REMEMBERING WELDON IRVINE



Weldon Irvine: Here's Where I Came In
From Sinbad (RCA 1976)

I should have done this back in April but 2004 marks the second anniversary of Weldon Irvine's suicide. I certainly can't say I knew him well but having interviewed him on a few occassions, I had an appreciation for the conversations we shared and just the fact of having met him. I remember him as quiet but intense and just a tad "off," like he was engaging with you but part of his consciousness was elsewhere. I could pick through many different songs from his catalog but I just offer one: "Here's Where I Came In." His reputation among younger cats is as that cat on the electric piano who BDP and Tribe sampled but this isn't one of his funkier tunes. Instead, it's a simple, plaintive piano solo, played acoustically, that I find sublime, beautiful and haunting - all apts ways of describing my memories of the late, great man himself. R.I.P. Weldon.