So effective was he with his fists that they called him “The Brute”. Then you heard him play, and his opulent, breathy tenor saxophone sang of tenderness, loneliness and romance. In the yawning chasm between these extremes lies that fact that big, mean drunks can also be gentle giants. And,…
Category: Features – Archive
With her flatmate off playing a gig, she had the apartment to herself for the night. She’d spent her childhood studying classical piano, culminating in four years at the New England Conservatory, before she married and disengaged from music entirely for six years. Now here she was in 1975, with…
Perhaps he instinctively empathised because he, too, had been treated like dirt. That’s why he called his autobiography Beneath the Underdog. He, too, had had his music – some would say his genius – belittled. So when others shrugged their shoulders at the hopelessness, or openly mocked the man with…