[Dixielandjazz] Fwd: [New post] BOILERMAKERS, FRENCH FRIES, AND SORROW

Fri Apr 3 12:45:30 PDT 2015

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Subject: [New post] BOILERMAKERS, FRENCH FRIES, AND SORROW

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BOILERMAKERS, FRENCH FRIES, AND SORROW
 by jazzlives 

Let us remember, mourn, and celebrate Richard McQueen Wellstood in three ways, for he was too expansively singular to be contained in one alone.

The first is a blessing -- the man himself -- on a 1981 BBC video, the program called Pebble Mill At One," where Wellstood plays AIN'T MISBEHAVIN' and RUSSIAN RAG, then we have the immense happiness of Dick, Kenny Davern, and Kenny Clare for A PORTER'S LOVE SONG and BLUE MONK:

The second is prose -- what my briefly-known friend, the late Leroy "Sam" Parkins, reedman and thinker, called "random mutterings" wrote about Dick in 2002:

Dick Wellstood, pianist / catalyst, died in 1987.  Died of boilermakers, french fries, and sorrow.

In somewhat over 50 years of playing this music, there's only been two accompanists that gave me the vitamins I need.  Roger Kellaway . . . and Dick. On 6 of the 9 records I've made - well - let's take it from wherever the top is.  Oh yeah - the boilermakers. Tapered tall glass of Guinness Dark, and a 3 oz. glass of Wild Turkey.  Repeat ad libitum . . .

Some random mutterings about Dick.  The basics.  Law School; Editor, Columbia Law Review [that's what he told me.  His biographer says NYU]. Folks, that's big time.  Passed the bar exam, went right back to the Metropole to play with Red Allen.

Brilliant.  Funny.  Fast forward. Late in his life, with considerable saloon burn-out, he took up an offer from some customers from a Wall St. law firm to join them at work.  The first thing he learned was that lunch was billable time.  You don't do lunch.   They put him to beginners' shit work, but he was so brilliant that after about six weeks got the class stuff.  Hated it.  After eleven months he returned to Hanratty's and his beloved piano.  Dick Sudhalter went to visit him real soon at the club.  Wellstood said, sitting down at the piano, "The law don't take no fucking brains.  This [plays piano] takes brains."

One weekend night that summer of '86 I stayed to the end and closed the joint. Remember it's six nights a week.  He got paid. $500.00.  For the week.  Got it? This is a superstar in Europe, the tippy top of his craft, raved about in newspapers in 5 languages. Making 1/10th - wrong - make it 1/20th - of what he would have been making by then in law . . . .

Third, Wellstood in an excerpt from a 1977 CBC documentary, THEY ALL PLAY RAGTIME, offering CAROLINA SHOUT and his own SNATCHES.  At several points in the second performance, his left hand is a blur:

I think we only intermittently understand ourselves, so our comprehension of what is going through another person's mind and heart can be at best empathic guesswork.

So although I prize Sam Parkins' recollections of Dick Wellstood, friend and hero, I hope Sam was wrong.

I hope that Wellstood, someone who created so much joy -- a joy that continues now -- was not sorrowful, that there was not a direct causal relationship between the low pay and insufficient recognition and his too-brief life.  But only he could tell us, and he might not even have known it fully for himself.  His ebullient quirky music and his singular personality remain, and they are too large and too beautiful to be quantified in any small way.  He gave generously of himself, and that lives on.

May your happiness increase!

                        jazzlives | April 3, 2015 at 1:10 PM | Tags:                        boilermakers,                        Dick Sudhalter,                        Dick Wellstood,                        Hanratty's,                        Jazz Lives,                        Kenny Clare,                        Kenny Davern,                        Leroy "Sam" Parkins,                        Michael Steinman,                        Red Allen,                        Roger Kellaway,                        sorrow,                        Stride piano,                        the law | Categories:                        "Thanks A Million",                        Awful Sad,                        Bliss!,                        Generosities,                        Hotter Than That,                        Irreplaceable,                        It's A Mystery,                        It's All True,                        Jazz Titans,                        Pay Attention!,                        Swing You Cats!,                        The Heroes Among Us,                        The Real Thing,                        The Things We Love | URL:                        http://wp.me/pckf2-7tN                       

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