Despite periodic threats to the contrary, I’ve never had the patience to learn an instrument. I can’t read music, and I don’t know the first thing about how to speak the musician’s lingo; as my former producer once told me, “you approach music from a fan’s perspective.”

That perspective is what’s fueled my lifelong orbit around the stuff — as a writer, as a label owner, as a publisher, as a quote-unquote recording artist — but because I try to know my limits, and probably couldn’t tell an A from a G if you pointed a pistol at my head, jazz is one area I’ve always tended to avoid. I review the occasional new record, but nothing too in depth; it’s hard enough to do justice in writing to the stuff I am qualified to write about.

Still, much to my wife’s chagrin, there are a handful of jazz artists whose work moves me on a fundamental level despite my crippling ignorance of form and theory. The wiry tangle of pre- and postmodern guitar that Bill Frisell churns out at blinding speed, for instance, or the deceptively smooth fusion of Mike Stern. The astoundingly accessible innovations of early Brubeck. The soul-shattering beauty of a Stan Getz solo (although, heretic that I am, I prefer not to listen to the Gilberto stuff). And, maybe most of all, the seemingly effortless perfection of Toots Thielemans’ harmonica.

Born in Brussels in 1922, Toots Thielemans actually got something of a late start; it wasn’t until he was in his late 20s that he made his mark — primarily as a guitarist — during stints with Benny Goodman and George Shearing. In time, he became known as the best harmonica player — and first to legitimize it as a serious jazz instrument — since Larry Adler; for quite a few years, though, he was a sideman in the States and a sort of elevated novelty-tune writer in Europe, where he was famous for cutting sides that blended his guitar playing with his whistling. (Thieleman’s whistling skills earned him some American gigs, too — arguably the most notable being the long-running Old Spice commercials that you probably don’t remember because you’re too young, you little shit.) (more…)