Sunday, April 26, 2009

Oh Pretty Baby, You Are Just Too Good To Be True!

DEATH OF A BEBOP WIFE by GRANGE "LADY HAIG" RUTAN
Author
“The Lady Knows!”

Dan Morgenstern - Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers



Grange Margaret "Peggy-also-known-as-Rudie" Rutan was not just an ordinary Centenary College Graduate who believed the world was waiting for her, nor was she an ordinary "Mountie Girl" from Montclair, New Jersey. Rudie, by the time she was 21 years young, had traveled the globe, sunning and funning from the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, listening to Stan Getz playing" Desifinado" to being courted by the who's who of Acapulco.

Even though this renaissance woman had an appetite for the jet set crowd and fast lifestyle of the rich and famous, Rudie was a young woman who loved jazz and who wanted to run in the opposite direction from all the bobby-sox, crinoline-wearing nice girls of the day. She is a direct descendent of John Goodman who was on the original manifest of The Mayflower into Plymouth Rock in 1620; Ethan Allen of the Green Mountain Boys of Fort Ticonderoga in Vermont, and the Honorable General Israel Putnam of Bunker Hill who said, "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes."

Young Peggy/Rudie, was protected at all times by very nurturing, protective and caring parents and was believed and fought for despite her innocence and naiveté. All too soon she was caught up with the inventors of Bebop - the Jazz Doctors and creators - Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis .... and her soon to be husband Alan Warren Haig, and sooner to be ex-husband.

Wearing red underwear turned into being raped, that immediately turned into a marriage that 8 weeks later turned into an annulment and soon began her 40 year journey of recapturing herself.

Dizzy Gillespie coined Peggy/Rudie-now Grange, as “Lady Haig” and Lady Haig had to high tail it out of a tumultuous, and soon to be murderous, relationship with Al.

With the seduction of her lost innocence, Grange Rutan was just like any other abused woman: a survivor. But her successor, Bonnie, was not so fortunate. The story of her death, and Al Haig’s mysterious role in it, made the author of this book realize what a close brush she might have had with doom. Only decades later, as the remarried mother of grown children, did she begin to sleuth out what now emerges, in the pages, of “Death of a Bebop Wife” as one of the greatest whodunits in jazz. In so doing she revealed a wild streak of insight and imagination and a lyrical improvisatory gift for writing that evokes the bebop world at its hippest. This book is more than the biography of a too-often neglected jazz great. It is more than the diary of one of the world’s more astute observers. In fact it is a chronicle of an art form whose greatest practitioners spent almost every moment living close to the edge. Many have fallen over it. Al Haig did, but luckily for us, Lady Haig did not. It is a book that has bebop as it’s backdrop and abuse as it’s reality.

The Lady knows and now she shares her journey, alive and well, believing that if she can save one Bonnie Jean Maude Haig nee Gallagher it will be worth it to have opened her battered bebop heart.
Website:
http://www.grangeladyhaigrutan.com

alhaigbebop@aol.com

Grange "Lady Haig" Rutan's Photos

Grange "Lady Haig" Rutan's Blog

Grange "Lady Haig" Rutan

TAMM E. HUNT AND ALL THOSE WONDERFUL WOMEN WHO LOVED/LOVED THE BEBOPPERS! EVEN NOW! - 2008

DEDICATED TO EVERY WOMAN WHO LOVED A MUSICIAN



I AM A WRITER. THIS IS A WORD I PRIVATELY SAVOR, ALWAYS CAREFUL TO DISTINGUISH IT, STOICALLY, DEFENSIVELY, FROM THE DESCRIPTION 'JOURNALIST,' THE COIN OF WHOSE TRADE, I BELIEVE, ARE VOICELESS FACTS SKILLFULLY ASSEMBLED; OPINIONS STACKED IN A LIFE FULL OF TAWDRY STUMBLES, MISTAKES AND SMALL TERRORS.

LET ME INTRODUCE MYSELF. MY NAME IS GRANGE. YOU DON'T KNOW ME YET I AM ONE OF YOU.

DID YOU HEAR ME? I AM ONE OF YOU!

I

Comment Wall (168 comments)

At 12:50am on March 20, 2009, Trumpeter Carlos Redman said…
Hello there stranger...
At 2:02pm on September 21, 2008, martine lecomte said…
digitalmartine