It’s been over 9 years since Doug Raney left this world, which is still hard for me to fathom given he never even reached age 60. I probably have explored enough comparisons of Doug and Dad’s tragic personal struggles over the years, so this time I would like to focus on a less-explored topic, namely, how would I compare Doug to Jimmy generally? Personality Doug and Jimmy had strikingly different personalities. Where Dad had the air of a philosophic school teacher, often waxing on such brainy topics such as quantum mechanics or literary classics, Doug was more of a no-bullshit realist. Not that Doug wasn’t interested in some of the…
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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, 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…
