Jazz, And All That

Over the weekend we attended the Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival.

Back when I was in college and trying to decide what to do with myself, I took a few vocal jazz classes. I was singing jazz at a restaurant downtown Portland at the time and loved it so hard. I really loved those classes, too, and singing the old standards and learning how to scat and studying up on Ella and Etta and Louis and Robbie.

In the end I majored in something "useful." Blah blah blah.

Sometimes I like to pretend that I stayed in those jazz classes and majored in jazz vocal performance. And sometimes I like to go to jazz festivals and be all smart explaining improv rules and chord progressions to my clueless and adorable red husband -- whose only musical instrument is the calculator after all.

Lionel Hampton played the xylophone. That is pretty bad ass.