At 42, Ichiro Suzuki is just a few hits shy of becoming the 30th player to reach the 3,000-hit milestone. He could get there as early as this weekend and, in his sixteenth big-league season he will become the second fastest to achieve this, behind only career hits leader Pete Rose. When he does crank out hit number 3,000, he will join Hall-of-Famers Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Eddie Collins and Paul Molitor as the only players with at least …
Two important musicians – pianist Don Friedman and trumpeter Erich Traugott – died in late June. I was late in hearing about both because I was unconnected for a few days, off playing at the Rochester Jazz Festival. It’s often said that bad news comes in threes, but in this case these two losses were counteracted about a week later by some good news: major donations of jazz material to the Sound and Moving Images Library and the Clara …
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” – William Shakespeare, from Hamlet.
Yesterday a friend sent me a YouTube clip of Paul Gonsalves and Chick Corea playing Corea’s signature “Windows” in 1966, with Aaron Bell on bass and Louie Bellson on drums. No, that’s not a typo………. even before listening to it, I was astonished by its mere existence. I mean, Paul Gonsalves and Chick Corea?!? They’re not a pair …