Jery's Jazz

My late wife Jery loved jazz. She introduced me to the music along with Otis Sutton, who had a long standing show called Night Train on the former WCIB in Falmouth back in the day. Once Martha's Vineyard's first FM station got off the ground in 1975, I convinced the owner to see if Otis was still available, which lead to the creation of jazz weekends. Otis was on for several hours both Saturday and Sunday. His signature albums at the time included "Headhunters", Herbie Hancock's breakout explosion of funk, and " Swiss Movement", Les McCann and Eddie Harris live at the Montreux Jazz Festival with their anthem of alienation -"Compared to What".


Jery's favorite jazz tune was another Sutton staple at the time, "Land of Make Believe" which is a Chuck Mangione composition sung by Esther Satterfield. It is a symphonic blend of horns and strings that rise and falls in several crescendos with Satterfield's strong, clear voice leading the way. I liked it but found it a bit too polished and smooth - if you read this blog at all, you know by now my preferred sound is rougher and more primitive. I always wondered why she was so attracted to it. I think the song was an island of peace for her , a refuge from the emotional pain of stressful relationships that wore Jery down in the past , a chance to drift off into blissful fantasy if only for a few golden moments. We all need a song like that, a place where we can go to heal by ourselves.


Jery introduced me to Yusuf Lateef, especially "Nubian Lady", with its never ending flute solo and of course, from Swiss Movement, "Compared to What", with McCann's commanding piano riffs and Harris' swooping sax, not to mention the biting lyrics and the radical use of the word "goddamn". She still had a Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" album when we got married , along with Glen Miller and several other swing records, Roberta Flack, even Santana, but Jery stayed faithful to Chuck Mangione.


She's gone now. I'm not quite sure what I'll do with her records, but I'll never be able to listen to Chuck Mangione again - well, not for a while, anyway. I just hope Jery finally found the peace she was always seeking in the "Land of Make Believe."