Froggy (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} infrogmation) wrote in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} ragtime_land,@ 2007-11-12 22:27:00 |
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John Arpin
We lost one of the very best, John Arpin, on Thurday the 8th of November. He was 70 years old.
Obit in the Ottawa Citizen
Arpin's wife's blog
Arpin was one of the few musicians in any style I've been privileged to hear who was not just good, not merely damn good, but simply astonishing.
I only heard him perform live on perhaps a half dozen or so occasions, but feel very fortunate I had such an opportunity. I most treasure the memory of him playing at private gatherings at the late writer/historian/music promoter Al Rose's home in New Orleans. At one, some time in the 1980s, after Arpin played (IIRC, Lamb's "Bohemia"), there was a moment of awed silence, then Al Rose said, "You know, John, if you'd been born 75 years earlier, you'd be the most famous musician in the world."
Photo of (left to right) Diana Rose, John's wife Mary Jane, and John Arpin, at the Sedalia Ragtime Festival, 1990. I seldom used to take photos, and this is the only photo I took of John Arpin. For some reason I decided to scan it and upload it Wednesday, which turned out to be the day before he died.
If you don't have any of Arpin's cds, get yourself a treat. And know that yes, he really did play that well live.
We lost one of the very best, John Arpin, on Thurday the 8th of November. He was 70 years old.
Obit in the Ottawa Citizen
Arpin's wife's blog
Arpin was one of the few musicians in any style I've been privileged to hear who was not just good, not merely damn good, but simply astonishing.
I only heard him perform live on perhaps a half dozen or so occasions, but feel very fortunate I had such an opportunity. I most treasure the memory of him playing at private gatherings at the late writer/historian/music promoter Al Rose's home in New Orleans. At one, some time in the 1980s, after Arpin played (IIRC, Lamb's "Bohemia"), there was a moment of awed silence, then Al Rose said, "You know, John, if you'd been born 75 years earlier, you'd be the most famous musician in the world."
Photo of (left to right) Diana Rose, John's wife Mary Jane, and John Arpin, at the Sedalia Ragtime Festival, 1990. I seldom used to take photos, and this is the only photo I took of John Arpin. For some reason I decided to scan it and upload it Wednesday, which turned out to be the day before he died.
If you don't have any of Arpin's cds, get yourself a treat. And know that yes, he really did play that well live.
