[Dixielandjazz] 10 year old Jonathan Russell and 90 year old Les Paul

[Steve barbone]

Musical Conversation spans an 80 year age gap.

>From Jonathan Russell's mom. (You have no idea how long she's been on pins
and needles about whether Jonathan would be invited to sit in with Les Paul
at the Iridium in NYC. What a secret to keep until it happened)

BE SURE TO SEE THIS KID AT SACRAMENTO JUBILEE.

Cheers,
Steve  


OK, Steve, here it is. I don't even know where to begin. Tonight was the
"ceremony" for Les Paul's induction into the jazz hall of fame- run by the
NJ Jazz society, so the place was packed. I'd hesitated bringing him down,
but Jim Eigo (Les's publicist) said it would be fine. But we didn't know if
he'd actually get to sit in, because Les already had three people sitting in
(one of whom turned out to be violinist Chris Howes, who has known J since
he's 7 from Mark's (O'Conner) camp-Chris plays with Les a lot). Nikki Perrot
was playing bass, and we were sitting right under the stage- I introduced J
to her while she was tuning, because he'll be playing with her in NC next
Feb, and she said she'd try to talk top Les about J sitting in. And Joe Lang
was there, so we got to meet him. So Les may have heard it from a number of
people that this kid really should sit in. Place was packed to over full
capacity. They played a few, and then Les announced that he was going to
bring up a young violinist

J got up and Les bantered with him a bit and then they tore into Sheik of
Araby. You should have seen Les's face!! He had J play two leads, gave one
to the pianist and had J play another. Huge, thunderous applause erupted.
Then this 22 year old Brazilian guitarist came up to guest- I felt bad for
him-following J and a reception like that can't be easy. Les announced that
someone was supposed to be getting an award, and he thought it was the 10
year old violinist....Chris Howes got up to play at the end, and mentioned
that he'd known J for quite a while, was impressed with his progress and
considered him a colleague. After the show, Nikki brought J back stage to
meet Les. She was brimming over with praise for Jonathan, and what a natural
talent he had. So Jonathan went back and got to sit next to Les and talk to
him. I can't remember much of the conversation, but Les invited him to
please come back any time he wanted! So, I guess we'll be visiting Iridium.

OK, I can start breathing now...