50K: Some Passings

Happy Holidays, all.

So, I got my 50,000th saved email this week. It was from my friend Paul, and the subject was:

Singer Dan Fogelberg Dies of Cancer

That's too bad, I have always liked Dan's music. "Longer", in particular, is one of my favorites. I know, it's sappy. So sue me.

And a couple other notable entertainer passings in the past couple weeks. Closest to my heart is my favorite piano player, Mr. Oscar Peterson. He was, almost without argument, the most technically proficient pianist of our time, maybe even of all time. I loved his music so much growing up - pretty much every year, that's what I wanted for Christmas, one of his albums. It taught me both that jazz could be exciting and highly structured, and that I could never actually be an amazing technical pianist (a valuable lesson to learn BEFORE practicing a zillion hours a day for your entire young adult life). Don't believe me? Watch this.

This dude was way over the top. RIP, Oscar.

And of course, the third notable one is Ike Turner. This happened (or at least, we found out about it) while we were in the studio recording Gunpowder with Black Joe Lewis. Seemed fitting. My favorite part of the whole thing, though, is the headline from some inspired journalist: "Ike Turner beats Tina to death."