It was a hell of an education, listening to him talk about his experiences with jazz greats like Clark Terry, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and many others, I knew that I was hooked about big band music, bebop and jazz.  When I left high school in 1984, I lost track of my mentor.  I occasionally heard that he and his big band were playing somewhere in the Detroit metro area and I would make it a point to catch up with him at the annual Montreux/Detroit Jazz Festival.  However, over the years I lost track of him.  Then in early 2002, I heard that he left Detroit and moved to Las Vegas where he formed another big band and embedded himself within the Las Vegas community—turns out that he had been there since 1994 and formed the Jimmy Wilkins New Life Orchestra.  The band played the Four Queens and the Riviera for a few years and Jimmy established himself in the music education community through a few guest speaking engagements and guest conducting some of Ernie’s arrangements for a band at Las Vegas High.  Over the years, the band has been playing his extensive Basie library, including arrangements and originals by his brother, saxophonist/composer/arranger, Ernie Wilkins.

Ernie might be best known for his work with Count Basie. He also wrote for Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, and Dizzy Gillespie. In addition to that, he was musical director for albums by Cannonball Adderley, Dinah Washington, Oscar Peterson, and Buddy Rich.

As I began my journey as a musician out of college, I continued to reflect back on my experiences with Jimmy.  In addition, over the years I continued to hear that voice of encouragement as I worked to piece together a livelihood as a working musician.  I have been out of the music business for the past 3 years and find myself missing the camaraderie and the intangible feeling of pleasure performing.

Recently, after reconnecting with my jazz band director, Ron Cardeccia, we started talking about the old days and remembering how much fun it was learning and discovering jazz through the ‘lens’ of Jimmy Wilkins.  Even though he was an educator, turns out that he too was profoundly enriched from the time Jimmy spent at Chippewa Valley High School.  To this day, Ron stays in contact with Jimmy and his wife Cynthia and have developed a long-lasting friendship.

As we sat talking over lunch at California Pizza Kitchen, reminiscing about Jimmy, his love for the music and how he got a bunch of snot-nose, suburban kids to ‘swing’, the idea of wanting to give back in some fashion bubbled to the surface.  The most obvious manner in which to show this appreciation was to talk to Jimmy about doing a recording of him and his band performing the music he loves.

So here I am, putting my toe back into the proverbial ‘water’ of the music business working on pulling this project together in short-manner. 

I feel very fortunate to have enlisted the assistance of Joanne Gilbert, a writer, historian, college instructor, member of the UNLV Jazz Studies Advisory Board and former board member of the Las Vegas Jazz Society.  Since 2005, she has been instrumental in gaining recognition for Jimmy and all the wonderful musicians in his New Life Orchestra.  More info on her Las Vegs Jazz Masters Project can be found at www.jazzatjoannes.com.

I spoke with Jimmy over the weekend, and he is very excited about the possibility of this project coming to fruition.  I’ve got my work cut out for me; generate interest to create funding for production, reconnect with some music labels that I’ve previously worked with, call a Grammy-award winning producer that I’ve worked with to see if he would be interested in producing the project, as well as a number of other administrative details.

Here is a recent story about Jimmy that appeared in the Las Vegas Sun.

I’ve also created a Jimmy Wilkins Facebook Fan Page.  Please consider joining and getting the latest information about this project.

More later…ciao

With regard to work, I spent a good deal of time in meetings as well as putting together a few Google Adwords campaigns, writing a corporate blog policy & blog editorial calendar, and setting up test parameters for email A/B testing.  GoIndustry DoveBid organized a team building exercise for the Global Marketing Center team Thursday evening—Bowling Night.  We had 22 people playing and I’m happy to report that I scored right in the middle of the bell curve with a score of 80.  I know, nothing to brag about but it was a lot of fun and great time to see the team enjoying themselves.  I appreciated the time out and getting to know individual members of the team. 

The bowling alley that we went to was located in what’s been described as the largest mall in southwest Asia.  Wikipedia had some good content about the mall, briefly “SM Mall of Asia is the second largest shopping mall in the Philippines and the 4th largest shopping mall in the world. It has a land area of 42 hectares and has a gross floor area of an approximate 410,000 m². The mall is located at Bay City, Pasay City, Philippines just near the SM Central Business Park, the Manila Bay and the southern end of EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue). The mall attracts daily foot traffic of 200,000 people.” Read more at Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM_Mall_of_Asia.

So it turns out that typhoon season occurs from June through November, and I was brought back to that realization when I woke up this morning and it was just pouring like a Moen Vertical Spa System Shower.  Weather reports project that this will continue throughout the weekend.  Looks like I’ll be camping out in my room, doing some work (maybe) but most likely watching some of the 3 seasons of Family Guy on my iPod.

I am in Manila on a 3-week assignment for GoIndustry DoveBid, spending time with the folks who make up the company’s Global Marketing Center.  This center is essentially an in-house ad agency that services the three major business units of GoIndustry DoveBid (North America, Europe and Asia).  The team here in Manila supports approximately 1,500 annual global sales buying media in various local, regional and global publications; designing sales catalogues and various online/offline event specific advertisements; creating and managing various PPC campaigns; and preparing industry specific research within the various verticals that GoIndustry DoveBid operates within.

 The team is made up of approximately 14 people and led by a very talented manager along with her direct reports of three senior managers.  I had the opportunity to spend some time with these senior managers and immediately sensed their conviction and passion for their and their team’s work.

I am looking forward to learning more about their capabilities and spending time getting to know each of the players over the course of the next 2.5 weeks.

On another note, the weather in Manila has been hot, humid and rain 18 of 24 hours every day since I’ve arrived. There is a tremendous amount of street flooding and travel times by car are greatly extended.  I can’t believe the volume of rain that is coming down as I type this posting—it is simply a sheet of water!

I’m staying at a very nice Marriott property in Makati City, the heart of the Philippines’ business community.  They have a wonderful fitness center complete with outdoor pool (its been fun swimming in the rain) which I’ve been able to make complete use of.  In the mornings, I’ve been eating at the hotel restaurant where they have breakfast foods and the freshest fruits from all over the world.  I was impressed to see idle and sambar (traditional South Indian breakfast) as well as mangos as a part of their morning offering.

Last night I had dinner at an ‘OK’ Indian restaurant called Bollywood–nice atmosphere, good service, visually engaging decor (look up in the men’s restroom) and Great garlic nan!!!

Once we arrive, I get out of the car and accompany Gil and Stan to inspect the property, turns out that this site was a small car dealership with 10 bays, a showroom, some office space and a rather interesting room on the second floor–it seems that the previous owner did quite a bit of after-hours entertaining and the room looked like a set from a ‘b-grade’ porn movie complete with mirrors, elevated area for bed, walk-in shower with room for at least 5 people, area specific mood lighting and a concealed emergency exit to the roof.  The previous owner may have been running something more than just a car dealership.  Regardless, both of those businesses seemed to have dried up and the property went back to the bank.

After being there for about 1/2 hour, various people started showing up and began their own inspection of the property.  After about 40 minutes, Gil and Stan stake out the area in which to facilitate the auction.  They picked a beautiful spot right in the sun in front of one of the large bay doors.  They had spent the time leading up registering bidders and collecting a mandatory deposit from those who registered.  Since the amount of the required deposit was a rather large sum of money, most everyone provide a check, however one gentleman showed up with a big bag of cash–plastic shopping bag like from the grocery store.

I met the trustee and the bank representative (who was a very attractive woman) as they all were conferring with Gil and Stan.  Once they were done, Gil makes an announcement and all the bidders (approx. 10) move towards him (did I mention this was in direct sunlight, 90F, and about 80% humidity?).  Anyways, Gil proceeds to read al l the ‘legaleeze’ within the auction and foreclosure notice–this part of the auction was the longest part.  The reading of this notice took about 18 minutes.  He then took a few questions from the bidders and proceeded with asking for an opening bid.

There were 3 active bidders who kept driving down Gil’s attempt to keep the bidding increments at 25K.  Stan worked the ‘ring’ by walking through the crowd and echoing Gil’s last bid and asking folks individually if they wanted to increase the bid.  By the way they worked together, it was very clear that they had done this many, many times and played off each other in a seamless fashion.  The entire sales portion took only 15 minutes.

The property ended up selling from much more than what the bank was expecting which made our bank rep very happy as well as the trustee.

We all went out to Kibby’s for their locally renowned shrimp salad and celebrated.

All and all, there was some good drama and good learning.