It was a typical day at Bebop Spoken Here HQ A.K.A. the back room at Joe's - a waterfront dive. I was listening to Bart Pepper (Art's lesser known brother), Russell was digging the Outer Siberian Jazz Quintet - they are the coolest! Ann was painting her toenail whilst listening to the latest Folk/Jazz offering from some folk who claimed to be jazz musicians (or was it jazz musicians who claimed to be folk?) and Debra was running up and down the scale in Bb leotards. We were just about ready to put the baby to bed when the news broke - Duke Ellington was dead!
Jazz's greatest composer dead - even at 114 we never expected him to die.
Our reviews were forgotten, toenail remained half painted - even Russell left his bottle of Blues Buster Ale untouched. Debra shed a tear - she'd been saving it for Cry Me A River but sacrifices had to be made when Jazz's premier citizen had taken his last ride on the A Train.
Ann looked at me, some things were more important than a toenail, "You'd better post something Lance." Debra nodded in agreement and Russell said, "Take a swig of this."
I took a swig then got down to business.
I Googled it,. as we do these days and, would you believe it but it came up saying that the Duke of Ellington had died in 1974!
Our grief was multiplied by almost 40 years!
"How did we miss this?" I asked my trusty team.
"How could we know?" said Russell - "They didn't have the Internet in 1974."
I breathed a sigh of relief and began typing.
"Duke Ellington, the most prolific composer in jazz passed away..."
Lance.
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