The ultimate lick player

My friend Doug Morton sent me this, along with the comment "time for us to pack it in". My response is as follows:
To the contrary, my friend. This is required watching for anyone plugging in worked out licks, and I will make it so for my students. Yet another argument for principles over patterns, melody over memorization, discovery over dictation. There are so many lessons to learn from Trane, and the Trane of mastery, soul connection, spirit, soaring transcendent sound, restless and endless self-challenge and exploration is the one I love. I am technically impressed by the repetitive patterns he plays on Steps, Countdown, etc...but I will take Crescent any minute of the day over that, and those who work out his Giant Steps licks are truly missing the forest for the jazz ed trees...Trane, then Brecker and maybe now Chris Potter raised the bar as to technical mastery on the horn. Any self-respecting tenor player who can't negotiate that level of harmony at that tempo is not a technically competent sax player today, in my view. But there is little more enervating than hearing someone regurgitate those old Trane patterns and thinking it passes for music. More to come...meanwhile, enjoy the truly hilarious end result of being a mechanistic licks player.