We lost Bill Yesterday. He was late for a gig and the musicians went looking for him. Great way to go. I hope musicians are looking for me when my time comes. WE love you Bill and that wonderful lilting swing that propelled the music so well.
I knew Bill for many years, both as a musician and mystery author. We worked together on several events (the drummer side of his life), and I hosted him at Literary Salons and saw him at several mystery events, most recently at Noir at the Bar. Bill and his group played at Bcon Monterey several years ago. He lived in Sonoma in a converted train car. How cool is that! But that was Bill. I will miss him.
Bill Moody was a mystery author and professional jazz drummer. He was the author of the Evan Horne Mystery series: The Man In Red Square, Czechmate: The Spy Who Played Jazz, Fade to Blue, Shades of Blue, Looking for Chet Baker, Bird Lives! and other novels, as well as a short story collection, Mood Swings.
From his website:
Bill Moody was born in Webb City, Missouri and grew up in Santa Monica, California. A professional jazz drummer, Bill played and/or recorded with Jr. Mance, Maynard Ferguson, Jon Hendricks, Annie Ross, and Lou Rawls. He lived in Las Vegas for many years as a musician on the Las Vegas Strip, hosted a weekly radio show at KUNV-FM, and taught in the UNLV English Department. He lived in northern California, where he taught creative writing at Sonoma State University, and was active in the Bay Area jazz scene with the Terry Henry Trio and Dick Conte's trio and quartet.
"The connection between playing jazz and writing crime fiction is a strong one for me. A jazz musician begins with the framework or the song — the chords, the structure, the form — but during a solo, he doesn't know what he's going to play or how until he reaches that part of the song. Writing crime fiction for me is a similar process. Working from the basic structure of the crime novel, I then improvise on a premise or motif, if you will, and I'm a fervent advocate of the 'what if' game during the writing process."
-Bill Moody
I'm so sad to hear this -- I had maintained Bill's website for many years and every month we'd be in touch so he could send me his latest performance dates. I will have to make a note of this on his site.
ReplyDeleteEnough already. I liked Bill. He was always friendly whenever I saw him at conventions or salons. I like his books a lot. I remember his group playing at B'con i Monterey.
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