Positive Feedback has a lively and diverse creative community on its masthead. One very unforgettable person, and a very close, dear friend of mine, is the inimitable Dr. Jim Merod, a Senior Associate Editor at PF. A professor at Soka University in southern California, Jim is widely renowned in the world of Jazz as The Man when it comes to scholarship, relationship, and cool-cat-ship. A producer, a scholar, a recordist who has worked with everyone who's anyone for decades now, Jim is operating in the stratosphere of this improvisational rock floating around the sun that we call home.
Jim Merod: A Portrait. Buena Park, CA, 2009 (iPhone 5 study; photograph and image processing by David W. Robinson)
And it's earthy that he is, too!
(Not only that, but he is a fellow single malt aficionado, a hale fellow, well met! over our wee drammies together. Salud, brother...sip on!)
His label, Bluport Jazz, has tons of recordings, one of the richest troves of Jazz on the planet. I'm working on him to share these with a larger audience...we both wish that we had 48-hour days!...and who knows? Perhaps that'll happen.
Meanwhile, if you'd like to get a sense of this wonder of a person, a man that I'm delighted (jazzed?!) to call my close friend, check out this YouTube link that was just released. It will give you some small indication of this larger-than-life amigo of mine.
And by the way, don't miss another dear friend of mine, Joe Kubala of Kubala-Sosna Cables, talking about his relationship with Jim.
For those who would like to know more about Jim's label, Blueport Jazz, you'll find it HERE.
Ecce homo!