Today's jazz music: Bob James in the morning and afternoon; Eric Gale in the evening.
1. Listening to Bob James much of the day today took me on a welcome trip back to about 1977-78. My memory is a bit fuzzy on this. I'd sure appreciate any help if what I'm about to write brings memories back for any of you reading this post.
I think the term used in radioland for stations like KXLY-AM 920 in Spokane was Middle of the Road (MOR). Their programming was built around soft rock and smooth jazz, so one might hear Chuck Mangione ("Feels So Good") or Bob James ("Angela") followed by Debbie Boone singing "You Light Up My Life" or Bob Welch belting out "Sentimental Lady". Host Joe Lyons (in the Lyon's Den) loved Michael Franks' song "Popsicle Toes". I got to hear it a lot. Ha! It was an easy station to wake up to in the morning and the CBS radio news programming was terrific, especially Charles Osgood's daily spot.
Now, here's where I could use some help. KXLY's programming also included a show on Saturday nights that I listened to frequently that counted down the week's most popular smooth jazz tunes. I think the show had the words "jazz" and "countdown" in the title and I would love to recover the name of the show's host. At the time I was listening to this show, the most popular tune week after week was George Benson's "On Broadway", but the show regularly featured Chuck Mangione, The Crusaders, Bob James, Joe Sample, Grover Washington, Jr, and many other similar muscians.
This style of jazz was popular among my friends, students, people I worked with at Whitworth, and people my wife worked with downtown in Spokane. I can't remember if these people listened to the jazz countdown show, but I loved the many conversations I had, listening to albums with other people, and, on occasion, playing some smooth jazz on LPs with my poker buddies.
Over time, I moved on from listening to this style of jazz and began listening to Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Oscar Peterson, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Chet Baker and other jazz musicians. I listen to all of them to this day and, every day, when I tune into Billy Collins live broadcast, he plays jazz music and my horizons broaden.
Recently, though, I've been enjoying the sounds of those artists I listened to on KXLY -- I've enjoyed their wanderings into fusion, the funky inclusion of the slap bass guitar, the inclusion of the electric piano, the jazz covers of songs like "Masquerade" or "Feel Like Making Love", and memories of Saturday evenings in the tiny house on Mountain View Lane in Spokane, lying down on the love seat, my legs hanging over the far end, tuning in to the jazz show on KXLY, thinking I'd never forget the name of the show and the host, but now I have, and listening to and taking in the elegance of smooth jazz, as if I were under the comfort of feathery duvet.
2. We listeners were fortunate that Billy Collins didn't cancel his broadcast today. He is plagued with an attack of the gout. We learned from Suzannah from off camera that his foot, out of sight behind his resolute desk, was elevated.
I enjoyed Billy Collins reading a selection of his own poetry, but, even more, I enjoyed responses to recent writing I've done about his readings. Don M. sent me a link featuring a reading of W. B. Yeats' poem "The Second Coming". Diane S. wrote about how she's been working from home during the pandemic. She has replaced her morning commute to the U of Washington with a morning walk on a gorgeous trail near where she and Bill live and, in the ecstatic spirit of Marvell's "The Garden", she joins in spiritual union with the world of nature.
She also commented about how much her four years of university study meant to her, describing the experience of being a student in a way that matches my experience at NIC and Whitworth. We both experienced having four years of study as a luxury, as a time to experience the flames of our deepest interests to be fanned and fueled. I know that I reached a point in my undergraduate studies when I no longer thought about grades and I didn't think much about what I'd do for work when my four years of studies ended. (Luckily, that worked out.) All I cared about was learning. I was hungry, even greedy, and whether I was that good of a student or not, my inner life of learning was being fed. It expanded. Reading, listening to lectures, writing, and talking with professors and friends at school about poetry, plays, novels, history, art, theology, and other stimulating things intoxicated me. I loved it.
As an instructor, I tried to convey this love in the classroom and in conferences with my students, hoping to help them see that what we were doing wasn't primarily about grades and credits and earning a degree to get a job, but was about beauty and the great questions of what it means to be human.
I also heard from Deborah. She told me that reading my words of wonder and love about poetry and other things have been a balm during these weary days of sheltering in place. We shared our love of Mary Oliver.
Deborah's email, much like Diane's comments and Kathleen's email to me the other day, encourages me to keep writing about my daily experiences with poetry, fiction, music, conversations, and so on, not only as record for myself, but as a way of deepening friendships and our understanding of each other as we communicate about what's written here at kelloggbloggin'.
3. Late this afternoon, I had to go to Yoke's to pick up some medicine and a few groceries. Debbie and I agreed it would be fun to take a night off from eating superb home prepared food and eat a pizza. I brought home a pizza from Yoke's baked and ready to eat and Debbie and I sat on the deck and downed slices and talked about all that had happened today -- family updates, pandemic updates, Billy Collins' gout, Gibbs' house training progress, and other things. A little later, we dropped in on Christy and Everett. Like us, they were enjoying how we'd had a cooler day today in Kellogg and how the night air was growing more refreshing as the outdoors grew darker and darker.
Here's a limerick by Stu:
We know Sugar makes things taste sweeta!
And wearing tennies not boots make you fleeta!
So today if you make,
A blended drink to partake?
You need this to create a Margarita.
National Tequila Day
Si Si Senor
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