You would be them for a week. Who would you be and why?
Debby Gibson because she is the most amazing performer singer woman ever. lol I think that is obvious except I wouldn’t ever take over another person’s life and identity. That would be wrong.
Oh yes, Debbie Gibson.
Simple one and only choice
GERONIMO - A tactical genius - Prob the greatest of all time
Light years above any of the others
Who would you be?
Queen Elizabeth I
What a challenge.
There’s brazillions of people to chose form of course, but one that might be a hoot would be to be Paul Gonsalves of the Duke Ellington Band playing at The Newport Jazz Festival in 1956, The Big Band era was all but over, but Ellington slogged on, The small combos of bebop with Miles Davis and the like had taken over Jazz the kids were turning on the rock n roll but on a drizzly Sunday Evening magic happened and Duke Ellington with Paul Gonsalves soloing on Tenor captured lightening in a bottle…The Newport Jazz Festival Summer capper for the Blue Blooded Yachting crowd Summer Season…here’s an article from the Guardian that might set the scene better
50 great moments in jazz: Duke Ellington plays Newport jazz festival
Duke Ellington’s postwar reputation was faltering until one spectacular night in 1956 that would alter his fortunes for ever
Jazz was finding itself in a changed world by the mid-1950s – though not all the changes disadvantaged it. The invention of the long-playing record had allowed the art of extended improvisation, as well as the freedom of the jam session, to at last be represented on disc. Moreover, the enthusiasm of postwar college students was providing a young audience for hip new bands led by Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan and others.
On the other hand, the rise of television was keeping people at home, the old swing ballrooms that had housed roaring Saturday-night big bands playing to jitterbugging dancers were closing fast, and the sound of rock’n’roll – which would soon displace jazz as America’s, and the world’s, popular music – was beginning to advance across the country.
Even Duke Ellington’s Orchestra, which had creatively dominated big-band jazz from the late 1920s through to the 40s, was struggling. Ellington’s postwar recordings were variable compared to the majestic output of his famous 40s band, and changes in musical fashions were affecting the once-indomitable orchestra’s pulling power and record sales.
Until, that was, a historic gig at the Newport Jazz festival at Freebody Park on Rhode Island on 7 July 1956. Thunderstorms had hit the outdoor event, and Ellington was irritable about playing the closing set nigh on midnight, when he suspected many fans would be on their way home. At first, his fears seemed justified. A new suite dedicated to the Newport festival opened proceedings in a rather uneventful manner, and it wasn’t until Ellington called the tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves to blow on an old 1937 arrangement – rekindled for the occasion as Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue – that the event took off in a manner none of the participants could ever have predicted.
In an electrifying performance by the band, Gonsalves – who hadn’t played the piece in a while, and was initially uncertain of his way around it – played 27 improvised choruses in a raunchily R&B and gospel-inflected manner. It was an astonishing example of a musician playing way out of his skin – and one who had never been in Ellington’s front rank of star soloists. The record producer George Avakian said of the Newport crowd: “Halfway through Paul’s solo, it had become an enormous, single, living organism.” The critic Leonard Feather, reviewing the show for Down Beat magazine, wrote: “Here and there in the reduced, but still multitudinous crowd, a couple got up and started jitterbugging. Within minutes, the whole of Freedom Park was transformed as if struck by a thunderbolt … hundreds of spectators climbed up on their chairs to see the action; the band built the magnificent arrangement to its perennial peak and the crowd, spent, sat limply wondering what could follow this.” there’s no film of this event, but it was recorded, if you listen you can hear the crowd coming alive, too bad you can’t see the buxom blond said to dancing wildly in the audience but you can almost imagine her…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYgow060zOg
Ellington’s faltering reputation was rejuvenated overnight. The show won one of the loudest ovations in Newport festival history, and on the strength of it the bandleader made the cover of Time, the magazine declaring that “the Ellington band was once again the most exciting thing in the business. Ellington himself had emerged from a long period of quiescence, and was once again bursting with ideas and inspiration.” That night was to be followed by a new dawn for Ellington’s late-period creativity, and the worldwide appeal of his orchestra. It was a momentum destined to be sustained until Ellington’s death in 1974.
Here’s the snippet out of Ken Burns series on Jazz about that night
William Tecumseh Sherman. He got shit done.
Spartacus or Leonardo da Vinci or Einstein(I would like to experience his thought processes) or Ansel Adams.
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