did you get that pizza?” Bear in mind I am standing about 20 feet from the pizza store at this point…..”Man, I’m starving, I’ve been out selling these books all day, can you spare a couple of dollars for a brother to get a slice?”
“Books?” says I, “What books do you have for sale?”
He opened the bag up, and I could see maybe 7 or 8 copies of The Will To Swing.
“Sell me a book” I said, vaguely aware that I was probably skating over some kind of moral blue-line at this stage.* “How much?”
“Ten dollars, brother”
Will to Swing.jpgI only had a twenty, so I passed him the twenty, and he reached into his pocket, where he had a roll of bills certainly more substantial than I did. He peeled off a ten for my change and passed it over with a sparkling new copy of the book. By this time I’m starting to feel a little weird about the whole thing, the books were almost certainly “hot”, I didn’t know Gene at the time but had several mutual friends, etc, but it all went down so fast and completely out of the blue that I was mostly thinking about what a great deal I was getting on this book which I had been hoping to get (I rank myself as a 10/10 when it comes to being an Oscar fan). Anyway, the deal was done and it was time to head back in for the second set.
As I turned to cross the street and return to Visione’s, the book guy stopped me…….”Hey man, what about the couple of dollars for the pizza?”
Too weird.
*Hockey metaphor; not sure if that translates

.

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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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