125. Mike Sledge, Part 2.

125.  Part two of our interview with Mike Sledge. Mike lives and writes in Shreveport, Louisiana. He wrote the book Soldier Dead about what happens to the bodies of America's military personnel when they die in combat. He has also written a novel entitled Gerald's Star, which covers a long-dead astronaut in a decaying orbit around Earth.

1. Lily the Street Poet she reads her poem, "Your True Self."
   
2.  This week in Louisiana history. October 10, 1974. Cindy K. Bell became first woman LA. State Trooper.
3. This week in New Orleans history. Jazz drummer Edward Joseph Blackwell, born in New Orleans on October 10, 1929, played in a bebop quintet during the 1950s with pianist Ellis Marsalis and clarinetist Alvin Batiste. They toured briefly with Ray Charles. Blackwell achieved national attention as the drummer with Ornette Coleman's quartet around 1960, when he took over for Billy Higgins in the quartet's legendary stand at the Five Spot in New York City. He is known as one of the great innovators of the free jazz of the 1960s, fusing New Orleans second line style and African rhythms with bebop. In the 1970s and 1980s Blackwell toured and recorded extensively with fellow Ornette Quartet veterans Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Dewey Redman in the quartet Old and New Dream. He died on  October 7, 1992.

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