Miss Patsy (Day 145)

Thelonious Monk - "Off Minor" (take 5)
The Arcade Fire - "Intervention"
The Beastie Boys - "High Plains Drifter"
Aimee Mann - "I Could Hurt You Now"
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - "Come Rain Or Come Shine"
Richard Thomspon - "Miss Patsy"
The Beatles - "Baby You're A Rich Man"
Lee Morgan - "Gary's Notebook"
It's jazz day at WILTOMWTWT! Funny how weeks will go by and I won't hear a single jazz tune and then - - voila - - three very solid ones. I spent a little time trying to figure out exactly what percentage of the 11,298 songs on my iPod are jazz. Unfortunately the 'genre' label is the only one I don't really stay on top of. I'm pretty anal about having the right track name, artist and album and keeping things organized but the genre label seems superfluous. I mean it's pretty meaningless in real life let alone in the iTunes library. BUT, right about now it would help me get some idea of the rock/jazz ratio. I soldiered on anyway and spent a few minutes moving all the songs with a jazz genre tag (for the record, this includes jazz, bop, hard bop, cool/West Coast jazz, big band swing and jazz vocals), as well as any other I could quickly ID into a "JAZZ" playlist. The total? Only 390 songs! I'm shocked. I actually thought there were more. That's just 3.45% of all the music. Which makes the odds of today's 3-play, well, even greater. (Be happy I figured out this percentage, beyond that I'll need math back-up.) Conclusion? Must add more jazz. (If you have suggestions, please leave 'em. Clearly, I like most bop...) Meanwhile, it never ceases to amaze me how incredibly crazy the lives of most of these 50s and 60s era jazz artists are. I was really digging this Lee Morgan tune so I headed over to Wikipedia to find out a litte more about his background. Lo and behold, it could be a freaking movie-of-the-week. Check it out.

By 1965, Morgan's addiction had returned, and (according to Nat Hentoff's book, Jazz Masters of the 50s) Blakey felt he was unable to use him anymore. Billy Hart says that things deteriorated to the point where Morgan was sleeping on pool tables, and didn't even have a horn, let alone a working band. He borrowed a horn for the recording of Night of the Cookers, in which he sat in with Freddie Hubbard's band at a live gig in New York. The recording captures some of Morgan's weakest playing. Helen More, who became his girlfriend and later his common-law wife, helped Morgan clean up his act. He eventually put together a working band and re-established himself.

(...)

Lee Morgan was shot by Helen More following an argument between sets at Slug's, a popular New York City jazz club. According to an interview with drummer Billy Hart, Morgan had gotten into a dispute with a drug dealer, after buying a large amount of cocaine. He called More and asked her to bring his gun to him at the club. More showed up, and spotted him with another woman, who Morgan was planning to leave More for. An argument erupted, and Morgan kicked More out of the club. When she returned to retrieve her coat (which she had forgotten), Morgan got into a scuffle with her, and the gun went off. An ambulance was late in showing up, and Morgan bled to death. More was judged to be insane at the time of the shooting.

There are conflicting reports of the shooting. According to the biography "DelightfuLee: The Life and Music of Lee Morgan" by Jeffery McMillan, More -- who had nursed Morgan back from heroin addiction and was a stabilizing force for Lee for the previous five or so years -- was a very jealous woman. Morgan had wanted to start a relationship with another woman and was trying to leave Helen More. Helen went down to Slugs on that fateful night and argued with Morgan because the woman was at the club. Lee forcefully removed More from Slugs. She returned to the club shortly after and pulled her gun. Morgan taunted her to shoot him. As he approached the bandstand for the third set, Helen More delivered a single fatal shot to Morgan's chest. He bled to death en route to the hospital.

And then I got to work.

Today's Stats
Total songs listened to: 8
Total minutes of music (approx.): 37
Song with the most previous plays: "Miss Patsy" - 10
How I Rate Today's Playlist (1-10): 7
Miscellaneous factoid about my trip to work today: The tanking economy is ruining my commute. Okay, not exactly, but allow me to be shallow and unfeeling for a moment. Due to budget cuts, naturally, the New York Times has folded the Sports section into the Business section. How annoying! Gone is the glorious color on the front page of the section. And now the combined Business/Sports is cumbersome and unwieldy. Uggh.