“MAN — YOU KNOW IT’S THE COOLEST”

The epitome of cool, or “Gone, man, gone”:

This studio portrait of Mr. Wettling, appropriately inscribed, occupied a place of honor in drummer and friend Walt Gifford’s scrapbook.  Two other facets of the very talented Geo. can be found here and .

Don’t let the period percussive gestures from the apparently ancient disc put you off.  To quote an expert jazz drummer I know, “You could play that in any context and it would sound good.  It never gets old.”  In fact, if possible, I would urge listeners to aurally push aside the glories of Fats, Tommy, Bunny, and McDonough, and simply concentrate on the shifting sound-carpets Mr. Wettling creates for us, alive in 1937 and alive now.

And here — magically — brought to you by the invisible forces of the internet — is another pose from the same studio session.  Intent on being cool.  Cool, you know, is serious business:

Whether playing drums, painting, writing satiric doggerel, playing at being a late-Forties hipster, George Wettling was a treasure.  Listen, consider, and be uplifted.

Some cultural critics can balance these photographs against THE NIGHT BEFORE BOPMAS and arrive at a point of balance — I think amused masquerade plus affectionate mockery feels right.  And as a personal aside, perhaps a decade after the poem and the photograph, I dressed up for Halloween as a “beatnik,” complete with beret, cigarette holder, and goatee created with my mother’s eyebrow pencil.  I think I had to explain at many doors what my costume was.  Geo. did it better.

May your happiness increase!