Double rainbow, Evergreen, Colorado, 2014. Photograph by Michael Steinman
To some, “expressing your gratitudes” is a cliche associated with a certain worldview, a reflex of a privileged class. But there’s usually plenty to be grateful for.
I think of the words of a character, Chicken Number Two, a dying petty thief in John Cheever’s moving novel of life in prison, FALCONER: ” . . . it’s like a party, even in stir [prison] — even franks and rice taste good when you’re hungry, even an iron bar feels good to touch, it feels good to sleep” (199).
This passage is reverberating in my head because recently I encouraged a friend to read the novel and because Marc Caparone and Ray Skjelbred played THANKS A MILLION at the San Diego Jazz Fest on November 28, 2014.
I knew the song first through Louis Armstrong’s Decca recording, even though it was first made popular by Dick Powell in — as they used to say — “the movie of the same name”:
and Jon-Erik Kellso has kept the song alive in this century as well. But hearing Marc and Ray reminds me, as I hope it reminds you, of all the people who make beauty possible: not only Caparone and Skjelbred, but also Armstrong and Jack Kapp (who insisted that his artists record as wide a variety of music as possible) but also Bob Mielke, Dawn Lambeth, Hal Smith, and Paul Daspit.
Such people make rainbows, and double rainbows, of joy and feeling. I thank them all. And I have people in my life who don’t play instruments, who evoke such feelings, too. I am sure my readers do also.
May your happiness increase!
JAZZ LIVES 