Jazzkids and Willie

OK I now have my mandate: To teach the kid to make beautiful music on the old black and whites. I also have my own hidden agenda: To be able to play a recognizable tune and not just a Joe Zawinul wah wah solo from Bitches Brew. Problem 1: I could not play a scale with the correct fingering even if someone held a gun to my head. Problem 2: I have no idea what to teach my kid. Solution: Piano Teacher. Problem: Zoe no want. Cost big money. The big bail out has not made it to my house yet. Solution 2: Online piano lessons as presented by me. What? I take a lesson and then give it to Zoe. Problem: There are now seemingly thousands of online piano courses. Piano Magic, Rocket Piano, The Sudnow Method, LearntoplaylikeHorowitzin8andhalfseconds.com So I do my due dilligence. Sudnow has been around for a long time but is not really for kids. Rocket Piano seems too inexpensive and anything called Rocket makes me nervous (I tried Rocket Spanish and usually fell asleep), Piano Magic seems OK but the web page seems to taking it's sales cues from a the herbal viagra, penis extension industry. So I am about to give up and dig up a piano teacher when I stumble upon jazzkids.com. More to come...

The King of Instruments

OK I actually think the organ is known as "the king of instruments" and I do think that a Hammond B3 is cool but the rest of the genre is to put it mildly, "dorky". When I was a kid we had a Lowery Holiday with a built in drum machine and a little Leslie speaker. It weren't no Hammond.



Anyway as a teenager the family Lowery did eventually mutate into a Hammond, which led me to a Rhodes, which led me to a Mini Moog, which lead to electronic burn out and a Tenor Saxophone. My heroes were in successive order: Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, Joe Zawinul, Jan Hammer, Chick Corea and George Duke. After the embarrassing "Prog Rock" phase



I traded the Hammond in and got a Rhodes. If I was smart I would of stopped the mutation at Joe Zawinul and the "Bitches Brew"/first couple of Weather Report albums. Man, that stuff was amazing. Sadly Zawinul passed away last September.



But like everybody else including Joe and Chick and Herbie I didn't. The Rhodes sprouted first a cry baby wah wah and then a chorus and then a big muff pie. I missed the short echoplex era which would have been cool. Then I scrounged up cash and bought a used Mini Moog.



Basically with all this stuff I had in a fairly elaborate and expensive way recreated the sound of the Lowery Holiday. Time for a break of multiple decades after a brief flirtation with a woodwind and the company of many harmonicas.

So time passes... lots of time passes. A child eventually arrives. Said child wants to play the piano. I suggest a piano teacher. She suggests me. Uh oh.