Recently Oliver Lake tweeted “happy birthday” to Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis. I responded, “If I played tenor, I’d spend all my time not with TraneSonnyWayne but Lockjaw, Byas, Gonsalves, A. Cobb, G. Ammons, B.Webster, Lucky T.”

Several people took this to mean I was open to all kinds of tenor alternatives. Which I am! (Like Getz, Warne Marsh, Booker Ervin, etc. etc. etc.) But everyone on my initial list had something burly and breathy in their sound, a kind of smoky mystery which seems to have mostly left the planet — with the exception of Houston Person, a living great who I should have mentioned in the first place.

If Ethan Iverson did nothing but write his blog he could probably still win a MacArthur Foundation grant. I will have to ask him some time about his Don Herron link, other than I know EI is a big Dashiell Hammett fan. (“Red Harvest” especially, he told me once).  Don Herron gives walking tours of SF and writes the literary guidebook to SF.