{"id":322,"date":"2006-06-05T05:48:37","date_gmt":"2006-06-05T13:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/?p=322"},"modified":"2006-06-05T05:48:37","modified_gmt":"2006-06-05T13:48:37","slug":"ive-got-mail-pogo-is-music-to-bills-ears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/?p=322","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;ve Got Mail: Pogo is Music To Bill&#8217;s Ears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The great bassist and jazz annecdotalist <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/billcrowbass.com\"><strong>Bill Crow <\/strong><\/a>is not much help regarding <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/?p=317\"><strong>Hans Groiner<\/strong><\/a>,but he has other goodies to share:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Sorry, I don&#8217;t have a clue about Hans Groiner.  I hope it&#8217;s a joke.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sorry Paul Weston, a great joker, passed on before he had a chance to do anything with an idea I gave him: having Jonathan and Darlene do an album of minor tunes made more upbeat by changing all the chords and melodies to major.  &#8220;Moanin&#8217;,&#8221; &#8220;Saint Louis Blues,&#8221; &#8220;Alone Together,&#8221; &#8220;Comes Love,&#8221; and &#8220;Gloomy Sunday&#8221; all sound much more cheerful when played and sung this way.<\/p>\n<p>Years ago, when Johnny Mercer first started Capitol Records, Paul did some country and western records for the label featuring a guy he called &#8220;Shug Fisher,&#8221; who stuttered while he sang, adding extra beats of guitar strumming during the stuttered sections of the lyrics, and putting the meter deliriously out of whack.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Consensus seems to be that it&#8217;s a joke, and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/archives\/2006\/06\/monk_is_tough.html\"><strong>Rifftides had more to say<\/strong><\/a> about Groiner and about other Monk-strosities.<\/p>\n<p>Bill also wrote me a few days ago regarding <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/?p=320\"><strong>my mention of Pogo<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I have another Pogo quote for you.  Albert the Alligator was talking about, &#8220;&#8230;everybody thinks&#8230;&#8221; something or other, and Churcy La Femme remarked,<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Without me, nobody is everybody!&#8221;<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>I was a big fan of Walt Kelly, and during my first years in NYC, living on Cornelia Street, I was moved to write him a letter one day.  I complimented him on his strip in general, and particularly on the way he often made jokes about musicians without demeaning them.  About a week later I got a nice letter from him along with the original drawing for his 9\/28\/53 strip, an episode involving Pogo&#8217;s banjo playing and singing.  It still hangs on our wall at home.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>If you haven&#8217;t checked out <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/billcrowbass.com\">Bill&#8217;s website<\/a>, do so now. In addition to great photos (which I&#8217;ve mentioned in the past), he&#8217;s now posting <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/billcrowbass.com\/Pages\/writingindex.htm\">some of his writing<\/a><\/strong>, including a lovely piece from 1999 about Marian McPartland.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The great bassist and jazz annecdotalist Bill Crow is not much help regarding Hans Groiner,but he has other goodies to share: Sorry, I don&#8217;t have a clue about Hans Groiner. I hope it&#8217;s a joke. I&#8217;m sorry Paul Weston, a great joker, passed on before he had a chance to do anything with an idea &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/?p=322\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;I&#8217;ve Got Mail: Pogo is Music To Bill&#8217;s Ears&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jazz-ears"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}