Missed

Some tragic deaths here in New Orleans lately.

I didn't know Dinerral Shavers, drummer with the Hot 8 and educator, but I enjoyed hearing him play a number of times. I first heard him while he was still in his early teens at most, the youngest of the band-- my friends and I predicted he'd go far. He was shot by a teen who had an argument with his stepson.


Tad Jones died without violence but with no more sense, falling and hitting his head in a chance accident. He'd been doing important music interviews since his teens, and was nearly done with his book on Louis Armstrong which fellow music historians eagarly anticipated, sure it would far eclypse everything previously published on the subject. I had him on my radio show for the centeniary of Armstrong's birth-- which he discovered the real date of. I won't get to have his erudite presence on a followup show after publication. At least the publisher, family, and friends have made a commitment to see it into print.

I went to his funeral and played with the band on his final trip to the tomb in Metairie Cemetery today.

For a while I wasn't sure I'd be emotionally up to it, as I got news of the shooting of two old friends. Times-Picayune: "Killings bring city to its bloodied knees."

Helen Hill and Paul Gailiunas were, as pretty much everyone who knew them observes, as nice a pair of people as anyone could care to meet. They were shot at their home in Bywater. Last I heard, Paul is in the hospital expected to live; Helen was pronounced dead on the site. They have a 2 year old son.

CartoonBrew tribute to Helen Hill.
Obit in S. Carolina newspaper.
YoniYum post

Tragedy.
Lots of people are shocked and sickened.


At present it is little consolation to note that we all die, but at least these people avoided the even greater tragedy, and LIVED first.