Recently, I received a website email requesting I write about the details of the dark side of my brother’s life. This person just launched into the letter without preamble, “Hey so why don’t you write about the dark stuff and what happened to his guitars… I’d like to hear it because… blah, blah, etc. “ So aside from tactless manner in which this person wrote to me, I’ve pondered the implication that my website presents an idealized and selective view of my famous jazz family and in particular, Doug. In all honesty, it’s possible. This is one of the dangers of the social media age. Bill Maher refers to this…
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Memories of The Legend, the Myth and the Man (Happy Birthday Jimmy Raney 2020)
Each year on the August 20th, I struggle a bit with what to say about Jimmy Raney that I or his most ardent fans haven’t said already. The music of course, speaks for itself and thank God for that. But there are some things I perhaps haven’t shared chiefly due to my pack rat tendencies. The Featured image above shows just some of the fun things I’ve found in the closet recently. I will be adding these and others gradually on other pages of the site. The small photo shown is likely from ~1952 taken from his apartment in Sheridan Square. It’s really a wonderful snapshot of him and the…
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Keeping the meter running…
Pursuant to my recent quest to write more frequently and keep everything I’ve been thinking about writing top of mind, I submit this quick one. On Facebook, on a whim I whipped up the below little poem pretty quickly. It reflects what I was thinking about with my recent battles to stay sane in the pandemic as well as (in some degree) my attempt to try to reconcile the Raney family members burden – from Dad, Doug and finally me – to always be perfect, and the inevitable toll it takes when we can’t. I have no illusions anymore, just tremendous new creative energy to straighten out all my shit…
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On Language: Unforgettable conversations with Jimmy Raney, Doug Raney, myself… and the World
There is an unusual clarity we feel under duress. Like feeling death’s door is near, and the world flashes before you. I’m sure many of you are feeling it. I’m feeling it in my own conversations and instant messages, as well as in broadcast interviews and speeches. Certain people are putting on their game face and showing great compassion, sincerity and depth while others are talking out of both sides of their mouth and showing their true colors. (And it ain’t a pretty sight..) I’m also feeling the hair rising in my neck towards the language patterns of certain politicians, who struggle to say the same words over and over…
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Thoughts on the Pandemic
Hi Folks, Although this is technically a Raney Legacy blog, it would be ridiculous to ignore the elephant in the room, so at least to start, let me combine the themes. My immediate family has survived a lot over the years. I am perhaps the least tough of all the family members and have drawn inspiration from all of them: my daughter, my wife an her family, my brother, mother and father. There has always been an aspect of tragedy and triumph in the Raney family and the three remaining members have the challenge of their lives ahead of them. My family is wonderful, and I have great friends and…
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Blogging, Social Media & Connecting with old friends
As a seldom blogger, I have to sometimes question my tendency to attempt to create an opus each time I want to write. Of course, it’s understandable when sharing something public, to feel the weight of the higher standard. Editing, spell and grammar checking, researching etc. You should. But the problem is, setting such a high bar can make it impossible to post frequently enough to meet the general blogging practice standard. You need time to do this (which I don’t have a lot of) and the end result is to not doing anything at all. Which is sort of a shame. Because you tune out and so does everyone…
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Happy Birthday, Doug Raney & Recollections from a Special Night in ’93
I was reminded of Doug by good ol’ Google recently (I have a notification set up to inform me when Doug or Dad comes up in the news). There was this nice review of a recent posthumous release, There Will Never Be Another You of a live duo outing of Doug and Nicolai Gromin (who also died recently) from cafe Sabine in 1993. Here is a link to the article. This got me reflecting on Doug a bit during that time. As I mentioned in a previous blog, my brother and I led largely separate lives. When I was in high school, Doug was already out the door starting his…
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Happy Birthday, Jimmy Raney 2019
I hate to be a broken record but…drop the needle back again… I still find it astounding how profoundly Jimmy Raney is underestimated historically. Save a few critics, notably Ira Gitler and Whitney Balliett, it seems like he’s largely expunged from jazz history. The other day I watched a jazz guitar history video by the noted guitar video blogger, Rick Beato. He has a ton of fun videos on rock and jazz fusion guitar with transcriptions and insightful commentary. So I was a bit stunned at his omission of my father from the list in his video, THE GUITAR 1929-1969 | THE PLAYERS YOU NEED TO KNOW which featured a…
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Faux Pas and Past Lives
In my previous post about Tinnitus, it is likely I mistook my fair use rights of (what I thought was) a royalty free image of a gentleman’s hand on his ear. Facebook appears to have blocked the previous post url on Facebook Community Standards grounds. I have since cartoonized the image (below left) and added a few doohickeys to make it mine. Creative license I guess is not the same thing as … license to create (?) (Funny I can’t do ellipsis anymore without hearing Stephen Colbert in my head, “Dot, dot, DOT...”) Anyway, This quick follow-up story is essentially an elaborate way of making lemonade out of lemons, so to speak.
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Tinnitus Anyone? (part 2)
Following up on my previous post, Tinnitus: The Silent Killer…Condition. A week after publishing the article, I visited an ENT about my tinnitus problem. He basically confirmed almost everything I said about it: There is no cure for it. Most natural remedies are nonsense or perform no better than a placebo. The only decent prospects for cure are in the cognitive psychology realm. The doctor even gave me a referral brochure of the same clinic, the Center of Hearing and Communications mentioned in my previous article. So far, I have no recurrences in the nightmare tinnitus syndrome that woke me in the middle of the night. I do notice the pitches…
