Night Notes

Tito Puente recording session in NYC

It is late, and I am listening to Jazz Profiles on Tito Puente, not because I had planned to, but because when I was on I-Tunes searching for Christmas music that I hadn’t heard and/or wasn’t sick to death of, I clicked on the podcasts section of my library, and it just immediately started up.

It is strange to hear his voice again, speaking, telling stories. The first time I met Tito, he asked me where I was from. I told him that I’d grown up in Columbus, Ohio, and he immediately went into a whole thing about Columbus. Columbus is one of the greatest cities, they have a great jazz scene, everyone is so nice… He went into a story about losing his wallet in a hotel in Columbus when he was staying there during an appearance. It was a fairly long story, but the gist of it was that he ended up getting his wallet back after he had returned home, albeit minus the actual money that had been in it. I miss his energy. He gave off sparks, and not alot of people do that.

In other areas, I got very few Christmas recommendations after my post asking people here & other places for ideas. In the next few days I’ll put them up here, along with some of my own favorites. One suggestion that I did get was for the Manhattan Transfer Christmas CD. So, one morning I was online & listening to it, and happened to post on Twitter that I was listening to this CD, and trying to get inspired… A couple of minutes later, a guy twitted an @JanetSommer reply, saying, “Manhattan Transfer sux!” Sooo… so much for inspiration!