Nat Hentoff's column on politics is carried in our local newspaper every day, but the work he did reviewing jazz and blues and folk in Downbeat was just grand writing.

This article shows him at his best. God, he was old when I first found him, he must be 100 at least.

MY MAIN POINT. --- Growing up nominally Jewish, but totally secular, none of this music, and what Nat says about it in his heartfelt review, ever came home to me. Now, it sounds alien to me---at best. That is just what is. And it's O.K. But I come away from here feeling I've seen some big glimpse of all that I lost when my father died at age 48----when I was five years old. But then, he wasn't Jewish until he married my mother and adopted the faith. Probably I'd not been more prepared to enjoy this music after all.
This is only hindsight---for whatever it is worth. Only a few thoughts on a nice August afternoon in Illinois.

Art Thieme