I’ve admired the singing of Dawn Lambeth for twenty years now. Her unaffected warmth, easy swing, and loving embrace of both the melody and its emotional message are a delight. Pair her with a great song and a lyrical band, and the result is pure pleasure. And it all happened at the Jazz Bash by the Bay last February and March.
That band! Josh Collazo, drums; Jacob Zimmerman, clarinet and alto saxophone; Danny Tobias, trumpet and Eb alto horn; Chris Dawson, piano; Mikiya Matsuda, double bass.
and the marvelous Mr. Dawson:
I love UNDER A BLANKET OF BLUE (I think of Ella and Louis) and everything here is both tender and hopeful: lovely to hear a Thirties love song that isn’t about one’s shattered heart:
It makes me want to lie under the stars with the OAO. After Chris’s to-the-point piano introduction, Dawn says, happily, “Yeah.” That’s how I feel, having replayed this video seven times already.
And there’s lovely musical news: Dawn and a group of like-minded players including Danny, Jacob, Chris, and Josh have recorded a new CD, which should be out by the time “back to school” sales start. You’ll hear about it here, I promise.
I can’t say, but through the kindness of a friend, I can take us all back to the Nice Jazz Festival to hear some priceless music: for instance, Kenny Davern and Bob Wilber using DIZZY ATMOSPHERE as a riff on I WANT TO BE HAPPY. Vic is in rare form (catch his ROSETTA); Davern is a trumpet-spectacular; Wilber is lyrical and hot. And how lovely to hear Wilson (brilliant on ROSETTA) and Duvivier in this context. (Who knows something about Dallas Taylor?) Davern lectures the crowd, memorably.
Everyone sounds truly happy.
Audiophiles be warned: this is a cassette-recording of an outdoor performance; it may run off speed; there is chatter. But wouldn’t it be ungracious to fuss over these things? This, more or less, is what we would have heard at Nice, and what a treasure it is.
The heroes are Teddy Wilson, piano; Bob Wilber, Kenny Davern, clarinet, soprano saxophone (Davern and Wilson make the announcements); Vic Dickenson, trombone, vocal; George Duvivier, double bass; Dallas Taylor, drums. Nice Jazz Festival, July 16, 1977. The tape is generously provided by Derek Coller. I WANT TO BE HAPPY (late start) / ON THE ALAMO / ROSETTA / [public service announcement] / I WANT A LITTLE GIRL (Vic, vocal) / RUNNIN’ WILD (rhythm) / MOTEN SWING //
The tape is a precious document. Bless Derek and people like him! But he does more than go to jazz oases with a cassette recorder. Derek is a great jazz scholar. His book on Big Joe Turner is a monument:
We owe so much to people like Derek who have made the evanescent beautifully permanent. And to these glorious musicians who give so unstintingly for decades.
When Bobby Hackett visited England in 1974, he did a long interview with Max Jones, later printed in TALKING JAZZ. This passage continues to resonate with me:
If I hear a song, I know how I want it to play. I kind of make it a rule that if it’s by a good composer, I’ll aim for a faithful interpretation, not change too much ‘cos he knew more about writing it than I ever will. So a soloist to me is an interpreter. How did the writer wish the song to sound? That’s the way I try to make it sound. If I’m playing a Cole Porter tune I don’t want it to sound like Birdland — that would be a misinterpretation, and I won’t do it. And the better the song is, the harder it is to play. Say you’re Porter or Gershwin, Berlin, Ellington — and there’s no better example — well, you did all that thinking before putting the song down on paper. So we had better play it the way you conceived it, unless we’re sure we can improve it. I’m not capable of improving on Duke Ellington, and any guys who think they are, well, they must be very vain people.
Those words came to mind when I was listening to Bobby delicately make his way through Harold Arlen’s I’VE GOT THE WORLD ON A STRING in August 1950 with the unsung Charlie Queener, piano; Carl Kress, guitar; Bob Casey, double bass; Don Marino, drums.
It couldn’t be simpler. After Carl Kress’s chordal guitar introduction, Bobby plays the melody tenderly at a slow tempo (his first chorus, with the introduction, takes two minutes), then they switch, with Bobby playing the embellishments on the expected harmony part to Kress’s lead, before concluding in the same sweet mellow mood. Those who understand will understand, and will also go back to admire Queener and Kress, master humble magicians:
No tricks, no gimmicks, no double-time, no altered harmonies. Unadorned, touching, and incredibly hard to do with such open-hearted humility and love for melody, but Bobby did it whenever he played.
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Catch your breath. Check your pulse. Nothing breakable has suffered in the process? Let’s do another. The Reverend Leyland is ready to preach, and Pastor Siers is directing the congregation:
One more? All right. But no more. You’ll fill up on pleasure before supper:
This is an extraordinary new CD — the third in a series of duets between master drummer / washboardist Pete Siers and stellar pianist / vocalist Carl Sonny Leyland. And before you read another word from me, here is the Bandcamp link where you can purchase a download of this stirring music for about the price of a fancy coffee or a two-pound bag of organic carrots. (Other financial yardsticks are there for the imaginative to invent.)
I will only say that I was first dazzled by the swinging creative Mr. Siers in September 2004, when I attended my first Jazz at Chautauqua, and heard his beat (irresistible) and his sound-palette (apparently limitless). He is a percussionist who plays “for the comfort of the band,” as did the great forbears. I encountered the Rev. Leyland later, perhaps in 2011, but he made an impact on me that I have not forgotten: his mastery of the piano, his awareness of the joy to be found in playing and singing the saddest music as well as the most jubilant. Both men are irreplaceable soloists but they understand community deeply, so their duet is more than the sum of two organic entities: they are a portable orchestra that can occupy a two-top at the diner, so remarkable.
Self-care is more than the right moisturizer, so consider a careful purchase of this music and let it help you go aloft. And the legal shrubbery at the start was entirely necessary. You could hurt yourself while having an unrestrained personal festival. Swing out, buy hold on to the banisters.
Yes, Ellington, authentically, down to the grease and funk: expertly performed by Nick Rossi’s Jazzopaters at Mr. Tipple’s in San Francisco, on April 20, 2024. The flawless video is by Sunny Tokunaga.
THE MOOCHE was a dance, an Ellington standby for forty-five years. The wonderful musicians are Nick Rossi, banjo, leader; Patrick Wolff, alto saxophone, clarinet; Colin Hancock, cornet; Victor Imbo, trombone; Nathan Tokunaga, tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, clarinet; Kamrin Ortiz, baritone saxophone, alto saxophone, clarinet; Rob Reich, piano; Clint Baker, double bass; Riley Baker, drums.
Somewhere, as I write this, a group of earnest musicians is doing their own “Ellington tribute,” which features SATIN DOLL and TAKE THE “A” TRAIN. I am glad that any music is performed in the name of Ellington, but I want Nick Rossi’s Jazzopaters to catch the eyes and ears of concert producers, club owners, swing dance organizers, festival planners. They are the real thing, offering vibrant living history, delightful to dance to.
And here’s PELICAN DRAG, from October 28, 2023, different personnel but the same groovy heart:
Let me whisper in my most subtle tones: “Don’t sleep on this band!”
And for those who are wide-awake to beauty, you can learn (and hear) more at
A triple delight: the bliss of Marty Grosz in his prime, surrounded by his noble peers, playing Irving Berlin. Marty is most often associated with small-group jazz of the hot Chicago kind, but this session reminds me so happily of a Basie small group, and that is no idle praise. It is seriously impromptu and wholly expert all at once.
Photograph by Lynn Redmile.
The noble peers are Randy Reinhart, cornet; Bob Havens, trombone; Dan Block, clarinet, C-melody saxophone; Scott Robinson, tenor saxophone, taragoto; Rossano Sportiello, piano; Frank Tate, double bass; Pete Siers, drums. Allegheny Jazz Party, September 22, 2014.
The opening selection of this set, WHAT’LL I DO?, starts late (a camera issue) and we miss the first chorus ensemble and some of Dan Block’s solo, but what remains is choice and beyond:
then, after Marty introduces the band and satirizes the audience, all standard procedure, we have Berlin’s 1911 hit, ALEXANDER’S RAGTIME BAND:
HOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN? begins with a peerless moving soliloquy by Bob Havens, before Marty the balladeer asks the immortal questions, slightly out of order, forgivably:
Two more songs were performed in this lovely leisurely set. Watch for them here, soon.
This post is about the delicious new CD by Ian Hutchison, BOP FOR DANCING. And you don’t have to be an elite dancer to savor the music or purchase it. I, who worry about tripping over invisible obstacles, have been having the time of my life with this vibrant sweet inventive communal music.
If you’re already straining at the leash, skip the words that follow and meet me here. Getting this music for yourself is more important than passing the JAZZ LIVES final exam.
But some details for those who have hung on nobly. Or those who have been to Bandcamp, done the needful, and are now basking in sounds. Here are the people who make the sounds:
Ian Hutchison, bass and arrangements / Charlie Caranicas, trumpet and flugelhorn / Jon De Lucia, alto and tenor sax / Mariel Bildsten, trombone / Jon Thomas, piano / Jocelyn Gould, guitar / Jay Sawyer, drums. The beautiful recording is thanks to Michael Perez-Cisneros, Kevin Thomas, and Andrew Ryan. More details:
Bop For Dancing is equally enjoyable on the dance floor or in your own living room. 20 Bebop and hard bop classics, reimagined for dancing. 10 songs below 180 beats per minute, 10 songs above. Songs by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Randy Weston, Charles Mingus, Horace Silver, Benny Golson, Oscar Pettiford, Nat Adderley, Herbie Hancock, Curtis Fuller, Tadd Dameron, Milt Jackson, and Gerry Mulligan: THE CHAMP / BE-BOP / DIZZY ATMOSPHERE / BLUES-ETTE / ONE FOR DADDY-O / SEGMENT / RED CROSS / MY LITTLE SUEDE SHOES / MOOSE THE MOOCHE / YARDBIRD SUITE / GOOD BAIT / BLUESOLOGY / COOKIN’ AT THE CONTINENTAL / DRIFTIN’ / BOHEMIA AFTER DARK / FIVE SPOT AFTER DARK / FIVE BROTHERS / HI-FLY / SAUCER EYES / MY JELLY ROLL SOUL //
Ian is donating 5% of all sales to The Black Lindy Hoppers Fund. Learn about their mission and make an additional financial gift: blacklindyhoppersfund.org.
Some more words from me, having listened to the CD half a dozen times already. I know that, to some, there is an artificial divide between bebop (I omit the hyphen) and swing. And if you indulge in the pastime of historical jazz journalism, you can read of ideological warfare between two “schools”; you can even read how “the new music” circa 1947 drove Swing Era audiences away because “they couldn’t dance to it.”
But your ears will tell you differently.
BOP FOR DANCING swings like mad, and even someone glued to his computer chair like me wants to dance to it. The musicianship here is thrilling in ensemble and solo, and the only thing wrong with some of the tracks is that they are concise where I wanted them to go on for twenty minutes. If there’s higher praise I don’t know it.
Here’s another sample. When you’re through admiring the dancers, play it again with the video shut off so that you can enjoy the music:
As they say, get thee hence. Ian and his brilliant players have created something magnificent: a living reminder that all good music is good music, and all well-played thoughtful music is joyous danceable fun. I salute them. And I hope that there will be many more CDs and gigs for this band. They deserve it, and so do we.
This is the third set of three performed by this wonderful hot band at the 2024 Jazz Bash by the Bay in Monterey, California. The crowd loved them, and other crowds will have the opportunity through this year and the future. You can see the first set here, and the second, here. I’ll wait if you need to catch up. The superb videos are by the indefatigable Sunny Tokunaga, whose YouTube channel is full of delights.
For this set, the band was Andy Schumm, cornet; Brandon Au, trombone, vocal; Nathan Tokunaga, clarinet; Jeff Barnhart, piano, vocal; Bill Dendle, banjo; Mikiya Matsuda, string bass; Hal Smith (leader), washboard. Here are ten — count ’em, ten! — rousing performances:
SALTY BUBBLE:
EARLY HOURS:
WEARY BLUES:
PERDIDO STREET BLUES:
TAILGATE RAMBLE:
SAVOY BLUES:
SHAKE THAT THING:
STORYVILLE BLUES:
DARLING NELLIE GRAY:
CAKE WALKIN’ BABIES FROM HOME:
You don’t have to be a musicologist to hear the freshness this band brings to sometimes-familiar repertoire. They know the conventions given through earlier recordings but they are playing these tunes as if they were new, which is always enlightening.
Keep your eye on this band! There’s not a repeater pencil in the bunch.
And not to ignore the other members of this sterling hot ensemble, those readers who will outlive me will be saying, decades hence, “I saw Nathan Tokunaga before he graduated from high school, and he was a great player then!”
These ruminations are provoked by several previously-unseen bits of jazz ephemera for sale on eBay. My parents didn’t particularly like jazz, although they kindly tolerated their son’s obsession with it. (My father did say, before I had a checking account and would give him twenty dollars to write a check for that amount so I could buy new records, “Can’t you save your money?” but it was a wistful request, not a roar.)
But I was alive when these events were happening, my parents were healthy, and we lived about an hour outside Manhattan. Oh, well.
The emotion-charged pieces of paper are on sale at troystreetsales at modest prices. Surely I can’t be the only person who vibrates to them.
First, a collection of advertisements / tickets to the weekend extravaganzas at Central Plaza. I associate that place with 1951-2 broadcasts MC’s by “Doctor Jazz,” so it was a delightful shock to see that the sessions were still going on more than a decade later, before the Beatles came to town.
This evening might have been impossible, for we did celebrate Thanksgiving as a family:
And I can’t blame them, because they didn’t know. But I can gaze deeply at these relics and the others for sale at troystreetsales and dream. I encourage you to do the same. (I get no commission.)
And lest tiy think this is a muffled rant by an adult about the shorcomings of his parents, nay nay. My mother pointed out when Bobby Hackett was on the radio, and my father took me to hear Louis in April 1967: life-changing kindnesses, for which I remain grateful.
One of the nicest things about being a self-employed independent contractor-blogger (say that three times fast) is that I only write about music I enjoy, and return to.
I had not heard of guitarist Joe Wittman, but I certainly know and admire double bassist Daniel Duke and drummer Keith Balla. And before I heard a note of this disc, I visited Joe’s website, and read these words:
“Joe certainly is born to be blue. His original tunes all expand upon the foundation of the blues, but in ways unexpected and always musical. Light on his feet, his guitar playing reflects the swinging history of his chosen instrument: a clean and resonant sound, negotiating chord changes with ease, every note in the right place, and always with a touch of the blues. If you’re looking for swinging and musical jazz guitar playing, look no further than Joe Wittman.” – James Chirillo, of Benny Goodman and JALC fame.
Now, I know James. He doesn’t dispense praise as if it were candy corn on Halloween. Then I began to listen to the disc, and was immediately captivated by the second track, an original, BIG SIP RISER, which Joe explicates as it “is really just about having fun”:
That’s dancing-in-the-kitchen music, and the spirits of Ahmad Jamal, Jo Jones, Ray Bryant, Milt Hinton, and Johnny Hodges are grinning. Guitar fetishists can confer as to who Joe Sounds Like. I frankly don’t care. I’m happy he sounds like Joe. And Daniel and Keith could rock the New York Stock Exchange in sixteen bars, no questions asked.
Here’s something pretty:
More details about this new CD and its predecessors can be found here. You can read about, listen to, and even purchase the music in digital form. And here is a very readable interview with Joe, who is a gracious low-key musician (we’ve met, so I speak from personal experience).
All right. You have the path marked out for you. Three CDs to browse through, music to purchase, a new guitarist to follow. But wait! There’s more! (as they say).
See this. On Wednesday, May 1, the trio of Joe, Daniel, and Keith will be playing two sets (10:30 PM and midnight) at Mezzrow on West Tenth Street in New York City. Wise heads will buy tickets; wise heads who don’t live close by will visit the site to see the gig being streamed. And I would assume that Joe will have actual physical discs to sell, like the old days.
And while you’re waiting for May 1 to roll around, check this out; it features the superb tenor saxophonist Vito Dieterle:
Joe and his colleagues create intelligent friendly exploring music that pokes its head out and sniffs the air: ingratiating music that doesn’t get stale. I look forward to more.
The trail of home-grown jazz recordings winds back more than a hundred years, if you begin with the 1926 Earl Baker cylinders. If you’ve never heard them, they are impressive. Here’s one:
Recording jazz outside the studio, in a club or your living room, became easier as technology progressed. We have hours of home-recorded radio broadcasts, some smaller amount of living room jam sessions, perhaps more done on site in clubs. It is obviously the smallest fraction of what was performed. In our time, we have reel-to-reel magnetic tape (coming after wire recorders), disc cutters, cassette recorders, smartphones and more. I have the first recording of live jazz that I captured, from 1971, and a good deal of JAZZ LIVES is devoted to such miracles.
Still, jazz remains elusive and the music captured informally is to be treasured. What follows is the only session I know that was recorded in a barn, although I am sure some readers will write to inform me otherwise. And it is shared for the first time (aside from a few fortunate collectors) here.
We remember acts of kindness long after the person performing the kindness has moved on. I offer this hot interlude as tribute and gratitude to two men I knew, John L. Fell and Joe Boughton, and to three musicians, all of whom have gone on ahead. The next six minutes of music are luminescent in themselves: Johnny Windhurst, cornet; Eddie Hubble, trombone; Red Balaban, banjo and vocal interlude. The recording supervisor, interjecting his approval, is one Jack Rooster. The two songs are IF I COULD BE WITH YOU ONE HOUR TONIGHT and YOU TOOK ADVANTAGE OF ME, recorded 1958 in a Florida barn:
It is possible Boughton recorded this, but I don’t know. And it also sounds as if the original source was a disc rather than tape. But none of the five or even six participants is around to tell us. So pull up a folding chair or a bale of hay, and be transported.
James Dapogny at Jazz at Chautauqua, September 2014. Photograph by Michael Steinman.
Any session with Professor James Dapogny was special and needs to be preserved. In this case, he’s nearly hidden behind the piano, but his sound and swinging energy are vividly present. This music took place at the jam-session-before-the-festival on Thursday night, the festival being the Cleveland Classic Jazz Party, the successor to Jazz at Chautauqua. I have the happiest memories of those weekends, where musicians and civilians mingled at meals and at the open bar and sheet music table, where the music went from Thursday evening to Sunday afternoon. The weekend was originally the creation of the late Joe Boughton, supported by his industrious loving family, Sarah, Bill, and David, and then it was sweetly supervised by Nancy Hancock Griffith and Kathy Hancock. I began attending in 2004 and went every year until 2017, when the economics called a halt to the sizable enterprise.
Joe invited me as someone who would write about and publicize the weekend, which I was happy to do, but initially he was opposed to anyone recording the music — anyone except himself, I should add. I made a good many surreptitious digital recordings in 2006-07, and got his permission to bring my camera in 2008 or 9.
What you’re about to see is from 2009, ROSETTA, featuring Jim Dapogny, piano; Andy Schumm and Randy Reinhart, cornet; Frank Tate, double bass; Hal Smith, drums. The sound is fine but there is some visual goofiness going on. Whoever was controlling the lights decided early on that jazz in an informal setting required a cabaret environment, so they dropped the lighting to near-dark and I frantically adjusted the white balance on my camera to bring it all back into the realm of the near-visible.
I miss gatherings like this more than I can say, even though I have seen Hal, Andy, and Randy, separately, in the last few months. But here we are, romping away on a good old good one:
Thank you, Jim, Frank, Hal, Randy, Andy, Boughtons and Hancocks for making this possible. It was a joy to be there and it remains one to be able to present it to you now.
Nancy Harrow is not only one of our finest, most honest singers. She is also a composer, dramatist, a visionary blessed with an expansive imagination. But she is also a realist, someone who not only observes but sees deeply into the heart of things as they are.
I have the honor of knowing her, of conversing with her, of hearing her sing.
But it still came as the most delightful shock when I saw this email from her this morning, “Last week I recorded a new song I had just written and I wanted to send it to you to see what you think. It’s called Second Thoughts. The pianist is Ted Rosenthal. John Snyder produced the recording.“
I played it for my wife, we looked at each other when it was through, and she said, “Wow.” And I echoed the sentiment.
Now you can, too.
Nancy tells me that she and Ted have recorded other pieces and have plans for more.
What a thing to look forward to! Bless Nancy, Ted, and John for their generosity and vision.
And let us all say, in unison, but quietly, “Wow.”
It was even more gratifying than we had any right to expect: the inventive swinging orchestra these four unaffected musicians created, song after song; the friendly camaraderie the music inspired in the room; the reassuring creativity; the sweet musical surprises; the refreshing humility and delightful versatility. All of this in the space of a Sunday afternoon.
Here‘s some evidence already shared (if you missed my recent post with Bette Davis adding her own music).
The band. Danny Tobias, trumpet, flugelhorn, Eb alto horn; Vince Giordano, bass saxophone, tuba, aluminum double bass, tenor guitar, vocal; Randy Reinhart, trombone, euphonium; Arnt Arntzen, banjo, guitar; vocal. The place Brith Sholom, 1900 West Macada Road, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Thanks to the Pennsylvania Jazz Society!
This marvelous expandable quartet offered hot and sweet in equal measure.
EMBRACEABLE YOU, with Arnt’s sweet vocal:
For Signore Capone, MY GAL SAL:
Arnt asks, endearingly, WHAT’LL I DO?:
For Louis and Lillian, STRUTTIN’ WITH SOME BARBECUE:
A aong that always touches me, HOME:
There’s more from the second half. But what a band! And hooray for the Pennsylvania Jazz Society, whose good works aren’t limited to one concert.
Without further ado: three location recordings of Jimmy Rushing with Donald Lambert at the piano, recorded some time in the late Fifties or early Sixties at Wallace’s Tavern. We don’t know much more than that. Wallace may have been the recordist, and the late Peter Ballance (trombonist at Arthur’s Tavern with the Grove Street Stompers for years and a friend of Lambert’s) may have been the catalyst. The pianist and scholar Sterling J. Mosher III just posted these on YouTube, and they are frankly miraculous. The recording microphone was closer to the piano than to Jimmy, but the piano is in better shape than on some Lambert recordings.
There is some drumming here also. I wonder if that is our friend and Lambert’s, the remarkable Howard Kadison. I hope it is and I can add his name to the credits!
To me, this is a meeting of giants who never recorded together formally. Miraculous, like eavesdropping on Moses and Buddha playing gin rummy.
Thus. THERE’LL BE SOME CHANGES MADE:
GOIN’ TO CHICAGO:
SENT FOR YOU YESTERDAY:
Aural blessings. And we can all thank Sterling by taking a fond long look at his YouTube channel, a treasure-chest of stride piano, ragtime, interviews, and his own romping work.
I don’t know about you, but I’m going to play these three performances until I’ve memorized all the delightful nuances.
I checked my phone this morning at breakfast, as one does (I can remember life pre-smartphone, but that’s an Andy Rooney essay) and saw that the soulful Ali Affleck had shared a performance of UNTIL THE REAL THING COMES ALONG with the Rhythm Rascals, who were Lucas Ferrari, piano; Jacob Ullberger, guitar and banjo; Roy Percy, double bass; Andy Schumm, clarinet and cornet. I didn’t inspect the personnel and just played the video through the phone next to my breakfast.
What soulful passionate intensity! No gimmicks, no trickery, just a deep message aimed right at us.
And when it was over and I could once again form words, I said to the OAO, seated near me, “Well, that’s my post for today.” So here it is:
Ali Affleck is a great artist, and I do not write those words casually. She tells her truth and it moves us. That’s rare and precious.
And the band! Four heroes in emotional and musical unity.
But wait! There’s more! How about Jelly’s mournful warning, half-lament and half “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” DON’T YOU LEAVE ME HERE.
The backdrop isn’t Storyville (it’s far too clean and tidy) but the ambiance is deep New Orleans at night:
Today’s homework: do share these unaffected masterpieces with the people who will get them. And since there’s no tip jar visible, please subscribe to www.youtube.com/@Aliaffleck. Surely this audience can make that number a wee bit larger.
And in return, the generous Alison will share more music with us. Deal?
Trombonist Vic Dickenson had feelings. Make that FEELINGS. Writers who didn’t entirely get him heard him as a double-entendre humorist, someone telling naughty stories through brass, those of us who heard him truly understood his emotions. And they came through fervently on his choice of a solo feature, Ellington’s IN A SENTIMENTAL MOOD. Vic wasn’t chatty with people outside his circle, so he never explained his choice in print, but whenever he played it, he showed his heart.
A word about “features.” In the world of small-band swing that Vic found himself from1941 on, much of the music was exuberantly propulsive. There might be a slow blues paying tribute to a tin roof or a basin, perhaps, but in general the tempos were medium to medium-fast and the volume followed. Clarinet players might call AVALON; pianists, CAROLINA SHOUT; drummers, CARAVAN or WINNETKA, but brass players may have opted for variety of a psychic, sonic, or emotional kind. So wise musicians such as Roy Eldridge, Joe Thomas, Bobby Hackett and Vic chose to play ballads — not because they were easier to perform, but because they were music of a more solicitous kind.
I do not know when Vic first heard IN A SENTIMENTAL MOOD, which was first recorded by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra in 1935. But obviously it struck an emotional chord with him. Earlier, he was featured on YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU, which he returned to through the decades; as a comic turn, he sang on SISTER KATE, but when I requested that at a 1972 gig, he said, “They don’t know the routine,” and I understood that was a polite practical “No.” Sometimes he would offer MANHATTAN as his solo turn; sometimes the bandleader would feature him on BASIN STREET BLUES — a song trombonists have been expected to perform, perhaps harking back to Jack Teagarden. But in the decade or so that I saw him, frequently but not frequently enough, he always returned to IN A SENTIMENTAL MOOD. Here is a particularly gratifying performance: Vic doesn’t “do anything new,” but we see him close up in color, with a splendid rhythm section, and the sound is superb. Also, the rather fidgety cinematography typical of the Nice director is calmer here.
This video from the Nice Jazz Festival of July 7, 1977 (broadcast on French television) comes from a set where the front line was Benny Carter, Doc Cheatham, and Budd Johnson; the rhythm section was Hank Jones, piano; Bill Pemberton, double bass; Oliver Jackson, drums:
Play that again. We miss Vic terribly, but how fortunate we are to have his immortal music.
We are often mysterious to ourselves. But we can dig within to attempt answers to our own behavior. With living people, it may be more difficult to inquire. Who among us really wants to ask, “When I did ________, you seemed quite upset. What was at the heart of all that?” And when people have moved on to other neighborhoods, they take their secrets with them. I am not the only adult, once a child, who wants to know why his parents did this and didn’t do that.
The brilliantly curious musician Dennis Lichtman, faced with his own version of this elusiveness, gave his questioning musical shape, and the deep results can be found in his creation SECRET WORKSHOP. Here’s an evocative audio-visual taste:
Dennis pulls back the curtain a few inches to explain.
My late father was a highly eccentric and private inventor/engineer/machinist/entrepreneur whose genius in many fields was evident to everyone who knew him, and whose creations were impeccably engineered yet far too niche to be highly marketable. He left behind a mountain of inventions, machines, gadgets, and 80 years’ worth of souvenirs in his mad-scientist’s-lair of a workshop, directly below my childhood bedroom and always off-limits. Every song on the album is inspired by a strange, surprising, or revealing object I discovered while dismantling the workshop.
I must assure anyone reading this that the music of SECRET WORKSHOP stands on its own, even if we knew nothing of Philip Lichtman and had never climbed the stairway to the workshop. Dennis’ journeys to that lair echo resonantly as music, as theatre, as complex emotions piled one upon another.
Consider this, BLUEPRINTS IN BLUE:
The details. First, the compositions.
1. Secret Workshop (Theme) 2. Cleopatra’s Telescope 3. Prototype LM4 4. Butterfly in a Jar 5. Self-Portrait 1960 6. Competition Associates 7. Computers Are a Fad 8. Blueprints in Blue 9. Love Doodles 10. Gullwing 11. Secret Workshop (Reprise)
All music & lyrics by Dennis Lichtman except Gullwing, by Jefferson Hamer & Dennis Lichtman.
Dennis Lichtman: clarinet, mandolin, violin, tenor guitar, vocals Sam Reider: accordion, piano, organ Andrew Millar: drums, percussion Eddie Barbash: alto sax Roy Williams: guitar Sean Cronin: bass plus Tamar Korn: vocals (1, 11) Alex Hargreaves: fiddle (10) Mariah Hawley: vocals (4) Catherine Bent: cello (8)
In memory of Philip Lichtman.
Listening to SECRET WORKSHOP, I admire Dennis and comrades immensely. The questions may remain unanswered, but accompanying them downstairs is immensely moving. Yes, there is grief, but there is also a singular quirky beauty. I would expect nothing less from Dennis, and although I never met him, from the man at his desk whom this disc celebrates.
SECRET WORKSHOP is available here as a download, a CD, and as “a vinyl.” You can learn more about the worlds of Dennis Lichtman here.
The band. Danny Tobias, trumpet, flugelhorn, Eb alto horn; Vince Giordano, bass saxophone, tuba, aluminum double bass, tenor guitar, vocal; Randy Reinhart, trombone, euphonium; Arnt Arntzen, banjo, guitar; vocal. The place Brith Sholom, 1900 West Macada Road, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Thanks to the Pennsylvania Jazz Society!
and
Here’s a hot tune from early in the concert: the tale of a chimney sweeper who enjoys every moment of his opium dreams and “cries for more.”
If that weren’t enough, here is an irreplaceable film clip from Bette Davis’ CABIN IN THE COTTON, supremely relevant to poor Willie:
You understand why “Marvin Blake” (Richard Barthelmess) is completely transfixed.
I’ll post more from this wonderful Sunday afternoon concert. But I must thank the diligent splendid people who make the Pennsylvania Jazz Society swing along in the nicest ways: Gary Lader, Pete Reichlin, Mike Kuehn, Joan Bauer, Anne Lutkenhouse, and others whose names I haven’t memorized. They do great work!
The 2024 performance by Katie Martucci and Josh Dunn: melancholy, ruminative, touching:
If you’re like me, one viewing won’t suffice.
This interlude brought back the superbly mournful poem by Harvey Shapiro:
The good news is that Katie and Josh are young and healthy. We will have them around to uplift our days and night for quite a long time. Without special effects, they resonate sweetly.
When Duke Robillard puts his guitar down and steps forward to the microphone, the music continues to pour through him. And we are glad.
Here’s a particularly touching instance of that: Duke’s vocal performance of WEE BABY BLUES, in honor of the monumental Big Joe Turner. Duke performed it at the Redwood Coast Music Festival, October 8, 2023. Providing noble assistance are Carl Sonny Leyland, keyboard; Josh Collazo, drums; Samuel Wolfe Rocha, double bass; Marc Caparone, trumpet; Mando Dorame, tenor saxophone.
And the shades of Abe Bolar, A.G.Godley, Pete Johnson, Don Byas, Hot Lips Page, and Piney Brown were nodding approvingly at the rear of the hall:
Music like this is good medicine for any blues you might have. Blessings on the heroes onstage and the ones who make the Redwood Coast Music Festival happen. And, by the way, the October 2024 one is flourishing. You, too, can be there to join in the magic.
and some captivating art:
And if you would like to know all the good stories about Big Joe Turner, Derek Coller’s book is a thrilling place to be.
It’s reassuring to know that musical treasures are out there, waiting to be discovered. And the man to discover them is our own Fat Cat, Matthew Rivera of The Hot Club of New York, someone I admire: see him in action at the Louis Armstrong Center on March 22, here. Matthew in the wild and more sedately. (And the record is WHO? by Frank Newton; details matter.)
and
Very recently, Matthew found a set of Recordio 78 discs — “home recordings,” we might call them, of a searing hot band led by altoist James Ostend “Pete” Brown, in 1941. Pete is one of our heroes: he recorded a good deal with Frank Newton in the late Thirties and then with Joe Thomas in the early Forties — a combination that couldn’t be bettered. He was a singular musician, and I know that phrase is overused, but he had a ferocious staccato attack, “pushing the beat,” a distinctive tart tone, and a facility matched only by later altoists. In his time, placed alongside Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, Earle Warren, Hilton Jefferson (and I could go on) he is the closest thing to a focused and controlled tsunami.
Pete, by William P. Gottlieb:
I am pleased to say that I shared some live performances by Pete, courtesy of the late John Clement on JAZZ FROM THE ARCHIVES, a program on WBGO-FM. Here they are, either from January 2, or February 1, 1943.
But Matthew’s new discoveries are frankly astonishing. They document a working group, one with energy and variety. Pete sings on two of them, and I think him a superb singer; they nod to Basie, to the Ink Spots, to the common repertoire of 1941, and to what would come to be called bebop. Remember that this was four years before Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie made their recordings together. And when you listen to OPUS FIVE, somewhere between a chainsaw and a locomotive in its power, know that Pete was busy innovating along the same lines without getting credited.
Here is the treasure Matthew has so generously shared (and beautifully annotated) with us, twenty-two minutes of delightful shocks, including a CAROLINA SHOUT scored for piano, alto saxophone, and rhythm that has to be heard to be believed. All the details are in the description:
Here’s “Leonard G. Feather,” writing in the July 15, 1941 DOWN BEAT, about Pete’s triumph at a summer residency in the Catskill Mountains of New York.
This is a treasure for other reasons beyond rare music. Recordio discs were not usually this well cared for, or documented (you’ll notice two kinds of annotations on the labels, suggesting that someone was interested in accuracy and posterity). I don’t know who owned the recording machine or who preserved the discs, and it is tempting to wonder if both sets of discs, 1943 and 1941, were done by the same person. Someone with recording equipment (far more unwieldy than your smartphone) was up at the Allen Inn in Canada Lake, New York, when the hot band from New York City was burning the wallpaper. We must be forever grateful to that person, their name now lost, for what they did and what they saved. And to Matthew.
A postscript that those deeply involved in such things will understand. Talking about this discovery and this music, Matthew and I agreed that this event was the handiwork of the magnificent jazz-solographer and guiding light Jan Evensmo. Jan left the planet on February 4 of this year, but those of us who knew and loved him do not doubt that he is continuing his great generous work from another neighborhood. So thank you, Jan. You won’t be forgotten.
JAZZ LIVES 