Letter 23

I,m sorry if i bore you  with  my  grambling  about jazz...  i could talk   all day long about that stuff... i  forget that may be  it,s not  very  important to everybody...  but you are right about Pushkin...  if  anyone  tamped with his words  it would   no longer be Pushkin...  i made a bad analogy... but my point is this- no one  would tamper with the notes  of Mozart or Borodin ...  but all great  jazz composes must submit there works  to a  collaboration of trusted arrangers and also the performing musicians... their  work becomes  interpreted and reinterpreted...  arranged  and rearranged  again and again till it,s  hardly recognizable ...  it,s the only music where the musicians can change  it spantaneously... where people  play  with it ...   tinker with it., cnange   it ...  where every local  small town piano player can play  invent his own  version of great works like  " Take  the A train "  or  my favorite " Misty"... but thata the nature of jazz and also it,s attraction.. a jazz composer just gives  birth  to the music invites everyone to make  it his own... to play  it all  wrong ... to lift  it up ...  to express themselves...every composition is like  a vehicle  and everyone  gets to drive it ...  that,s why jazz is  so unique ... i can,t goof around  with the great Pushkin,s  words , but  i can do anything i want  with the herat Ellington,s  notes... and with  his permission... every jazz opus is a challenge to all misicians... allarrangers... it is like  What are you gonna to do with  this .... high school kids  get to play with it ...serious  profesinal musicians get to play with this .. it,s music forus all ...  even Duke said  that they never  played  a song the same way ... it cant get  boring  bacause the whole  band  has a different  mood  and  a different  change every  night ...  it is very fluid music  without form or  parameters but also  with very strict forms  and parameters...  does that make sense... i remember the great Errol Garner.. the  diminuative piano player that wrote " Misty"   he was real little about 5"4"  but he had been a professional boxer.. the goofy thing about Errol is he never got a piano lesson... but he  was  a brilliant pianist andthe best jazz  pianist... up here with Teddy Willson and  Fats Waller... but he claiomed that he never  got better or worse ... that he didnt practise ... he said his oldre brother took a piano lesson when  errol was 9 yrs  old  and Errol watches and  listebed  and after the lesson he got on the piano bench and began to play  .. he says he was exactly as  good that day as he never was... he only explanation was  that may be  he was a reincarnation  of fine pianist.. noone taught him fingering or chords or nuthin.. he already knew ...  and after he failed  everything including boxing he went back to music and become world  famous ... his  trademark was his  audible talking and  exclamations as he  played .. but in English or  any language known to man... i love his music...