1. Leslie Marie Cook of Los Angeles and Brooklyn, December, 2020, original song “Women On The Wall” making of video in her home studio;
2. Monica Walker, of Palo Alto, busking or singing for fun in the new parking garage near California Avenue, the “Phil Carter” version of “Amazing Grace” — I’m a songcatcher more than producer. I have two versions, one approaching her before she knew she had an audience, and this one, an example of the “observer effect”.
3.
Camila Meza at Stanford in a trio at Bing studio (under ground, so to speak, or literally) — she is from Chile and New York and more to the point is part of a Dave Douglas Overcome project that I sponsored (part of Lions with Wings, my Bandcamp platform, subbing for being a concert promoter, although in this case its on Greenleaf Music’s platform and not Lions with Wings)
“fm” in my headline stands for “female” + “music” — no static at all
LenRay McCalister has died, age 49. His brother Stanley was my teammate for Gunn basketball, and his oldest brother Danny McCalister was a star of the Gunn Titans first championship basketball team, 22-5 in 1979-1980.
There were six McCalister brothers who excelled in football, basketball, track or wrestling for Gunn: Dan, Stanley, LenRay, Shawn, Mark and Lamont.
When Danny died, around Halloween, 2007, in a work accident in Saratoga, CA, there was a huge memorial for him in East Palo Alto. His father officiated.
At the Gunn-Paly basketball game in January, 2008 the school awarded Danny’s mother with a plaque, naming him Hall of Fame – -in some ways it was acknowledging the whole family, or the brothers as a set. Meanwhile, their cousin Mike Scott was the star of the Paly teams, and he stood at halftime with some of the family.
Kent Lockhart, a pro basketball player, knew Danny well, and from Melbourne, Australia sent four jerseys and two baseball cards back home. There was talk of creating a fund to honor Danny, to identify student athletes who had his qualities, who reminded us of him. (There was also a fund for the family at Archbishop Mitty where Danny helped coach girls’ basketball, his daughter Kassandra being a star for the Lady Monarchs).
One of Lock’s jersies was entrusted to Tom Jacoubowsky – it was to be displayed in the new gym. Another jersey I gave to Hans Delannoy, our coach (a Cubberley grad, himself named to the San Ramon High hall).
Maybe with the sad passing of LenRay we can resume the discussion of how to honor the McCalisters.
Just this week there was a meeting about Ventura as a neighborhood; it is being targeted by Sobrato and other real estate dynasties for dense housing, maybe a park.
Not to disrupt the family grieving process, but I hope that any serious planning about changing the character of the neighborhood should consider Black Lives Matter and the history of families like the McCalisters.
What is the Black history of Palo Alto? I have a sense, but I want a better telling of the story.
I am going to try to reach Kent and ask if I should pass on these two sports valuables to LenRay’s family — maybe they can be sold on EBay and the proceeds pay for an obituary in the paper or defray funeral costs per se.
LenRay had a son named Tully McCalister who played for one of Earl Hanson’s championship Vikings teams, and also at Cal Poly Mustangs. LenRay’s first cousin Richard Scott, Gunn 1979, is one of only five baseball players in the history of Gunn High School (founded, 1964) to play pro baseball, in the Pirates’ system.
The internet says this token of our respect might be worth about $500 “Football friends (JG and DM)” by Stacey Carter, 2008, acrylic painting
Edit to add, two days later: I’m watching NFL on a Sunday — both the Niners and the Raiders lose, but there is some solace in the fact that former Gunn quarterback Chris Strausser is probably having one of the best days of his coaching career in that his Colts have run for more than 200 yards. I’ve added this painting by Stacey Carter which was created in 2008 as part of the discussions of the loss of Danny McCalister, the former Gunn football and basketball star. The painting is based on a photo from the 1980 Gunn Olympian yearbook; it depicts Javier Gil and Danny McCalister. (Stacey had created a suite of realistic paintings for the Baltimore Ravens, and I commissioned her to paint something about Danny; the original idea was that Gunn would put it in the boys locker room or the library, as a memorial and to raise awareness about the fund).
I had a talk yesterday with someone who works in educational foundation work. I think when the family of LenRay has a chance to mourn, maybe there can be a discussion of whether these potential initiatives would have meaning to them. My recollection is that 20 people came to a pizza parlor after the Gunn-Paly game 13 years ago, in support of this concept. In 2008, it seemed significant to celebrate a Gunn star because Palo Alto High would get more publicity. Now I think it would be more about just helping Palo Alto kids navigate the road from high school to interesting work, especially those who are sports stars in high school and also college. As a sports fan who knows something of the local scene, I would wonder how to tap into the success story of Davante Adams, who also mentored Keesean Johnson.
I paid 18$ to Fay Victor via bandcamp, on the prompting of Dave Douglas’ Greenleaf Music blast. It is the 18th project I have supported in this very convenient manner. I think it is three clicks, maybe four. Meanwhile, I am making some progress with my bandcamp project, Lions With Wings. There is some thought to abandoning the internet altogether and just make my seed money for Lions With Wings into grants for grants sake, in the hopes that someday we will be doing live shows again.
Note: Fay Victor appears with Dave Douglas and others in a project called Overcome that Mark Weiss, Earthwise Productions and Lions with Wings sponsored, but it is available thru Grandleaf Music bandcamp and not Lions with Wings bandcamp.
In Jewish liturgy and culture the number 18 is “chai” which means life. (like in the known expression “l’chaim”, like when we drink a toast); the letters, the “chet” and the “yud” add to 18– numerology. So paying Fay eighteen dollars and hers being the eighteenth such transaction, I am saying is double chai. Meanwhile, and not to totally confused you I am drinking at home from my home office, sitting on a Rauschenberg inspired couch drinking or sipping Philz coffee from a mug I bought from Jan Schacter. I first heard about Fay, I believe, because she has a project with Marika Hughes who once played in my series or twice perhaps with Austin Willacy and Tin Hat. If it was Tin Hat it was the Starewich sequence at the Museum of American Heritage on Channing, circa 2000. I’m also remembering Victor Zenoff z’l who had a sister named Fay. There
Rachel Garlin is a modern folk singer who lives in Noe Valley and J Church goes past her house. Lance Hahn founded the influential and surely missed punk pop band called J Church. I’d love to hear Rachel Garlin cover “My Favorite Place” or “Ivy League College”.
Molly Tuttle meanwhile covered “Olympia” by Rancid.
This is Rachel’s latest; I think its on a compilation curated by Little Village:
I got a post card from Jonathan Richman and it stopped me dead in my tracks, to take out my handheld computer and order #4 on his bandcamp bundle. I had to pulldown my mask to make this happen.
When I got home I ran to my computer to hear what is new in JR’s world. The computer told me that not to be confused but Jonathan Richman does not use computers, a company called Blue Arrow in Cleveland does, for him, however.
I’m not going to fault Veronica DeJesus for embellishing Steve Lacy’s resume: “played w/Muddy Waters”. I don’t think Steve played with Muddy — the person who might know is Bob Margolin, or Eric Hanson. More people think of Steve as the first person other than Monk who played the music of Monk. Other sources say that an attribute of Steve is not just his versatility but that he kept evolving over a 50-year career. So maybe there was a blues deep dive that I am forgetting about. (I think in her production — she made 10 portraits of musicians for me, she is confusing Pinetop Perkins and Steve). Steve played two shows for Earthwise. The first was around 1999 with his trio plus Roswell Rudd, the basic set and arrangements was later recorded live at Sweet Basil and released on Verve — or at least the Sweet Basil show was reviewed in the Times and then the album was cut in NYC. But it started in a warehouse space in San Carlos where Andy Heller was storing his gear. I didn’t know if Steve would fill the 300 capacity Cubberley Theatre here in Palo Alto — plus Andy was fixing to have a party anyhow so we somehow booked Steve Lacy the Genius Grant winner to play there. I watched the band rehearse – this was the first show of the tour. My memory is that Roswell and Steve had not played together in a while. I also recall Steve, JJ and John chilling in a bar on El Camino — maybe its the one with the neon marquee the former Carlos Theatre — and that as my brain wandered, Steve turned to me and invited me back in to the conversation: We are discussing Don Cherry, he said. Maybe for a bonus I should ask Veronica to do Don.
The second time it was Steve and Irene, at Cubberley. Will Bernard and Miya Masaoka were the opening act. I first thought of Carla Kihlstedt – the violinist, taking a cue from Irene Aebi’s role. But she was not available until the following night at Berkeley, St. Johns. I recall Irene whispering to me: that is unusual, someone singing and playing at the same time, for violin.
Steve did not drive so you had to drive him the next day. I know I also saw he and Mal Waldron duo at the Kaplan Penthouse. Maybe I met him five times, if I was lucky. Eric said that Steve rememembered me and was appreciative of the gigs.
I remember standing with Steve Lacy at Foothill College outside of KFJC and he took a puff from a little pipe but first he did some sort of Jedi trick to very briefly become invisible.
My headline refers to the expression that you cannot step into the same river twice; if I met Steve Lacy five times, it was mos def five different artists, each better than the previous. He not dead, he a jew-gitive. (“fugitive” plus “Jew” — his words).
May his memory be a blessing. And thanks Veronica for this painting.
and: I categorize this “jazz” natch and “ethnicities” sic which means “jewish”; this is not the second but the 44th time I write about or mention “Steve Lacy” at Plastic Alto.
andand: fairly random, but yesterday I ran into my Gunn classmate Monica Walker who was singing a “phil carter” version of “Amazing Grace”, tapping a tambourince and walking her dog at the new parking structure near California Ave. It was the first time I had ever spoken to her, I reckon. (There were 410 people in our graduating class and I can recall about 375 of them, but didn’t recall any particular memory of Monica, alas). She also sang a bit or at least mentioned “Bridge Over Troubled Water” but was familiar with the Aretha Franklin version, not Simon and Garfunkel original — they wrote it with Ernie Griffin I think it is. I’m listening to the Aretha version on a loop this am for about the last 30 min as I peck away here at the Plasty. “Still waters run deep” and “don’t trouble the waters” are enhancements to this version that were not in the original. I have to deliberately stop the player to inspect our text thread and fact check those two points — the author of the song and the arranger of the Amazing Grace. Well there is a sax i am just noticing in the Aretha version, and a chorus of chorus — not a soprano, closer to bari. The original version was recorded in 1970, won the 1971 Grammy for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Wiki says 50 others including Aretha and Elvis and Johnny Cash have covered the song. It says that the song borrows from Claude Jeter’s “Mary Don’t You Weep” 1958 I’ll be your bridge over troubled water if you trust in my name”. Aretha’s version came out shortly thereafter, in March, 1971. That won best female R&B performance at the 1972 Grammy’s. I’ve been listeing to the 5 minute version, not the 3:20 commercial radio single. But, it says she played it at the 1971 Grammy’s. My connection to Aretha is only that Henry Butler and I played Houston with “Front Porch Blues Tour” the day before Aretha was coming for 2 or 3 nights, on the marquee, circa 2002.
Ernie Freeman 1922-1981 won the Grammy with Paul Simon for “BOTW”, as arranger; he also won the same for Frank Sinatra “Strangers in the Night”.
You can’t change the tide, you can’t change the sea
you just gotta be who you were born to be.
I wouldn’t be alive now if it weren’t for three things; music, my kids and God. As a child, I found out that I could make people like me, maybe even love me, if I could sing for them. I made music. I made love. I made love to keep making music. Music kept me going times got tough. Having a baby young was rough but it made me consider someone else’s needs. Made me hopeful about tomorrow. Made me want to be a better person. My kids kept me going when times got tough.
First time I saw or met Candye was at the San Jose State Fountain Blues Festival, produced by Ted Gehrke. I went mostly because I had heard that Laura Chavez, the young former St. Francis basketball player who was in Janis Stevenson and Mike Sult’s Blues class at Foothill, Laura from down the block, was in Candye’s band.
The Candye I met was nothing like the sex object in this photo. She testified from the stage, between songs, about her battle with pancreatic cancer, and it was poignant. At that point my mom had survived two types of cancers but had not been diagonosed nor had she presented with the dementia that dominated the last years — nine years — of her life.
Candye Kane was a band leader, a story teller, mother of two fine boys — young men — and a creative person. I still have never seen any of the adult material that dominated her early years or how I first heard about her. (And was not interested in working with).
God bless Laura Chavez for her true friendship with Candye Kane.
Tonite I read “draft 10” of Candye’s play and it makes me want to repeat my vow that her story deserves an audience. I had made notes on a hard copy of Candye’s plan but do not recall if I ever shared them. I have no idea how the production differed from what I just read (and quoted from, above).
I think there could be a indie movie with known actors doing a treatment based on this script. Somehow it’s “Brian’s Song” mixed with “The Rose”. It’s like a King Lear story but also Falstaff. Isn’t there a Falstaff bit about grabbing some dead guy’s balls?
Is this a bad place to mention that I thought “Whole Lot of Rosie” by AC/DC was about a plus size groupie? So if I met Candye at Fountain Blues 2009 and she died in May, 2016, then I knew her the last 7 years of her life. I wish I had known her better. I sent her a text early one morning, me rising from The Phoenix after a gig or scouting rather: I called her “sweet and tough” like taffy.
Here’s a a whole lot of Candye. Tits the season. Form Candye Kane.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 