QUIET As IT's Kept: Newsletter & Press Release March 5, 2011

  YOUtopia INstitute [A, no-money-profit, conscious awareness & behavior evolution organization]

The Phenomenal BILLY COLWELL Blues, R&B, R&R, and Jazz Band LIVE – Volume I

(Collectors Edition, Exclusively available- Previously unreleased from last 2 years 1972 – 1974 )

featuring Rama Demetrius Dyushambee aka: E. D. Harris, etc. – Alto Saxophone

We ain’t scared of no rats, and we don’t hate nobody neither

With Death & Fear as our allies

Never no time to waste

 $8.88 per CD for FREE 1^st Class US Postal, and Mexico deliveries. Other countries add $3.00 for regular mail deliveries. Email TheCosmicDetective@YOUtopiiaInstitute.org for rush shipping fee.

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This music causes necks to wave, toes to tap, feet to dance, and so on...

"If you don't rock and roll it won't be my fault at all." From tune: LET'S HAVE A NATURAL BALL.

As can be seen in Internet search results, and the sampling of glowing and appreciative reviews, and comments below about the excellent music from Billy Colwell, and the Colwell - Winfield Blues Band's 1968 Cold Wind Blues album, and summed up in the Boston Magazine article titled Getting the Blues http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/getting_the_blues/ " Guitarist Billy Colwell, a hard-ass who'd switched from psychedelic rock to blues, could command any audience.”

What is conspicuously missing, for the most part, is information about or music from Billy Colwell after 1970. Most fortunately, for those of us who can appreciate and enjoy this, I have found five 1/4 inch reel to reel tapes, recorded in both directions, of live performances of the Billy Colwell Band recorded between 1972 and 1974 - during the time that I was a member of that band. 

Billy sent me those tapes before he attempted to commit suicide in 1974 or '75. He did not kill himself but, as a result of the attempt, remained paralyzed in a wheel chair for a few more years, before making the transition several decades ago. In my Internet searches, and individual contacts, I have not found any obituary or information about exactly when and where Billy passed out of this life, disposition of his remains, or living relatives.

I moved to Boston in 1970 to go to music school, and met Billy in 1972 when I was conducting the rehearsals for a local production of Jesus Christ Superstar. Billy was the guitar player in that band. One week before that scheduled opening date, a federal court injunction was issued against the performance of any productions other than the original Broadway people. Our Boston production - as well as numerous other local productions throughout the USA - ended. With no job and no band, Billy formed the Billy Colwell Band from some of the people in that Boston Jesus Christ Superstar band. We had been paid for several weeks to rehearse that music five days a week, so we all had played together a lot, knew each others playing and had gotten to know each other, as for people to hang out with.

The natural way of creative genius is that one must move beyond wherever one has been, and is. That is always difficult to extremely difficult for the individual, personally. Making that unavoidable path even more difficult, for the progressively creative person pursuing the IMP/Individual Maximum Potential, is the fact that most do not have competent psychological, spiritual, economic support. Billy needed supportive honest professional music business guidance and representation to move ahead with his music career and his life, and did not have such at that time.

When I talked to him about that his thinking was if we played the music well the business part would somehow be taken care of.

I think, for the most part, Billy simply made the fatal mistake of entrusting his music business decisions to incompetent acquaintances that he had known for years before he and I met. We were one of the most popular bands, and one of the lowest paid, by the guy who hustled gigs for us. We mainly wanted to play the music, so none of us complained.

Now, nearly 40 years later, it is clear to me that Billy's final music business decision was to trust that I would be the best person to leave the legacy of his unreleased live recorded music in the care of. Therefore, I AM committed to do the best that I can with filling in, with my words from my perspective, the human life story of Billy Colwell. Billy's superbly inspired, intricately delicate to dynamic improvisational guitar music, from these recordings - melodically, harmonically and rhythmically ‘speaks’ for itself. 

Atlantic Records scouted the Billy Colwell Band for several months leading up to Ahmet Ertegün, with his entourage on their way to Europe, having us play privately for him at Sandy’s club in Beverly, Massachusetts. Followed by some nights of demo studio recordings for Atlantic and contract negotiations. Billy was not business oriented, did not like talking about business, had no professional music business representation, and was misrepresented and ill-advised by some incompetent self serving individuals. Consequently, the potential contract with Atlantic Records did not happen.

I burned out and left the band, which opened the door for various people to “play” with the Billy Colwell Band. Billy plugged about like that for a few months more until his wife, with their new baby girl, left him and moved in with her parents. Shortly after Billy pulled the trigger that ended his phenomenal guitar playing.

Billy was a quiet, intelligent, sensitive and exceptionally musically talented man who “swilled heavily,” as he referred to heavy imbibing of mostly whiskey or vodka, to dull the emotional pain and suffering from his fragility in functioning with the, dishonest, insensitive, phony, jealous, envious, competitive, diabolical, malicious, cruel to vicious influences of some that he had the closest personal and business relationships with..

When I last saw Billy, he was alone in a coma in a hospital room. In a waiting room I saw 3 or 4 people that I was told were some of Billy’s family members who stayed there 24/7 in a silent prayer vigil through the days and weeks until he came out of the coma, and family members took him home.

I was in the Boston area for a few days some years later, and wanted to find and visit Billy. I asked some people but never found where Billy  was at that time. A former member of our band told me Billy was in a bad way, and advised me not to find and visit him. I somewhat regret that I took that advice, and never saw Billy again. Maybe that was best, with my memory of how sad I was being in that hospital room with him incapacitated in a coma.

In my way of thinking, feeling and hearing, my time and experiences, with Billy and the Billy Colwell Band, was with a man and his inspired tight in the groove band with the range of a delicate flower-dynamic machine, and all else that was included. I think the invisible influences are the most powerful and, ultimately, not negotiable. http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/BillyColwe llBand_Live.

B. B. King was Billy's major influence, which can be heard in Billy's guitar playing. We once opened for B. B. King at the Boston Garden arena. After we played our opening set there was an impromptu jam session, as B. B. with his band were a couple of hours late because of a transportation delay. 

Being born is a non-commutable death sentence, sooner or later.  Therefore we ALL should be about trying to do the best we can with our relatively short human lives, and leaving as much as we can for others to learn from - or at least enjoy and appreciate - when we leave these human forms.

What Billy Colwell left for us can definitely be heard and felt from this series of CDs, transferred from reel to reel tapes of previously unreleased live performance music from his last years. I have no doubt this is some of his best.

Jammin’ on…

Rama Demetrius Dyushambee, DD, aka: E. D. Harris  

The Cosmic Detective, and various other name labels...

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Tracks: [78 minutes]  

- Voice intro - :27

1.     Git Off -  9:33   

2.     No Time To Waste – 8:43

3.     Got That Love Disease – 9:08

4.     Whole Lot Of Lovin’ - 5:09

5.     Pretty Woman - 5:26

6.     Bootleg Bitch - 9:43

7.     Somebody Loan Me A Dime - 15:43

8.     (Who Knows?) - 14:03

Blues & Jazz Band:

·         Billy Colwell – Leader, Lead Guitar

·         Tony Harrington (‘Rug Head’) – Vocal, Rhythm Guitar

·         Raymond McDonald – Electric Bass

·         Joe Livolsi – Drums

·         George DeCarolis – Trumpet

·         Rama Demetrius Dyushambee/aka: E. D. Harris, etc. – Alto Saxophone

Original 2 track tape reel to reel live recordings by John ‘Friend’, Boston suburb native

Various tracks recorded at the SPEAKEASY + JOE’S PLACE clubs in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Paul's Mall and the Jazz Workshop clubs in Boston, and MY FATHERS PLACE club in Roslyn, Long Island, New York, early to mid 1970s. 

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Boston Magazine
Article: Getting the Blues http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/getting_the_blues/  “Boston's blues legacy is long and largely unknown...Some players, both white and black, routinely led their bands between the blues clubs in Cambridge and the few then remaining in Roxbury. Guitarist Billy Colwell, a hard-ass who'd switched from psychedelic rock to blues, could command any audience.”

·         Watermelon Slim described Billy as one of his “greatest influences”: http://www.barrelhouseblues.com/watermelon_slim.htm

“…the only one of my contemporaries in young-white-man-playing-the-blues I would grant that to. Billy Colwell, who made that awesome Colwell-Winfield Blues Band album of about 1968*, was an awesome player I hung out with and watched several times in the early 70s in Cambridge. He drank an awful lot, and one day shot himself - and lived, paralyzed. He's gone now.”

 James Montgomery
"Hey did you know my first New England gig was with Colwell Winfield and that when I started the James Montgomery Band the first version of it had Billy Colwell on guitar and Chuck Purro on drums. When I proposed to Billy that he play in a band with me Billy Mather and Chucky to fill in for times when Colwell Winfield wasn't booked Colwell said "OK, but we have to name the band after you in case it sucks!" That's how the James Montgomery Band got it's name!"
http://www.jamesmontgomery.com/index.html 

The Billy Colwell Band backed up John Lee Hooker for some gigs when I was with them

 From left: Me with John Lee Hooker, (unknown), 'Chicago Bob'

I have read that the Colwell - Winfield band opened for Led Zeppelin on a tour, and recorded with Van Morrison on his MOON DANCE album.

Straight ahead, albeit in a spiraling sort of way.

"An unexamined life is not worth living."-Socrates in Plato's Apology

"YOUR best is not my best, and my best is not YOUR best, but we ALL got a best." Rev. Jesse Jackson

One 'thang' leads to another.

Original SUFFERHEAD MUST GO if there is to be most desirable future life habitation on this planet.

Jammin on...maintaining, sustaining, pursuing and attaining my IMP/Individual Maximum Potential - with Death as my ally.

Myself, as a part of the ALL,

Rama Demetrius Dyushambee, DD

Founder & Minister: YOUtopia INstitute

Aka: The Wise Old Coot, The Cosmic Detective, Cosmic D, E. D. Harris - and various name labels...

LET'S HEAL IT CD of original music and lyric

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS: Do-It-Yourself Manual

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[Forward to friends & acquaintances who might want to KNOW for themselves]

Up & On to "The Mind Is The Last Frontier..."

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