Been doing the show since December of 2000 and over the course of the 500 or so shows, I just have to say I never had a better time in my life. What bliss! To retire into a job that one would have liked to have had as the job one just retired from. But the energy is fading, it’s hard for me to crawl on the floor looking for the right vinyl, and so the time has come to say goodbye. What a beautiful word. A sad word, a loaded word, but with a kind of sunset grace about it.

Three jazzmen get their individual farewells: Bill Evans, George Shearing and Art Pepper, from Bob Lark, Greg Abate and the Hot Club of Detroit, respectively; Anat Cohen does a gorgeous job on Gordon Jenkins’ Goodbye; Garry Dial and Dick Oatts have a lovely take on Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye, a seldom-played ballad by Cole Porter, and Charlie Haden’s Quartet West serves up Always Say Goodbye, a Haden original that smacks one right in the heart. Kenny Davern and Ken Peplowski go all the way back to the hoary environs of 1924 for Mama’s Gone, Goodbye, and the late Jack Walrath travels back to his native Montana where two players from his past – Philip Aaberg and Kelly Roberti – join him to form the Montana Wild Cats to play Goodbye, Old Guy. 

And so it goes. And goes. And goes. It’s been a gas; love everywhere you look. 

Stay cool, everybody.

~ Bill Wood, The Jazz Guy