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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

A Birthday To Crow About

The Rifftides staff unaccountably overlooked a memo designed to alert us yesterday to an important birthday. Bill Crow, bassist, tubist, author and occasional correspondent to this blog, became 84 years old on December 27. He continues to gig on both of his instruments and to write, among other things, his Band Room column in Allegro, the newspaper of New York musicians union local 802. Now that he is 84 and one day, we wish Bill all the best now, in 2012 and for a long time thereafter.

Here is Mr. Crow in the Gerry Mulligan quartet with Art Farmer and Dave Bailey at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958. It’s from Bert Stern’s film Jazz on a Summer’s Day. The piece is Mulligan’s “As Catch Can,” recorded the same year in the album What Is There To Say?

Asked in an exchange this morning on the Jazz West Coast listserve why all of those beautiful girls were flipping over the bass player, Mr. Crow replied, “Because he was so young and handsome.”

Was?

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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, … [MORE]

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