[Dixielandjazz] James Moody

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Very sorry to hear the lovely old madman is not well. 
As regards chemotherapy, there was a wonderful film on YouTube with Danny Moss 
saying why he had changed his mind -  rather surreal to see Danny as he looked 
then telling a young guy, "I'm eighty"  and very like the man to produce such an 
encouraging thing.  


I was chatting to my old friend Dick Lee after a splendid gig by Ken Mathieson'd 
CJO and Dick asked the people running the venue what the music was on the tannoy 
-- not the sort of music to chase people out, either, unless of a restricted 
interest, Dick was sure the flautist couldn't be Herbie Mann because everything 
was in tune.  It was Mooody....
Who subsequently became the supreme octogenarian soprano saxophonist 

I do recall him in the mid-1960s boggling everybody with a deadpan delivery of 
modal figures -- rather than a proper jazz solo -- on BBC's Jazz 625. Only when 
I saw a re-run decades later did I realise this was not the then latest thing 
but subversive parody. Moody could do the Coltrane thing Danny later campaigned 
against, and deliberately make no sense..

Great madman too ---  in a Dixxy Gillespie ensemble full of Latin Americans 
Moody began his solo features with a pretence to coming from south of the 
border,  Tarara del Fugueo to judge from his glorious gabble -- and then with 
more non-PC antics and high camp and falsetto he went into a mock-ballad, 


"I love you because you make me feel so (pause to modulate into bellowed 
fortissimo:   STRRRRRRRONGGGGGG

a great believer in the insanity cause 
for which he deserves everybody's love!