Tom Dent from Tulane archives

The JazzFest people sent me an announcement about a lecture series at Congo Square, and I noticed it was named for Tom Dent. It made me verify that we were talking about a different Tom Dent that the man for whom a cabin is named for at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, near Occam Pond. Dartmouth’s Tom Dent was their soccer coach from 1924 to 1960, and founded their lacrosse team in 1926. He was also part of the Dartmouth Outing Club. His career overlapped with other legendary coaches like Harry Hillman (coached track for 40 years or so), Ozzie Cowles (basketball) and Jeff Tesro (baseball coach, ex- New York Yankee).

The jazzfest event is named for a jazz scholar and board member of the Jazz Heritage and Foundation, the foundation art of the festival.
http://www.jazzandheritage.org/what-we-do/tom-dent-congo-square-lecture-series

The only other Dartmouth-New Orleans-music connection I can think of right now is that my freshman roommate Teddy Conway (a rugby stalwart, English major, senior society member and now a Wall Street Managing Partner) told me that Harry Connick junior attended his high school, the prestigious Newman School, but transferred because he was bullied.

It also reminds me that I want to look into the MacArthur “Genius Grant” winner whose specialty is the anthropology of New Orleans. She is a professor at University of Chicago. Reminds me that on a plane I once met a female professor whose husband was in a jazz band in Chicago — he sent me his kit for review. Just as I momentarily imagined that the two Tom Dents were one and the same, I will have to find her card to eliminate the hope that she is the “Genius Grant” winner. The jazz band I believe is called Spyder.

Also, I had a running mental list of homophone celebrities, people with the same name but in different disciplines. For example, there is a Chip Hooper former tennis professional from here in Palo Alto, AND a Chip Hooper successful booking agent in the music scene (and maybe also a stalwart photographer). There is a Penelope Houston who wrote movie reviews (in Halliwell’s she’s excerpted, for example), AND the founder of The Avengers punk rock group. I was thinking it would make a good Errol Morris “Fast Cheap and Out of Control” type movie to profile a set of people with the same names and see where the polyrhythms of their creative output synch up or harmonize.
http://www.jazzandheritage.org/what-we-do/tom-dent-congo-square-lecture-series