Some thoughts and associations from Appel:

"I got rhythm, / I got music, / I got my man- / Who could ask for anything more?" sang Ethel Merman in the first Broadway production of Girl Crazy (1930), stopping the show every night. The song was recorded immediately by Ethel Waters and Kate Smith, black and white benchmarks of tasteful singing. It became a standard overnight, and is alive even now, in part because Ira Gershwin's slangy lyrics avoid rhyme-a fatal Tin Pan Alley trap-and allow the woman of the song to express her unabashed egotism and unqualified satisfaction with an amusing and unusually frank concision.

"Singing was more into my blood than trumpet," Armstrong wrote in 1970. As singers, Armstrong, Waller, Teagarden, and Holiday typically had to modify or tear apart and rebuild poor or mediocre Tin Pan Alley material in a procreative manner analogous to the ways in which modernists such as Picasso begot paper collage, wood assemblage, and metal sculpture.

To call Armstrong, Waller, et al. "modernists" is to appreciate their procedures as alchemists of the vernacular who have "jazzed" the ordinary and given it new life. (In the 1920s the verb jazz also meant fornicate.)

"Rhythm Saved the World" is the title of a 1936 Armstrong number, and it summarizes the cardiovascular truth and root appeal of poetry, music, and dance indulged sensibly. Machines save the world and run rhythmically, states Fernand L�ger in Disks (1918), the artist's horrific experiences in World War I notwithstanding (fig. 6). As for pacemakers, Jo Jones, the drummer with Count Basie's greatest bands (1936-48), is, with Big Sid Catlett, the most important drummer of the classic jazz period (fig. 2). A well-schooled musician, singer, and excellent tap dancer who could play the piano, the trumpet, and several kinds of saxophones, Jones was the first jazz drummer to transfer the basic rhythmic pulse from the bass drum to the hi-hat, the two small cymbals that are struck by operating a foot pedal. Although Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson had greater technique than Jones, and Kenny Clarke was more radical, creating the bebop style out of Jones, Papa Jo-as he was called-possessed unrivaled imagination, developed by necessity in the 1920s, when, in addition to jazz, he also worked in vaudeville, carnival, and circus bands, learning how to introduce, accompany, accent, and improve every kind of act, from knife throwers to acrobatic, somersaulting dogs.

Matisse's Interior with a Violin Case (1918-19) is a good example of a needy case (fig. 3). If the violin is being played (the case is empty), the sonic effect isn't tonic enough for Jo Jones, who is warming up in the adjoining chamber and wants to transfuse and renovate Matisse's wishy-washy interior by defining the curtains, widening the red, making the blacks on the dressing table jump and the eel-like designs really dance, preferably next to a solid blue vista, a more riveting Riviera. This would match or approach the graphically sharp, color-saturated dynamism of Matisse's Jazz series, which Jones must see as the chromatic equivalent of so many riffs by Basie's brass and saxophone sections and a more immediate delight than Interior with a Violin Case.

"Solid! Took the words right out of my mouth," says Jones, from the wings, where he'll remain throughout this book as an interactive force responsible for accenting the music under discussion and improving the flow of the prose on each page, making it all more accessible-the way rhythm and color make L�ger's mandala-like Disks meaningful and accessible, even though the picture is abstract and almost totally flat. Pictorial bits of a bridge subliminally lead to the present, to computers and cat scans and better and better sound systems.Disks (of the phonographic sort) will be the operative word throughout these pages, which is why the OKeh label is on its own, displayed as a demotic icon in museumlike exhibition space �

Still gotta have it! Its coming by boat.

One rummages in record shops � and just occasionally there is something. InGuildford about 3 years ago � maybe more for 90p I got the Last Goodbye Limited Edition double CD single. Side 2 is Last Goodbye full version, Dream Brother live in Hamburg and So Real acoustic from a Japanese broadcast. CD1 adds Last Goodbye from the same broadcast. I played CD2 this morning and marveled.

NYRB has a review of a new synoptic book on Beethoven- which is criticized for being too circumspect about the emotional real life sources of the greatest works � say the dearth of really great works between 1812 and 1818. I have never really thought in these terms � apart from the time when we started to work on the piano, flute and bassoon trio from his teenage years � and I looked into how it had come to be written. What struck me was how it wasn�t like Mozart � I had been working with Peter on a piano/flute reduction of the string quartet/flute stuff � which had changed my view of Mozart quite deeply. My angle of engagement with Beethoven was really through the string quartets � I haven�t got quite a complete set on CD although I have the Dover complete score. Oddly this review mentions both the melancholy piece from the Opus 18 set and the Holy Song of Thanksgiving from one of the last 4tets. The reviewer says the B sounds modern because of the physicality of his music and also its discontinuities � I can remember these discontinuities coming in discussion about 10 years ago. Someone said it was as if B was interrupted eg by his landlady bringing a cup of tea � and then he started writing in a completely different diection. I used to say that between Bach and Debussy, B was the only composer I could tolerate.

Watched some of Yvonne�s video of the latest ROH production of the Magic Flute � I had quite forgotten how much I liked it.

Paul Bell phoned with a strange tale. When Cathy had been doing her dissertation last year at Caius on the late Shakes plays she had wanted to check up some points from Freud. In the library two of the volumes of the complete works were missing. Today he met Sheila � Steve�s partner � who had some of the books from Steve�s library that she thought the Bells might be interested in. Yep � there were the two missing copies from the Caius set.

Cleveland called round � I had phoned him about a letter from the Bahamas Tourist Board which arrived today. I played him the recordings from the November URC concert � and gave him a couple of CDs to take away and consider. I think he quite liked the sound � he is talking about doing another set of recordings with Peter and myself � maybe of spirituals. That would be something.

Time to start worrying about exactly where I have put my passport.

Driving back of Friday night I listened to 10SS and 4 5ths � I thought maybe I would find it all familiar � but fortunately not. I haven�t been able to post Paul the cover-concept I have using his material. These things take time. Robin's version was playing as I drove through the forest past Broadmoor.