There were some Ray Bryant stories I wanted to get to in the earlier piece about him, but it was too long, as usual. I’m considering a reverse Tom Waits: having had a bottle in front of me for many years, I may opt for a frontal lobotomy in the hope it might shorten my writing. It’s not as if it I’m a mental giant or anything, there would be no great loss involved. Anyway, here goes.

Though he …

The pianist Ray Bryant died in June of 2011 and has recently been on my mind a lot, mostly because I chanced to hear some of his records again lately. Though he made a lot of good ones, most of them don’t quite do him justice. You really had to hear him live to get the full impact and joy of his playing. Luckily for me, I both heard and played with Ray live quite a bit – a …