#(49) CHEZ PANISSE FOURTH BIRTHDAY:

Edition of 834 of which 100 copies are signed 1-100, 26 are signed A-Z as artist's proofs, and four sets are signed as progressives.

July 6, 1975 Nine colors 18" x 24"

Client: Alice Louise Waters, Chez Panisse restaurant, 1517 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley CA 94709. Telephone (510) 548-5525 #1 and A-Z: artist's own use (Print Casebooks 2, 1977) (facsimile)

Earnest honeybee totes her tiny freight from flower to flower adding as she goes and then back to the hive. Everybody gets something out of the deal. The flower wants her to come and go, swapping pollen around. Black African drumbeat, call-and-response worksongs and warchants. English, Scotch, Irish and Welsh hymns. Add these together and now you've got spirituals. Moorish Spain contributes sinuously flowing music and when the Jews get tossed out they take it just everywhere. Plus German oompah and now you've got the Klezmorim.

Robert Johnson, King of the Delta Blues singers killed by a jealous woman at the age of 19 but not before he learned music from listening to records and not before he made some records himself, facing a corner in a hotel room. In juke joints men and women crowd around an Edison phonograph, the bee flitting from ear to ear, picking up and laying down. Mez Mesirow collides with Sidney Bechet. Bessie Smith bangs into George Gershwin. Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore and Kansas City speakeasies sponsor the fusion of Klezmorim and Blues and by God now you've got Jazz. Bees and Flowers, Sex and Death, that's what it's all about.