I will never forget those magical steps my wife and I took up the staircase from the Palm Court Jazz Café to George Buck’s Jazzology premises back in 2010. It was a brief but impressive visit, surrounded as we were by his lifetime’s work.
So much so that I feel impelled to include on Jazz&Jazz Lars Edegran’s obituary to George posted on JazzNorthWest, along with the touching eulogies.
One passage from the obituary I find especially striking, given, as some would put it, the parlous state of jazz today:
“Very few people get to spend their lives doing what most of us dream about- George Buck was able to make a living from a music most people eke out a living at- no one in his right mind would try to make a living from a music thought to be extinct about the time he started his label. He kept his firm running successfully for over sixty years and had a lot of fun doing it.”
This inspires me all the more in my efforts through Jazz&Jazz to make that essential difference to achieve a New Orleans Jazz revival.
Peter M Butler
Editor & Proprietor, Jazz&Jazz
I joined Max Collie’s band after their U.S.A. shenanigans but I would imagine that Trefor Williams might have met him over there and could add his thoughts …… R.I.P. George