[xresultsearch]

Oh hey Jesse I'm a great fan of technique. Technique will set you free. I just find it interesting that there are players who, for whatever reason, did not have access to that kind of information but have managed to find a way around that handicap and still make a statement. It's be nuts to teach that way, you'd be doing your students a great dis-service.

For my own self, I've found I've made my greatest advances when I had access to a master teacher, and I've wasted the greatest amount of energy spinning my wheels when I didn't. I'm kind of feeling like I'm doing that now, and I had made plans to study with Tony Dagradi at Loyola in New Orleans this year, but obviously events have put that on hold for a bit.

Morgan. I have a Billy Higgins story for you:

In the late 80s I had a house gig with an R&B band in Toronto at a place called the Yorkville Bar and Grill. Mostly we played the Stax-Volt Atlantic Records songbook but the first set (which was a 'dinner' set) we'd pick our way through a few standards in the fake book.

The piano player was a serious jazz guy named Connie Maynard, who died a few years back. Older (50ish) black guy who'd knocked around a bit. One night during jazzfest he said a buddy of his was coming down to sit in. The guy shows up, introduces himself as "Bill" and sits down at the kit. He played the jazz stuff great (although I wasn't enough of a player in those days to realize how great. I now realize he was treating us with kid gloves so we wouldn't get confused) and also stayed for the first set of R&B material, which he also played great on.

It wasn't till after he'd gone that our regular drummer said "Man! Didn't you know who that was? That was Billy F***ing Higgins, man!"

I'm glad I didn't know. I would have been too nervous to play.