give me sonny stitt and his standards and blues and ballads any day. you can have the guys who sound like their balls are being removed without pain killer.

or, as rick adelman said when phil jackson was being praised years ago..."give me shaq." hell, give him a healthy yao for a year, or a decent game from the zebras. jack off coached shaq and kobe together, and jordan before that. yes, 10 is a lot of titles, but i'll take pizza face popovich and larry brown bird and adolph adelman and the savings and sloan scandal over the zen master.

at the record store a couple of days ago. old farts speaking of seeing the heavyweights. johnny griffin in 1980, clifford jordan in the early 70's, other names too. they're all gone now. made me sad, and a little envious of these guys. but then, i'm 29, and they're in their 60's. i guess it cuts both ways. but, clifford jordan? yeah, that would have been nice.

word is that gene ammons said to stitt..."sonny, you've got to stop playing that varitone." he stopped. that's all it took.

of course, gene once claimed to be off drugs. when someone asked him if he wanted to do some heroin, he said "naw, i'm clean. i do coke now."

hey, i never said they were perfect.

but, what would life be like without them?

and how many sober, clean cats could play canadian sunset? clean living has its place, but so does genius.

i remember a weird story. a piano player my dad knew, who said that dizzy and monk were two of the most overrated musicians in jazz. he also said that he liked stitt better than mclean, because mclean was a junky. wow. first of all, what a dumb reason for liking one musician more than another. second of all, they were both junkies who outlived their habits. in fact mclean outlived stitt by 16 years, and became a respected educator. they were both giants, clean or not. however, there is one midget in this story, and that's the nameless piano player, who had about as much soul as a wal-mart.