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Over the weekend I read — mostly aloud to my wife, actually – Plato and a Platypus Walk Into A Bar, by Cathcart and Klein.  A relatively short book, Plato aspires to reveal some truths (and confusions) of philosophy by reference to jokes.  It’s an odd premise, but it works, and parts of the book are side-splittingly funny.  You may find that the jokes, more than the philosophy, are really what appeals to you, and that’s no problem - there are plenty of them, and many of them were, to me at least, new.  A book to be read once, and then left around the house to read to other people.  Very clever indeed.

I also bought the expanded version of Ellington at Newport, a 2CD set with the complete concert played by the Duke Ellington Orchestra at the Newport Jazz Festival in July 1956.  For those who don’t know about this recording, there is a very long story to tell (and I won’t tell it here, but you must get the 2CD version of this performance, not the earlier single CD), but suffice it to say that one composition, “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” featuring a 27-chorus solo by Paul Gonsalves on tenor sax, is considered by many to be the most electrifying moment in the history of recorded live jazz concerts - and that’s saying something.

Even if you know nothing about jazz, trust me, you cannot help but be blown away by this astounding solo, which runs almost 7 minutes and leaves the band, the audience, and everyone else ecstatic and nearly ready to riot.  (Indeed, that night an attractive blond woman, for many years unidentified — later a resident of Boston — got up on her chair and started to dance to Gonsalves’s solo, which galvanized the crowd.)  Famous in the 20’s and 30’s, Ellington by the 1950s was on the downward arc of his fame.  But his Newport performance was so astounding that it put him back on the map - where he surely deserved to be.  This is one of the best jazz recordings you can buy, hands down.  And it deserves to be played loud.

Paul Gonsalves - incorrectly identified by the opening MC as Paul Gonzales - was born in 1920 to Cape Verdean parents in Brockton, Massachusetts, and grew up in New Bedford.  Well regarded, but never ranked among the premier sax players of modern jazz, he nevertheless achieved nirvana one night in 1956.  His later career was marred by drug use and he died, if I remember right, of a drug overdose shortly before Ellington himself died, in 1974.