Up 7. Left at 8, reading Green. Therapy. Lunch in that area, then worked over coffee for about 3 hrs. Came home, should have napped but didn’t. Dealt w/ a lot of email, wrote response to Holbo. Left at 7 to meet Laura and Jeremy for L.’s birthday at Vince Giordano & His Nighthawks’ weekly gig at Iguana. They were, frankly, better than I remembered - I feel like I saw his w/ some second-call players, or doing less rehearsed material, a few years ago. They have a huge “book” and Vince can call a couple 100 tunes at least, inc. request from the obvious (full-scale “Sing Sing Sing” complete w/ drum solo) to the obscure (“Four or Five Times,” though not this arrangement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj4GT9t2uRM). Not this arrangement. Also had a nice “I Got Rhythm” chart. A couple of guest turns (inc. “Charleston”) by a female period song-and-dance trio, the Honey Taps. Stayed for all 3 sets. Birthday guests inc. Rachel, Jay, Chris and his partner from the Tall Pines (we didn’t recognize each other at first), woman who books the swing series at Lincoln Ctr., a couple other people I didn’t know, and Tav Falco (yes, that Tav Falco), who hit it off w/ Bree and invited us to visit him in Vienna. Also talked to Vince’s clarinetist, Dan Levenson, and Phil Schaap.
Vince sells old sheet music, presumably duplicates and unwanted material from his collection, at $3 a pop, alongside his CDs. Spent $60, mainly on a folder marked “Black composers, professional copies,” Benny Carter’s “Rainbow Rhapsody,” several lesser Ellington tunes w/ various lyricists, a novelty song about “Queen Isabella” co-composed by “Chu” Berry, some Waller-Razaf, and Ivory Joe’s “I Always Lost My Mind.” And, outside of that folder, “Moanin’ in the Morning” (Arlen-Harburg, from “Hooray For What!”), a 1949 tune from a show I’ve never heard of by Jay Gorney w/ lyrics by Jean and Walter Kerr, a Nathaniel Shildkret song, “Just A Romantic Fool” pub’d by Ralph Peer’s Southern Music. And, the piece de resistance, even though it’s a Xerox: “Bill Johnson, the Monkey and the Dago,” Bob Cole (w/ no Johnson Bros.), 1896.
Car back to JH w/ Laura and Jeremy. Bree has a doctor’s appt. tomorrow, so we got to bed pretty quickly after that. Stalled on the Bert Wms. book, but read a few pages of Tuten’s Mao book which looks to be a kind of collage novel. Didn’t touch the horns.