If you're here, I assume you’ve taken a break from the rightful rabble at the door of Mr. Freedom — reminding the owner that you cannot be a designer first and historian second. You cannot be an amateur in cultural awareness and sell clothes. Or, you can, you’ll just piss a lot of people off with your bumbling.
If you’re here, you also managed to keep GTBT in your RSS feed.
With that, I bring up a bit of classic melodrama that I’ve taken a bit of time on.
Bill Evans is just one of many jazz tragedies. So if you’ve been here before, you can continue on.
His story could be told as a family story — as his brother Harry's story is intertwined — but Harry never played with Miles Davis so it’s not.
Heroin ended up getting the best of Bill Evans.
After Harry’s tragedy (schizophrenia and suicide), Bill recorded We Will Meet Again and I Will Say Goodbye. Those two albums, in my opinion, are his best works*.
Either way, this is a clothes blog and I should probably talk about Bill Evan’s style and subsequent decent into the 1970s and final days. While he recorded We Will Meet Again and I Will Say Goodbye in the 70s, many of his laudable sartorial days are in years prior — indicating the fallibility of man just through his sartorial decisions.
He’s got a couple classic looks.
Y’know, dark shirt/dark jacket.
Invisible tie.
Phallic cigarette.
JCrew skinny tie clone.
Questionable aging.
Are there lessons to take away from this? Sartorially, none that you don’t already know.
Maybe it’s that you shouldn’t abuse heroin. Maybe it’s that you should get so cut up inside when you go through a family tragedy. Maybe it’s that if you never beat yourself up, you won’t be remembered as a jazz great or just great in general. Maybe it’s that if you never beat yourself up, you’ll never go down a path of heroin, depression, and a decade long suicide.
Maybe it’s that the impulsive jazz of life is up, down, happy, sad, and that man isn’t consistent. You could be remembered for great things. They’ll remember your “fuck ups” too, though.
Heck, maybe it’ll be that your “fuck ups” are what help you craft great things. Maybe you’ll be dressed terribly while doing it.
*Of course this is a subjective opinion. There are a lot of Jazz Heads who would disagree and be able to formulate a more cohesive argument than I ever could.
