Brooklyn, Transit Strike and Jazzy Goodness
After an uneventful drive, we arrived in Brooklyn at Rob and Amy's place around 11pm last night. We chatted for a couple of hours and crashed really hard.
We had timed our trip to New York to coincide with the transit strike. Going from Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan took 3 hours. And when we finally made it to the Hilton they didn't have valet parking so Vanessa had to go around the block and waste another half hour. No fun.
While waiting for Vanessa to return from parking, I bumped into the renowned jazz singer Joe Doggs.
Meanwhile elsewhere Dr. Smith was on his way down from uptown to meet us for dinner. Traffic was equally insane going in that direction so we decided to save time by eating at The Iridium. Vanessa's grand cousin Steve came and joined us. Lonnie was great fun and chatty as usual.
Reuben Wilson opened the night with a couple of tunes and then Lonnie went on. Towards the end of the set they helped Jimmy McGriff onto the stage and he played as well.
I hadn't seen Jimmy for about 5 years and his health had obviously deteriorated in the time that had passed. You could tell he could hear what to play but his fingers couldn't keep up. So sad. But Jimmy still played lots of cool notes and he sounded unmistakingly like himself.
Melvin Sparks on guitar was excellent. It was the first time either of us saw him live and what a treat that was. Especially his interplay with Lonnie was amazing. And Don Williams did a great job trying to follow three organists each going in their own direction.
Oh, yes. 3 organs. The house organ had conked out. So Reuben and Jimmy were sharing in the first set. In the set break I went up on stage to take a look. B-2 in miserable state with Trek percussion installed. The organ was humming loudly when powered on. Easy to track down. One of the output wires had come off of the tremolo control box so it was running unbalanced. Fix took two minutes and in return we got free drinks and a complimentary set of tix.
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