Bob Brookmeyer on the late Bill Finegan:
Today is the funeral for Bill and the body goes into the ground. That is a strange place for my friend but the options just ran out. His daughter, Helen, is a PA so I was kept daily informed of the ups (few) and downs (sadly, many) of Bill's fight to continue his place in our world. At age 91 he had earned far more than he was given but to be great is not always to be rich and famous, as all musicians know well. My comment to students that "Bill had forgotten more than we would ever learn" still stands. He was a remarkably gifted man who felt that he had to work very hard to do well -- a surprising comment offered to me during our increasingly intimate relationship over the past ten or so years. It really started when his wife Rosemary became ill and I started a telephone campaign to keep his spirits engaged. How the whole thing started probably will help you out since this is the story of "Me and Bill" -- the only way I know how to tell it.
A wonderful and heartfelt tribute to Bill Finnegan. I first knowingly made contact with Bill's music when a few of his charts from the 50's showed up on the bandstand of a rehearsal band I was playing with. I couldn't believe this had been written almost 50 years ago! It was so fresh and inventive; not so much in terms of the vocabulary, but what he was able to accomplish with a standard big band and the same notes everyone else was using. I looked up the name and discovered that I was already familiar with a lot of his writing, and he had kept on writing well past the 50's. I put on his music whenever I have to get an idea of what is possible within the confines of whatever I have been restricted to in one of my projects.
Brookmeyer's note, while it brought the tears to my eyes, did contain one error of fact. Robert Farnon, whom he refers to as "English", was by birth and training Canadian. Like Kenny Wheeler, he moved to England in his twenties and spent most of his career there and adopted a British accent, so it was an easy mistake to make.
Posted by: cbj smith | 15 June 2008 at 11:47 AM