Dear Jackie Cain--you inspired me

She was part of the great jazz duo Jackie & Roy, Mr. & Mrs. Bop. She died last week and it was a personal loss for me since she and her late husband Roy Kral opened the door for me to sophisticated, hip music. I was just 14 when I heard them do “East of Suez”; no lyrics just perfect, energetic scat harmony, the way they would do other jazz classics like “Pent Up House” and “Whisper Not”. I grew up in the era of tin pan alleys' demise: “How much is that doggie in the window” and “Mama will bark” The sounds in my home were tangos and the Ink Spots and my parent's comment that the music I liked was “noise”. Of course I also listened to the gold standard: Ella, Sarah and Billie, an admirer of Jackie who said of her, “She's my girl”. Jackie & Roy recorded more than 400 songs including “You inspire me”, “Darn that dream” and the witty “So it's Spring, so what?” where Jackie includes my favorite Russian word “nichevo”. I met them in Toronto, LA and San Francisco, a charming and uniquely talented couple. In Aristotle's treatise on rhetoric he says the lives of the young are about imagination and expectation, the old live by memory rather than hope. Jackie & Roy helped me crystallize my youthful hope for a creative and adventurous life which led me to live in three countries, travel the world and experience life to the fullest. Jackie & Roy are both gone now. She was 86 and I'm 79 but when I hear her sing we're both young again.

Death always comes at the worst possible time

That's what jazz trumpeter Jack Sheldon told the audience when a member of the band died the night before the concert, The subject may be dark but we can keep it light. As the now late Joan Rivers said, “I've had so much plastic surgery I'm going to leave my body to Tupperware.” So, no TS Eliot bangs and whimpers and no downers like “all paths of glory lead but to the grave”.We're going with George Burns who said in his late 90's, “I can't die, I'm booked”. I did have a bad moment when Lord Martin Rees said on a TED talk that when the sun burns out the world will die in 50 million years. That's a relief. It might have been this year before Christmas, which would be the worst possible time for me. Orwell said, “you can't be a Catholic and a grownup”. Lighten up George. Mel Brooks said that if he got to heaven the first thing he was going to do was find out where Hedy Lamarr lived. The lyrics of the song “Life is just a bowl of cherries” instructs us: “Don't take it serious, life's too mysterious, so live and laugh at it all”. We thought Robin Williams would always leave us laughing. Instead, he left us weeping.