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New Mexico Jazz Festival: Tom McDermott

Getting Better All the Time

Photo by Rick Olivier.

Photo by Rick Olivier.

In 1996, while in New Orleans for jazz fest, I picked up a copy of Offbeat magazine and
discovered a well-written article about one of my favorite piano players from that city, the late James Booker. I thought I had all the legally available recordings, but the article mentioned two German LPs that I had never heard of. Even better, they were solo performances, so there would be no half-assed sidemen gumming up the works.

I did what any self-respecting obsessionist would do: I looked up the writer in the phone book and placed the call. (My wife still can’t believe I did that, and I still can’t figure out why she feels that way.) When he answered, I thanked him for the article and inquired if he would be willing, since the LPs were not available in the States, to record them for me if I supplied the cassette tapes.

Yes, he said, he would, and that’s how I met Tom McDermott, who will close the 2013 New Mexico Jazz Festival this Sunday at the Outpost.

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