HARLEM’S NEW JAZZ SITCOM
In the summer of 2016, after the premiere of the jazz film World’s Not for Me at the Harlem International Film Festival at MIST Harlem, Mickey Bass, Louis Hayes, and Gregory Charles Royal did what any musicians would do hanging out on the red carpet: they would tell a few lies and talk a lot of smack. This is particularly true for anyone who knew the late Jazz Messenger bassist, Bass, who died in 2022 at age 79. “Louise” and “Stuckie” as Mickey always referred to Hayes and Royal over their relationships that went back half a century, have always been captive to the banter, jokes, and dozens that Mickey dished out to them and the hundreds of musicians he encountered in his colorful life.
As for Royal, then age 55, his relationship with Bass goes back to the mid-1970s in Washington, DC at the Duke Ellington School of the
