Monday, August 17, 2015

BOP SHOP KAUPA/SNYDER CONCERT


Ohs (Overhand Sam of Thunder Body) with Mike Kaupa.
An evening of music no one has ever heard before.
Expect the unexpected when Mike and Sam team up on Wednesday, August 19th
@ THE BOP SHOP
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Known by his nickname "Overhand Sam," Snyder first began playing guitar as a kid
 who got stuck inside the house with a broken arm and his older brother's neglected
guitar. Aching to play with his fretting hand wrapped up in a cast, Sam did the
only thing he could think to do at the time: laying the guitar on the family's dining
room table and fingering the fretboard overhanded. (Once big bro saw Sam starting
to get good at it, big bro suddenly got possessive and competitive, which  Sam says
fueled an arms race and pushed each brother to keep improving their chops.) By the
time his injury healed weeks and weeks later, he'd already come too far to turn
back. Hence the bank robber-sounding nickname, which he was christened with by
grizzled old blues veterans.
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On trumpet and effects, Mike Kaupa has performed throughout the U.S., Europe, and
Japan.  He was an interim instructor of jazz trumpet at the Eastman School of Music
for the 1999/2000 school year and the spring semester, 2010. He recently performed
at The 92nd St. Y in New York City with pianist Bill Dobbins at the "Remembering
 Marian" tribute concert for Marian McPartland.

Among others, he has performed with Jorge Rossy, Ben Monder, The Dave Rivello Ensemble,
Mark Egan, Steve Wilson, Mark Murphy, Gary Bartz, Luciana Souza, Joe Locke, Mel
Torme, and Ray Charles. He is currently on the faculty of The Harley School, The
 Institute for Creative Music, and the Eastman Community Music School. Mike has
participated in school workshops with Quintopus, the Blank Tape Series, and the
IfCM Collective.


BOP SHOP RECORDS & BOP ARTS INC. present
MIKE KAUPA & SAM SNYDER
Wednesday, August 19th, 8:30 pm
Bop Shop Records, 1460 Monroe Ave., Rochester
$10 at the door

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Joe Smith in Palmyra


Oneida Dispatch, Oneida, N.Y.
March 8, 1872

    The correspondent of the Cincinnati Time and Chronicle, at Palmyra, in a recent letter to that paper, relates many interesting incidents; among others the following joe about Jo Smith, the Mormon Prophet:

    When a young man he was employed by one Durfee to assist in haying. In Durfee’s pantry stood two bottles quite similar in appearance, one containing whiskey (an article quite common in those days, but now entirely out of the market, benzine taking its place,) and the other,  medicine known as “No. 6.” It was a fiery, peppery compound that no family in New York State was without, thirty years ago, and if it had no  other merit, it was certainly warming. 

    I remember being dosed with it when I was a boy, and I sometimes think that it is what makes me so smart now. Jo Smith had a palate for good whiskey, although he would prefer that it wouldn’t cost him anything. He knew of the whiskey bottle in the pantry, and resolved to have a smack at it, for Durfee kept it rather close.

    So one night, after the house was in repose, Jo stole out of bed, and creeped safely down stairs, from his room in the loft, sought out the pantry. Shortly after, the family was aroused by a tremendous rattling of the bucket down the well, which stood near the house, attended by a fearful coughing and spitting on the part of some one in the vicinity.

    It was one of the old-fashioned wells that you don’t see on exhibition at the fairs and can’t buy at the family supply stores any more. They aren’t peddled around the country, nor put in prizes in gift lotteries. 

    This well was worked with a windlass and a chain, and when the  iron-bound moss-covered bucket was allowed to go down on the run, as the sailors say, bumping against the curbing, it made it very lively for the windlass, and this was the racket that woke up the Durfee family.

    Out of bed they sprang at once, and ran to the well, where they found the founder of Mormonism in his night-clothes, working the windlass with might and main, hauling up the bucket. “Why Jo! what’s the matter?” cried old man Durfee, as he recognized his hired man. With a quick shake of the head, as much as to say, “Don’t speak to the man at the wheel,” and coughing furiously, Jo seized the dripping bucket as it reached the top of the curb, and resting it on the edge applied his eager mouth to the rim and drank, and drank, and drank, the cooling liquid, fairly hissing as i went down his burn in throat.

    Durfee declared to his dying day Jo never let up so long as here was a drop in the bucket and he believed he would have drank the well dry if they hadn’t restrained him. All there was about it, Jo had mistaken the “No. 6” for the whiskey.

                                                                         Submitted by Dick Palmer