'Jazz Name Dropper' a poem by Robin Hill

Jazz has always featured strongly in our lives and its influence can be heard in much of Robin's music.
He also loves poetry and often writes a few verses when the mood takes him.
I was therefore not surprised when, 'Jazz Name Dropper', was passed on to me.
Apparently, for some unknown reason, at the time of writing the whole passage was conceived in a gentle Welsh lilt...


Jazz Name Dropper

I had a beer with Chick Corea
Played a shaker for Chet Baker
Had several binges with Charlie Mingus
Strolled in the park with Stanley Clarke
Bought pizzas and ate ‘em with old Art Tatum
Met the wife, Mavis, through Miles Davis
Sailed in a vessel with Barney Kessel
Received a personal cheque from Dave Brubeck
Was dubbed ‘glorious’ by Jaco Pastorius
Walked across Turin with Flora Purim
Played jazz-rock with Herb Hancock
Lived down the lane from John Coltrane
Appeared on telly with Stephane Grappelli
But I never met Django Reinhardt.....(I did however meet his son, Babik).

Robin Hill - 2013

Two Down, One to Go - On This Part of the Trip

News and comments are slowly trickling back on the two concerts performed so far.
The first, which was on Sunday, was very well attended and received.
Between two of the pieces, Robin had some rapid retuning to do, which he generally does very slickly as he introduces the next piece.
The altered string often tries to return to the original position, so one technique to prevent this, is to pull the string a few times so that it relaxes back to the tuning you require.
On this occasion, Robin was stretching the bottom E, whilst talking, but it 'slapped' back into position in a rather 'Stanley Clarke ' fashion.
He reassured his audience that he wasn't about to go into an 'Earth, Wind and Fire', style medley, and continued with the concert.
Audiences always seem to like the little personal touches, that are obviously not planned, and luckily Robin isn't fazed by things like that.
In fact, after the concert, he was talking to a couple who have been on board for 4 months as part of a world cruise. They had been to every classical concert in that time and said that Robin had the best response.
That's nice to know.

The second concert, which was on Monday, also went very well, although it wasn't an easy one for Robin.
The sea was rather rough and there was a certain amount of pitching and rolling going on. When you consider accuracy of finger positions is paramount, and millimeters make a difference, you can see that the moving neck of a guitar, that is beyond your control, is not going to help.
However, he did it, the audience enjoyed it, and he feels much better now!