I've been quoted -- actually enough times that I'm beginning to be sorry I ever brought the whole thing up -- as wanting to get the alto to sound like a dry martini. I mention this now only because there are moments on these records which could be justifiably be said to sound more like three dry martinis.

All part of the giddy euphoria of playing in a club again after years of concerts. Or because of the musicians I was working with -- Ed Bickert on guitar, Don Thompson on bass, Jerry Fuller on drums.

Jerry is a charter member of a unique and endangered species -- a drummer who appears happiest while devoting his sensitive, intelligent playing to whatever is happening at the moment.

Don of course is a walking miracle. Here are some things about him: he plays bass, somewhat reluctantly, if required. He plays piano in the manner of Keith Jarrett. He writes charts like an angel. (As a matter of fact, he looks a bit like a second cousin of Christ, and plays bass as if the family were a bit closer.) If you're into space music and feel like sitting on a B minor chord for 45 minutes, he either swoops around the bottom register of the bass or flutters about like a giant butterfly trapped in a Stradivarius, whichever is most appropriate. And if you're an old curmudgeon like me and feel like playing some old standards, he plays all the right changes. (In this case, also recording the proceedings with his other hand.) In all of the above situations, his solos are dependably unbelievable.

Ed Bickert is unique. Chords, for instance. I play a sort of horn-player's amateur piano. Ten fingers, 88 keys. When I work with Ed, I find myself turning around several times a night to count the strings on his guitar. Even with my eyes closed I'm reasonably sure it's less than 88. (Perhaps I should count his fingers more often.) My question, then, is how does he get to play chorus after chorus of chord sequences which could not possibly sound better on a keyboard? Or, in some cases, written for orchestra? This all becomes more impressive when I play a tape of Ed's for a guitar player and suddenly realize, between the hypnotized gaze of fascination and the flicker of disbelief, that what I had cherished as a musical phrase is also totally impossible to play on guitar. (Unlike some other musicians capable of this, Ed doesn't save it to beat you about the head and shoulders during his solo; the impossible chord occurs more often quietly in the background.)

(I realize suddenly, that I'm violating one of my basic principles: it's dumb for liner notes to rave about the music, in view of the fact that you've presumably already bought the album . . . like those packages you bring home and the first thing you see when you open them is "CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU HAVE JUST ACQUIRED THE BEST CASSETTE RECORDER AVAILABLE!!! etc.)

Why I continue to ramble on in this fashion about the records is because I feel if I were you (and, incidentally, I am), I'd be curious about the people who played on them.

Jerry Fuller and me you probably know enough about for now. Don Thompson sounds clearly impossible as described earlier, but he is. Nothing seems to change that.

Ed Bickert then, remains the mysterious figure in this group, and I'm not sure I know much more about him than you do. A picture of him would look a lot like the Marlboro Man (he smokes more than I do, which is impossible, and is much healthier, which is easy. Unless you have a motor-driven Nikon, it would be unlikely to find him without a cigarette heading towards either his face or his guitar, both clearly indestructible (The cigarette, incidentally, is always a MAVERICK -- a Canadian brand which, if it didn't exist, Ed might have invented.) When he talks, which is not all that often (not that he's anti-social; he just doesn't waste words), he sounds surprisingly like Gary Cooper. He has four children (ages 14, 12, 10, 7 roughly, but don't trust me -- who knows what birthdays have roared through that hectic house even as I write this?), and shares the attendant chores with his frighteningly capable, disarmingly charming wife.

He grew up in a small town in British Columbia (do you begin to get the feeling that this album is actually a short novel with records artfully concealed among the pages?).

All I know about Ed's home is that it's on the western side of Canada (since both Don Thompson and Jerry Fuller, among many others, came from Vancouver, they must be doing something terribly right out there), which brings us to a very personal and slightly eerie coincidence.

During the same period (early 1950s) that Jimmy Lyons, a San Francisco disc jockey at the time, later the founder of the Monterey Festival, was helping get Dave Brubeck and me out of town, Jimmy's show was bouncing nightly from many ghostly Canadian mountain-tops. Fortunately, the show got through to Ed Bickert each night as he was figuring out what to do with the guitar.

It took us long enough, Lord knows, but I'm glad we finally got together.

a kid from the polish countryside sucked at classical guitar, according to his own words, so his classical teacher gave him petrucci's "rock discipline" as parting punishment and sent him home...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-YWKrNE0Q4[/youtube]


to me, he sounds like a more fusiony version of andy timmons. anyway, what an incredible talent...