A friend just sent me an email telling me of jazz guitarist hiram bullock's sudden death on friday. i can't say that i knew hiram well but i knew him a little. he dated a woman named lisa for several years back when lisa and i were friends in greenwich village. we all went to the beach together several times. by then hiram was already kind of famous but since i didn't watch Letterman and wasn't at all into jazz, i was fairly oblivious to what he was all about. what i saw was a fat, funny, genial young man lying on a towel on the beach, smoking a doobie and catching some rays. i also remember going to his apartment in a chic new trendy building on hudson street that had double height windows and gleaming white heart pine floors but no furniture except for a glass top coffee table and a couple of leather sofas. there was a rooftop health club that came with the apartment and the guests were joking that hiram had no excuse now for not working out. i know it didn't work out with lisa who also had a little thing going i think with david sanborn. lisa was into jazz musicians and more particularly black jazz guys. that was pretty par for the course at the time. jewish girls. black men. but the men had to have a special talent and not just for using cocaine.
i was surprised to see that hiram was only 52 when he died. causes as yet unknown. the band leader paul shaffer called bullock the greatest guitarist since jimi hendrix and i suppose that might be true. although some people think that pat metheny should get that title, or john scofield. i'm willing to grant that hiram really was the best...except that for most of his life, he was plagued by demons.
hiram, you were sweet
rest in peace
i know a lot of folks are going to miss you
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