Then coincindentally the other night Eric of “Eric in the Evening” played “Equinox” which caught me.

Thanks for the jog to listen.

1) The great Leo Kotke still seems to draw an audience. Who else?

2) The electric guitar to my mind the most dominant musical innovation of the 20th century, so you might be right.

3) Big-band is expensive, so are the tickets. There’s a market for it in Europe, where jazz still has a broad appeal. Seems you need a major, well funded setting to hear the music. No more Hi-De-Hi-De-Ho in smoke-filled basements.

4) You’re probably right. Music feeds on music. Arrangements seem to be out of fashion, except in rap music, to stretch the term.

1) Can music without vocals be popular music anymore?

2) Did the electric guitar, combined with vocals, dull peoples’ taste for other instruments?

3) Could jazz step “backwards” to the post-big band sounds of the ’50s which combined real jazz with vocals (I’m thinking of the Marty Paich Dektette and Mel Torme around 1955, e.g., or various combos with Ella and Frank)? If that sound would be more popular than current jazz, why won’t performers offer it today? Is it not cool enough?

4) Has the expectation that performers do original material, rather than a new version of a classic song, killed jazz in favor of simple songs, accompanied by simple instrumentation?

But don’t the magnificent scope and speed of Coltrane’s meteoric flight across the sky make him, still, the most compelling mystery in American music?

And then came Eric Dolphy…

Thanks for the post, Chris. Looking forward to your interviews.