it's been a long while since i read Charles Mingus' autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, but i recall and always loved the part where he describes the conversations that he and his jazz band would have during the gig while they were playing.....
every now and then there'll be a musical moment that is just so rich it's really indescribable, but it's worth a try anyway..... though this particular scene is hardly in the intellectual realm of Mingus and his ensemble.....
the other day someone ~who shall remain nameless here~ suggested i should cover Bobbie Gentry's, Ode to Billie Joe.
(my dear friend, WSH, has been trying to get me to do that song for a couple of years now-- at least ever since she bought the album on vinyl.
--and there on the back cover is that wonderful Bobbie Gentry walking out in the country with her guitar, and she's in those jeans, looking back over her shoulder at the camera....)
what a great song. what great songwriting.
i told he-who-shall-remain-nameless that i would learn the song, and would play it the following night.
he didn't believe me. didn't think i could learn it and perform it so soon.
we made a bet.
and i won.
so the other night, when someone requested the song towards the end of our gig, we went ahead and played it.
Skinner was burnin' up that great bass line, Stephen Rickey Lee returned from his bathroom break jumped on his guitar and provided all that great ambiance line.... and someone in the room who was singing along-- you know who you are and bless your soul!-- got up and did an interpretive dance to the song.....
~this was heaven~
i couldn't watch her or i'd mess up the story and the song, since it was all still new to me. so Stephen took a few lead breaks, while i'd get it back together again...
but then we get to the line, "and she and Billie Joe was throwin' somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge," our dancer asks us, "what are they throwing off the bridge?" Stephen takes another sweet lead, and while i'm answering, "that's what everyone asks, and it makes the song so good, cause we really don't know exactly..." SRL, in the middle of his lead, looks up and hollers, "it's a foetus!" .... i turn to Skinner, "he just said 'foetus,'" and Skinner, grinnin', holding that bass line down says, "yeah, he did."
after the song, our dancer exclaims, "I'm even from Tallahatchie!"
to which Skinner replies, "I thought that was the Tallahatchie Stomp you were doin!"
and that's how from this point forward, SRL got the name, 'Foetus'