Jazz Lives

When you travel far from urban centers, you meet wonderful new people and see sights and sites you wouldn’t otherwise.  Al quite exciting and often rewarding.  And I don’t miss the wild proliferation of cellphone stores and nail salons of my native New York.  But I must be a born homebody, for I miss so many things while on the road, mostly food – spicy cuisine, the easy availability of goods I’m used to (bread, bagels, pretzels).  You can make your own list.  Johnny Hodges, who knew about life on the road, wrote a song, THE THINGS YOU MISS.   

And I miss hip FM radio, especially jazz radio.  (I know I could pay for Sirius or XM, but I’m not ready: remember that I still have cassettes at home and have only recently begun to covet an Ipod and you will know how far behind the curve I am.  But I dgress, unapologetically.)  Driving from Maine into Canada, I’ve been struck, once again, by how lucky people are who can hear NPR — to say nothing of the joys of idiosyncratic college radio stations. 

In Canada, I heard some reassuring Dvorak and Bach, but much more generic pop-rock and a good deal of local newsbreaks about the man who died after police used a stun gun on him . . . .

So it was a soul-stirring pleasure today to hear the strains of a later-period Goodman-Sextet style ROYAL GARDEN BLUES come out of the car speakers, without fanfare.  The guitar soloist went on indefatigably, in the manner of the late Charlie Christian, leading me to suspect that it might be Herb Ellis, bluesy, profane, profound.  When he was followed for a few choruses by two of the most recognizable soloists in jazz — Stan Getz and Roy Eldridge — I thanked the Fates for this six-minute interlude.  And to hear the announcer then render the album title as RIEN MAIS LES BLUES or some such was an added treat.  (My faux-French shouldn’t obscure that what I heard came from a Verve CD reissue of a Herb Ellis session, NOTHING BUT THE BLUES, truly worth searching out.)   

Heat and humidity make August a terrible time in New York City.  Therapists flee; Yorkshire terriers and Great Danes pant; air-conditioners drip; the asphalt shimmers in a most unappealing way. 

But Bruce McNichols, of the Smith Street Society Jazz Band, just sent me good news. 

John Gill, that understated virtuoso of the banjo, National guitar, and trombone, and a compelling, loose-limbed vocalist, has got an August gig — Sundays from 7 to 11 PM at the National Underground.  What’s more, he’s assembled some of my favorite individualists — Terry Waldo on piano and vocals, McNichols himself on banjo, soprano sax, and vocals, Brian Nalepka on bass, tuba, and vocals, and the pensive but ferociously swinging Kevin Dorn on drums.  You’ll have to visit the club every Sunday in August to see if Kevin can be enticed to croon a chorus by the end of the night.  I imagine the joint will jump with John’s own mix of ragtime, hot jazz, blues, and rockabilly.  I won’t be there and I’m sorry I won’t hear John sing: he knows the lyrics to both “Tishomingo Blues” and “Did You Ever see A Dream Walking?”  How many men can say that? 

The National Underground is at 159 East Houston Street (at Allen Street) (212.475.0611) and this band is a rare treat.  Bring several large handkerchiefs, a bottle of water from the freezer.  Don’t miss it!

When I got a copy of Retta Christie’s new CD, RETTA CHRISTIE WITH DAVID EVANS AND DAVE FRISHBERG (Retta Records 002) I knew only one member of that trio — the redoubtable Mr. Frishberg.  I put the disc on as I did that night’s dinner dishes — what could be more in the true American spirit than that?    

Now, I am a long-time musical elitist, taking this position early by my stated preference for jazz, not Gary Lewis and the Payboys.  And my first reaction to the mention of “country and western” was to think of Buddy Rich’s quip, when hospitalized, that it was the only thing he was allergic to.  So I was mildly suspicious of a CD that had “Ridin’ Down the Canyon” on it, and even Frishberg’s name didn’t entirely soothe me.

But I was willing to give tnis CD a try — my friend Barb Hauser, the Sage of Bay Area jazz, often spoke admiringly of Retta — and much of the repertoire on it was more than reassuring.  “Did You Ever See A Dream Walking?” has a fine pedigree (I know Bing’s record by heart, and I am looking forward to John Gill’s version for Stomp Off).  I had listened to a fair amount of Thirties Western Swing, to the country-meets-jazz jamming of Butch Thompson, Peter Ostrushko, and others on A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, and the cowboy jazz that Jon-Erik Kellso and Matt Munisteri created in their group Brockmumford. 

When I began to listen to Retta’s singing (and her nimble, unflagging time — she plays brushes through most of the CD) I was charmed, entranced . . . . hooked.   

I was first attracted to the sound of the trio.  As a soloist and accompanist, Frishberg is peerless.  In one of his bits of memoir, he says that he would have liked to sound like Jimmy Rowles.  Here, he often succeeds in his own way, never copying J.R.: Dave’s swinging waywardness, his way of finding melodies in corners no one would think to look in, his wry comedies (hear his commentary on “a coyote whining for hie mate” on “Ridin’ Down The Canyon”) are irreplaceable.  I doubt that he will establish the Dave Frishberg School for Pianists — mail-order, with transcribed solosfor amateur pianists like myself — but I’ll sign up.    

I had never heard or heard of David Evans, but I see that my horizons have been woefully limited.  His tenor and clarinet playing is loose, amiable, lyrical.  I thought of Al Cohn, of Eddie Miller, of Lester Young — and not because he offers the listener a plateful of phrases they made famous.  Evans knows how to purr, to muse, or to jump off the highest diving board, eyes closed, into a solo.  When the two Davids explore “The Thrill Is Gone” and “Louise” in duet, the result is thoughtful, moving music.  Backed by Retta’s neat brushwork, this trio sounded deliciously like Mel Powell’s Vanguard trios of the Fifties — particularly the one with Paul Quinichette, but also the session with Ruby Braff and the one lovely number, “When Did You Leave Heaven?” that Powell recorded with Jimmy Buffington on French horn. 

But I have intentionally left Retta Christie for last, as hers is the best surprise.  When I first heard her sing, I thought her approach so artless that it seemed unadorned, as if the guitar player’s girlfriend had gotten up and sung her favorite number.  But I seriously underestimated her singing.  Its emotional directness and simplicity got to me fast.  She doesn’t show off; she doesn’t insist on being the star.  She has a speaking delivery, but it isn’t a matter of being untrained or unsophisticated.  Rather, she wants us to hear the words because they mean something — and she delights in presenting the melodies as if they were beautiful and swinging.  Which they are! 

Without acting or overacting, Retta brings a rare tenderness to her material — Floyd Tillman’s “This Cold War With You,” “On Treasure Island,” as well as “I’ll String Along With You.”  You will hear echoes of Patsy Cline, but also of Connee Boswell and Nan Wynn.  And she can ride the rhythm on a swinging song — the rarely-heard “Lost” (lyrics by Johnny Mercer). 

I find myself returning to this session regularly, for its sincerity and wit — and I predict you will too.  The disc is avaliable at Retta’s website (www.rettachristie.com), where you can also learn about her other recordings and live gigs, should you be in the Pacific Northwest.  I never thought I’d find myself humming “Ridin’ Down The Canyon,” but I do, with pleasure.  Thanks, Retta.     

This grainy newspaper ad for Adam Hats shows the Benny Goodman Sextet of 1941, with Davey Tough nearly dwarfed by his hat, Charlie Christian looking somewhat startled by his.  I presume that is Johnny Guarneri in the back left corner, bassist Artie Bernstein next to Charlie, and who could mistake Cootie Williams — with or without a blazing necktie — and Georgie Auld for anyone else?  Benny looks comfortable with his hat: more power to him. 

I include this advertisement here because jazz musicians were usually trend-setters in fashion, and because it summons up a time when they were also iconic figures: WEAR THE HAT THAT DAVE TOUGH WEARS would be good enough for me, then or now.

The photo is taken from Leo Valdes’s encyclopedic Charlie Christian website, SOLO FLIGHT, http://home.elp.rr.com/valdes/index.html – hugely diverting and informative even if you don’t play the guitar or have no intention of wearing a fedora.

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin divided everyone into two types: those whose knowledge was broad but not deep, and the reverse.  One he characterized as a hedgehog, the other a fox, and I do not remember which animal reportedly had which intellectual profile. 

But yesterday the Beloved and I met a man who knows many things well AND deeply, and I celebrate him.  He’s BOB WIRTZ, and he’s on his way to Ohio to look at another huge record collection. 

While we were in Portland, Maine, a lovable town, I spied a used record store on Congress Street.  ENTERPRISE RECORDS was closed whenever I walked by, and it became even more enticing: records arranged neatly in browsers, a Jim Hall - Bill Evans issue in the window.  On our last day in town, I walked over and stood in front of the window, disappointed that I wouldn’t get in.  As I was about to turn away, the door opened and a compact, thoughtful man in a red floral shirt asked quietly if he could do anything for me.  I identified myself as a jazz collector and asked if I could come in for a few minutes if I promised not to talk to him.  He grinned, waved me in, saying that talking was OK, although he was on his way to Ohio. 

Since I get overwhelmed easily, I was happy he didn’t have acres of jazz records — but (to paraphrase Spencer Tracy) what he had was choice: from Sweet Emma Barrett at Preservation Hall to Herman Foster to Sun Ra and beyond.  I gleefully found a reissue of one of the Dicky Wells Felsted sessions (Benny Morton, Vic Dickenson, Jo Jones), a Columbia two-record Jimmy Rushing reissue which contained a few duets with Helen Humes backed by Ben Webster, and a Jim Robinson record that had the poetic Raymond Burke in the band — all for less than twenty dollars.  My kind of music!  When we fell into collectors’ conversation, I learned that Bob had run this store for twenty-one years and was interested in most kinds of music. 

The conversation turned to more normal matters — like food — when the Beloved entered, and we told him that we were on our way north and had been told to stop at a famous tourist spot, Moody’s Diner, for its good food, its local color, its popularity.  Bob said with great intensity, “You don’t want to go THERE!  Everything there is straight out of the freezer!”  He was fervent and compelling and offered an alternative in Gardiner, the A-1 Diner.  And anyone who worries that people will eat poor food and warns them away from it is someone to treasure. 

We found Moody’s Diner en route, and stopped in to see if Bob was right.  Oh, was he ever!  The iced coffee was distinguished only by being brown and wet; the packaged slices of pie had been left over from a James Whale film shoot, and the best thing was the restroom . . . .

Thank you, Bob Wirtz!  May all your enterprises prosper.

BOB WIRTZ, ENTERPRISE RECORDS, 650 CONGRESS STREET, PORTLAND, MAINE 04101 (207.773.7672).  enterpriserex@aol.com; www.enterpriserecords.net. 

It may be apocrypha, or a bit of crypto-knowledge passed around in adolescence, but I remember reading that the Zen masters taught the art of indirection.  If you truly want to get a bull’s eye in archery or other endeavors, close your eyes.  Stop aiming so earnestly.  It might work very poorly with real arrows, but it is a strong piece of metaphysics.  One way to have something you want badly come to you is to assume the attitude that Castiglione, in The Book of the Courtier, called sprezzatura — nonchalance — and the desired object will, in its own time, show up, although it may take years.  

Those ruminations are supported by my recent experiences at a yard sale in Portland, Maine (the town I am now writing from), flea markets in Woodstock, New York, and Lambertsville, New Jersey. 

I’ve spent a long time as an anthropologist-without-credentials in New York suburbs, where such informal commerce proliferates.  Hence the following generalities.  Yard sales seem feminized: they put forth outgrown baby clothing, coffee mugs and bread machines, mystery novels, self-help books, videocassettes and other amiable domestic debris.  Garage sales often seem male: shovels and power drills, six-packs of automobile engine additive, rock salt for clearing snowy sidewalks.  Both of them, true to their names, are held outdoors, goods sprawling across lawns and driveways.  Tag and “estate” sales, cutting across gender lines, pretend to be far more serious affairs, run by officious professionals who place price tags on clothing, jewelry, or furniture.  But all four varieties of sale might have a box of phonograph records, sometimes hidden under a table, objects of limited importance. 

Two days ago, at a Portland yard sale, I was drawn to a carton of long-playing records.  Usually they’re low-level knockoffs (”The Hollyridge Strings Play the Beatles”), Christmas collections by Andy Williams, 1970s Carly Simon, motion picture soundtracks, heavy metal, disco hits.  Jazz is understandably rare.  So I was astounded to see a Dave McKenna solo record, LULLABIES IN JAZZ, on the Realm label, recorded in 1963.  Before he was recognized as a phenomenonal solo pianist, McKenna had recorded only twice on his own – one Fifties session for ABC-Paramount; and this one for Realm.  I had never before seen this record and had only heard selections from it — all the songs have to do with sleep, the kind of gimmickry that record producers thought would sell records — on Ed Beach’s WRVR-FM jazz program, circa 1972.  Incidentally, the original lp has this quote from Oscar Peterson: “Dave McKenna’s left hand is a full rhythm section.”  How true!     

For perhaps twenty years, McKenna and Bobby Hackett were friends and musical associates.  Hackett, who had played with everyone, thought McKenna unquestionably the finest pianist he had ever worked with.  So it was fitting that, a few records deeper into the same box, I should find a Columbia stereo record, NIGHT LOVE, featuring Hackett playing classical and semi-classical themes over a lush background arranged by Glenn Osser.  What could be better than to hear Hackett muse over Puccini’s “Un bel di” from Madame Butterfly?  For whatever reason, this record is still sealed — no one has played it since purchasing it in 1962.  A musical time-capsule, perhaps?  Each record cost me twenty-five cents: a small price for such music and such associations.  And, in the fashion of the time, the covers of both records sport attractively dreamy women, their larger-than-life faces turned toward the camera, sending some message or other.   

In true secular-Zen fashion, while loafing around cyberspace, preparing for this posting, I found that there is a McKenna website — which I urge you to visit, especially because it has more than a half-dozen beautifully-recorded and authorized solo CDs for sale.  The proceeds go directly to Dave, who is no longer performing.  It’s http://www.aahome.com/dave.

A few weekends back, the Beloved and I went to Woodstock, New York, to experience this fabled town.  We spent a pleasant few hours at the official flea market, whose range was astonishing.  I sniffed out several boxes of records, most of them dull or odd, at least to me.  But one man had a few 78s in a binder.  Usually 78s are Forties and Fifties pop (Arthur Godfrey, Xavier Cugat, Eddie Fisher), polkas, or symphonies.  In this context, a Goodman record is a find, and the mint Keynote 78 of a small band led by drummer J.C. Heard a revelation: ALL MY LIFE and GROOVIN’ WITH J.C., featuring Buck Clayton, Flip Phillips, Johnny Guarneri, Milt Hinton, and Heard.  What was even more resonant was that the paper sleeve someone had kept this 78 in had once housed Charlie Parker’s Dial record, “Dewey Square,” certainly a powerful association.  Someone, who may now be dead, had very good taste,  Thank you, whoever and wherever you are.   

Another box offered up the lp, “ON THE ROAD with The Vic Pierce Orchestra,” clearly a home-grown production on a local label.  Born Vito Pesce in Woodmere (another suburb), Pierce was a bassist, so the cover of this record was clever — a line drawing of an automobile-sized string bass on wheels, driving on to the gig.  That in itself wouldn’t have convinced me to buy it, but the liner notes said that several songs featured trumpeter Billy Butterfield.  Online research uncovered little about Pierce except that he died not long ago: I would have liked to ask him about this record date.  Cost: three dollars for the pair.

Thumbing with tepid interest through a box of audiocassettes — almost all professionally made — I stopped cold when I saw the handwritten words PEE WEE RUSSELL / EDMOND HALL on the side of a box.  Someone in the early Seventies had used this then new medium to make a portable listening experience, ninety minutes long, of favorite selections by these two clarinet masters, with Dave Tough, George Wettling, Wild Bill Davison, and others.  The cassette’s owner was male (judging by his handwriting) and meticulous: each song had its personnel listed, its origin.  Someone had treasured this music and loved this cassette: the dollar I paid for it was a fraction of its emotional worth and warmth.     

Finally, DIXIE LAND, its title reproduced accurately, which I found at a flea market in Lambertsville, New Jersey, the sole trophy of an unpromising visit.  (Neither the Beloved nor I had realized that devoted buyers and sellers start their pirouettes at 6 AM on a Sunday, so we showed up quite late by community standards, and it was parchingly hot.)  An obviously serious record collector had his inventory arranged, without prices, by genre.  I looked through the assorted jazz and found nothing essential except a fairly tattered low-cost issue featuring Buck Clayton, Vic Dickenson, Bud Freeman, Pee Wee Russell, Lou Carter, “Arnell” Shaw, and Jo Jones.  What made this record desirable wasn’t the splendid music, which I had already heard, but the cover picture — Pee Wee dressed in a plaid shirt, Jo Jones bending over to say something to one of his colleagues, Bud Freeman sharp in suit and tie, Buck Clayton laughing at something Lou Carter had just said.  I had never seen the photograph, still lively in nearly garish shades.  Considering it as a possible purchase, I slid the record out of its sleeve and saw it was worn, saying politely to the dealer, “This one looks somewhat chewed.  What do you want for it?”  He took umbrage at these sentiments and snapped at me, “I’ll tell you what the condition is,” and continued abruptly, ”Two dollars.  And don’t try to get the price any lower.”  I would have paid four, so I handed him two singles, thanked him, and said no more.  Even though I am far from a phonograph, these acquisitions will enliven me in September.   

What’s the moral?  Perhaps this: with luck, nothing is really ever lost.  Unless they are smashed or burnt, the venerated artifacts of someone else’s past come around, as they should, to new owners who appreciate them anew.  Yes, so much has disappeared, but so much remains to be cherished.   

And, going back to the apocryphal Zen masters: if the only way to assure yourself of a desired result is to give up hoping for it, let me declare right now that I renounce all the Bluebird 78s by Frankie Newton.  I have no thoughts of any Nat Pierce records with Ruby Braff, Phil Woods, and Doug Mettome.  I eschew and abjure all jazz acetates or test pressings.  Is that clear?  Meanwhile, I am going to treasure the things that I have found: worth so much more than I paid for them, rare and special.

Click (http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2001/02/20010206_a_main.asp) to hear an hour-long interview on WBUR-FM where Whitney Balliett talks about jazz and some of his favorite recordings.

Giving thanks shouldn’t be restricted to grace before meals.  When I think of the people who formed my musical taste, Whitney Balliett, who died last year, is at the top of the list (joined by Ed Beach and Stu Zimny).  As I was truly learning to listen, I would read his work, immersing myself in an essay on the trumpeter Joe Thomas while listening to the relevant records: an enlightening experience, not just for the clarity and empathy of Balliett’s insights, but for the beauty of his understated, accurate prose.  Balliett made readers hear — as they would have been unable to do on their own. 

Balliett was generous in person and on the page, and I will have more to say about him in future postings, but here is a piece I wrote about his work several years ago.  He was particularly pleased by my last sentence, which became a blurb for this book, something of which I am very proud.

AMERICAN MUSICIANS II: Seventy-One Portraits in Jazz.  By Whitney Balliett.  Oxford University Press, 1996.  $39.95   520 pp.

             “Aesthetic Vitamins,” Whitney Balliett’s portrait of Ruby Braff, concludes with Braff’s self-assessment: “I know I’m good and I know I’m unique.  If I had to go out and hire someone just like me, it would be impossible, because he doesn’t exist.”  Such narcissism would not occur to Balliett, a modest man, but Braff’s words fit him well.  Others have written capably of jazz musicians and their anthropology, but for forty years Balliett has been a peerless writer of jazz profiles, a form he has perfected.  In American Musicians II, Joe Oliver, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Greer, Art Farmer, and many others glow under his admiring scrutiny.

            Balliett’s earliest work, for The New Yorker of the mid-1950’s, reveals that he comfortably provided the reportage and criticism expected of reviewers: Hawkins played “Rosetta” well last night; the MJQ’s new long-playing record is worth buying.  But he attempted more: to reproduce the phenomena he had observed in words that made it nearly audible, to transform musical experience into language.  Although his intent was not aggressive, his early essays often unmasked mediocrity simply by bringing it to the light.  Here is Ahmad Jamal in concert: “He will play some ordinary chords, drop his hands in his lap for ten measures, reel off a simple, rhythmic single-note figure (often in the high registers), drop his hands for five or six more measures, slip in an arpeggio, drop his hands again, plump off some new chords, and so forth–all of which eventually gives the impression achieved by spasmodically stopping and unstopping the ears in a noisy room.  Accompanied by bass and drums, which sustained a heavy, warlike thrumming that seemed to frown on his efforts, Jamal played five numbers in this fashion, and after a time everything was blotted out in the attempt to guess when he would next lift his hands to hit the piano.  It was trying work.” Although he has been termed conservative, Balliett did not overlook his elders’ lapses; Zutty Singleton “has refined the use of the cowbell, wood block, and tom-tom into a set pattern that he never tires of, [and] played, in his solo number, as if he were shifting a log pile.”

            Deadly satire, however, was not his usual mode, for he preferred to praise the poets of jazz — lyrical improvisors of any school.  In reviews published in a three-month period, he celebrated George Lewis’s band for the “sturdy and lively dignity” of its “absorbing ensemble passages,” noted Cecil Taylor’s “power and emotion,” acclaimed Roy Eldridge’s solos for “a majesty that one expects not in jazz but in opera.”  His sustained affection for the music is evident throughout American Musicians II, an expanded edition of his 1986 American Musicians, with new portraits, whose roll call reveals him unhampered by ideologies: Goodman, Mel Powell, Dorothy Donegan, Bellson, Bird, Dizzy, Buddy DeFranco, Rowles, Shearing, Braff, Knepper, Desmond, Walter Norris, Thornhill.  

            Balliett does not present what he hears in musicological terms — Gunther Schuller would have notated what Jamal and Singleton played — but captures sound, motion, and rhythm in impressionistic images equally enlightening to neophyte and aficionado.  Like the best improvisations, his writing is both surprising and inevitable; he listens with great subtlety and makes shadings and nuances accessible to readers.  He is a master of similes and metaphors, in deceptively simple prose.  Skeptics who think that what he does is easy should sit down with a favorite CD, listen to sixteen bars of Bix, Ben, or Bird, and write down what they hear in unhackneyed words that accurately convey aural sensations.  Balliett avoids the vocabulary that conveys only a reviewer’s approval or disapproval: A “is at the top of his form”; B’s solo is “a masterpiece”; C’s record is “happy music played well,” etc.  Quietly and unpretentiously, finding new, apt phrases, he teaches readers how to listen and what to listen for. 

            Balliett’s Profiles (no doubt encouraged by his New Yorker editor William Shawn, an engaging amateur stride pianist) enabled him to create expansive portraits.  Were his subject deceased, a fate all too common to jazz musicians, Balliett could do first-hand research among surviving contemporaries; his Lester Young Profile is illuminated by the recollections of Jimmy Rowles, Buddy Tate, John Lewis, Gene Ramey, Sylvia Syms, Gil Evans, and Zoot Sims.  Since they are not the same people retelling the same stories, the result is fresh, insightful, and we see and hear Lester as if for the first time.  If the musician were alive, Balliett could observe, hang out, always with extraordinary results.  He has visited the famous, but American Musicians II is not a self-glorifying book of big names (”I Call on Duke Ellington”).  He has brought worthy supporting players (Mel Powell, Tommy Benford, Jimmy Knepper, Claude Thornhill) into the spotlight, yet he is no archeologist, interviewing the anonymous because no one else has and because they are still alive. 

            One of this book’s pleasures is the eavesdropping he makes possible.  Musicians, shy or seemingly inarticulate, sometimes self-imprisoned by decades of stage witticisms, open their hearts to him, describing their peers and themselves with wit and unaffected charm.  Unselfishly, Balliett makes the musicians who talk with him into first-rate writers.  Here is Clyde Bernhardt on Joe Oliver: “He was really comical about color.  If he spotted someone as dark as he was, he’d say, ‘That son is uglier than me. I’m going to make him give me a quarter.’  Or he’d light a match and lean forward and whisper, ‘Is that something walking out there?’  He wouldn’t hire very black musicians.  I suggested several who were very good players, but he told me, ‘I can stand me, but I don’t want a whole lot of very dark people in my band. People see ‘em and get scared and run out of the place.’”  Vic Dickenson, musing on roads not taken: “I know I wouldn’t have been a good doctor, and I wouldn’t have been a good cook.  I know I wouldn’t have been a good janitor, and I don’t have the patience to be a good teacher.  I’d slap them on the finger all the time, and the last thing I ever want to do is mess up my cool.”  Balliett’s Profile of his hero Sidney Catlett closes with Tommy Benford’s memory: “I have a pair of Sid’s drumsticks, and this is why.  I was at Ryan’s with Jimmy Archey’s band, and one Monday, after Sid had sat in, he left his sticks behind on the stand.  I called to him after he was leaving, ‘Sid, you left your sticks,’ and he said, ‘That’s all right, man, I’ll be back next week.’  But he never did come back.”  When his subjects were alive, these Profiles might have seemed only beautiful prose.  Now, when we can no longer see most of their subjects in person, the historical value of Balliett’s evocations is inestimable.

            Through his writing, readers have been invited, vicariously, to join in gatherings and occasions otherwise closed to us.  The Profiles enabled him to eat peanut-butter-and-bacon sandwiches with Bobby Hackett, share a car trip with Mary Lou Williams, watch Jim Hall rehearse, go shopping with Stéphane Grappelly, walk New York streets with Mingus and Ellington.  These encounters are buoyed with the irreplaceable details we are accustomed to finding only in great novels:  Balliett sits down to eat with Red Allen and his wife at their home.  Junetta, the Allens’ six-year old granddaughter, eyes the fried chicken hungrily, mutely.  Mrs. Allen, a model grandmother, stern yet indulgent, capitulates, “All right, a small piece.  Otherwise, you’ll ruin your supper.  And don’t chew all over the carpet.”  I regret I was not invited to that dinner, but I am thankful Balliett was.    

            Even readers who have nearly memorized the Profiles as first published in The New Yorker will find surprises and delights here (the prose equivalent of newly discovered alternate takes) for Balliett is an elegant editor in addition to everything else.  He has done more than adding the inevitable paragraphs lamenting someone’s death; he has removed scenes no longer relevant (an Ellis Larkins recording session where the music, frustratingly, was never issued) and substituted new encounters.  Most jazz fans are well-supplied with anecdotes where the teller is the true subject, requiring listeners with divine patience (”I rode the subway with Benny Morton; I saw Jo Jones livid when the bassist was late”).  These tales, and their published counterparts, “and then I told Dizzy,” “Woody once said to me,” are not Balliett’s style.  In American Musicians II, he has subtly removed himself from the interviews as much as possible, making himself nearly invisible, silent.  The light shines on Warne Marsh, not on Balliett first, Marsh second.   

            The only regret possible after reading the book is that Balliett did not begin writing for The New Yorker when it began in 1925.  It is hardly fair to reproach him for not being older, but I imagine wondrous Profiles that might have been.  What would he have seen and heard at Connie’s Inn in 1929?  The Reno Club in 1936?  Minton’s in 1941?  Jimmy Ryan’s in 1944?  What stories might Eddie Lang, Frank Teschmacher, Jimmy Noone, Tricky Sam Nanton, Fats Navarro, or Tony Fruscella have told him?  Since these meetings must remain unwritten, we should celebrate what we have. American Musicians II is revealing and moving, because Balliett is a great musician whose instrument is prose, whose generosity of perception has never failed us.     

I know that anyone who now and again leaves the house and the keyboard might groan, “More things to read? Please, in the name of Jimmie Blanton, no!” So I will keep this brief.

Two blogs that have given me special, consistent pleasure are Marc Myers’ JAZZ WAX and Ricky Riccardi’s THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG, both listed on my blogroll, so discovery and gratification are only a scroll and a click away.

Marc’s blog is a heroic endeavor: he puts something new online every day, sharp prose next to witty photographs and graphics. His stated focus is recorded jazz, but he has gone far beyond simple appreciation or discography. He’s a fiercely attentive listener who hears beneath the obvious. And he has gone out of his way to interview some of jazz’s most pivotal but often underrated figures — how about Danny Bank, Eddie Bert, Dan Morgenstern, Chris Connor, Roy Haynes, and the like? We don’t share identical tastes — I am a dinosaur to his modernity and vice versa, but he never writes a trivial phrase, and his comedy is as affecting as his insights.

Ricky (not an alias) Riccardi is a not-yet-thirty Louis Armstrong disciple. He, too, has wise ears and a phenomenal reach. His long analyses of particular recordings are entertaining jazz scholarship of the highest order, and he generously provides substantial sound clips, so that when he’s written lovingly about every record Louis and others made of “West End Blues,” we can hear them as we read, enabling the best kind of comparative art analysis. And his love for Louis is deep, knowing, and objective — he won’t write that every version of a particular song is equally compelling, although he is the first person I know to state in print that he would like to hear another version of “Pretty Little Missy.”

These blogs are worth a visit. I find myself edified, amused, provoked, and moved. You will, too.

“There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This is one of them.” That was the introductory voice-over I remember from the fabled television show depicting New York City’s urban grittiness. I don’t know how many stories there are as I write this in July 2008, but here is my story — one man’s nearly obsessive quest to soak up all the choice live jazz possible before leaving New York for a long pastoral summer vacation. The score at the moment is (approximately) four Kellsos, two Asheries, two Aldens, one Hendricks, and so on. Tally up the totals at your own peril.

On Sunday, June 29, I took my position at THE EAR INN (326 Spring Street), knowing that the Earregulars would swing out in inimitable fashion, and a quartet of Jon-Erik Kellso, Dan Block, Howard Alden, and Frank Tate devoted themselves to some surprising music: a rousing “Ring Dem Bells,” “When I Take My Sugar To Tea,” then, joined by the brilliant alto / flute player Andy Farber, who leads his own seventeen-piece band at Birdland on Sundays, they stretched out on “Russian Lullaby” and “Sometimes I’m Happy,” before ending with a jam session on “Honeysuckle Rose,” made even more brilliant by violinist Craig Eastman, Frank Tate’s talented cousin.

The music was stirring, the camaraderie was happy: I got to meet and talk with the owners of an upscale Australian chocolate company (www.chocolategrove.com), Will and Dianne Muddyman, in town to show off their products at the Jacob Javits Center. They are a lovely couple, funny and well-informed: we were trading names of Australian jazz heroes in spirited fashion.

On Tuesday, July 1, I made my way to ROTH’S WESTSIDE STEAKHOUSE (630 Columbus Avenue at 93rd Street) to hear the weekly duet — in this case, pianist Ehud Asherie and Howard Alden. Listening to their inspired teamwork, I thought often of the 1941 “Waiting for Benny” warmup session captured by Columbia’s engineers that brought together Charlie Christian and Johnny Guarneri, Alden’s single-string lines perfectly complementing Asherie’s stride and walking tenths. Their repertoire was magically wide-ranging, moving without strain from Waller’s “Viper’s Drag” and “I’m Crazy ‘Bout My Baby” to Monk’s “Ruby My Dear,” Morton’s “Shreveport Stomp” and “King Porter Stomp” with all their strains properly attended to, as well as a Fred Astaire cluster of “Change Partners” and “I Won’t Dance.” Barbara Rosene (high-class local talent) sat in and sang a pretty, yearning “I’m Confessin’,” and the duo offered a delightful Brazilian contrapuntal song, “Lamentos,” which was new to me (Ehud said it was a choros, although whether I am using the term correctly I have no idea).

Here, too, the pleasure was personal as well as gustatory (he steaks are excellent at Roth’s): I met the genial owner Marc Roth, a committed-to-the-point-of-piety jazz fan who donates his time and energies to the Jazz Foundation of America. It was a real pleasure to meet a club owner who sees good music as integral to his business.

Two days later, I visited Ehud and Jon-Erik again, this time for a Thursday duet session at SMALLS (183 Tenth Street at Seventh Avenue South) with the compact room filled more than usual, which pleased me greatly. As I climbed downstairs, they were floating through a truly slow “Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now.” The tempo made that song (often turned into a quick-step) into a wistful love ballad. But their next tune, a “Whispering” that kept turning into “Groovin’ High,” was just as rewarding, and I noted that these two players have been more intuitively connected each time I’ve heard them — two like-minded improvisers turning into a team reminiscent of Hackett and McKenna, Braff and Hyman. It was a most rewarding hour.

Oh — and the personal angle? When I walked in, I heard a pleased voice (in an accent that wasn’t Queens) say my name, and I turned around to see a beaming Will and Dianne at the bar. We had an even more lively chat afterwards — with hopes for a more leisurely encounter in the future.

We didn’t hear any live jazz on July 4 — but since Louis thought that day was his birthday, it has the status of a sacred day.

On Saturday, July 5, the Beloved and I went to the JAZZ STANDARD (116 East 27th Street) to catch the early show of what was billed as “Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross Redux,” featuring one of the elders of the tribe, Jon Hendricks — now eighty-six, dapper and bouncing in a yellow blazer — his daughter Aria, and the anchor of the trio, Kevin Burke Fitzgerald. At eighty-six, Hendricks manages vocal calisthenics with the skill and wit of a man one-third his age. He led the trio rather than keeping up with it. Aria has a lovely, supple vocal instrument and a dynamic stage presence; Fitzgerald not only sang his parts wonderfully but stopped the show twice, hilariously impersonating a muted brass player, then an arco bass soloist — magical impersonations, theatrical as well as musical. He’s a true star and he deserves to be widely known.

Sunday, July 6, was a Kellso-and-friends doubleheader. I found my way to a new spot in the Broadway restaurant district, the sympathetically-named BOURBON STREET (346 West 46th Street), where the band was scheduled for their first brunch appearance (12-4). All the omens and portents were good: the restaurant is a huge space, two floors with high ceilings, marble floors, and a wrought-iron balcony. This isn’t simple decoration: the band was positioned on the second floor, playing without amplification, and their sound was brilliantly resonant, the room “live” the way such places used to be. The quartet was an uptown version of Kellso’s gifted crew, with Dan Block on clarinet and tenor, John Gill on banjo, guitar, and vocals, and Kelly Friesen on bass. And I got to sit with Doug Pomeroy, renowned audio engineer and deep-dyed jazz listener, so that we could trade inside stories.

Musically, it was one of those extra-special occasions where the jazz was quiet but rose to new heights on every song, from a hymnlike “Old Fashioned Love,” to a floating “I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love With Me,” and intense explorations of “Wabash Blues” and “Apex Blues.” Jon-Erik and Dan are profound soloists and deeply attuned team players, filling gaps, finishing each other’s sentences. Kelly Friesen nimbly managed to bring together the great slap-bass he learned from Milt Hinton and witty bebop references. John Gill provided his own recogniable pulse, wonderful chord voicings — and his own Bing Crosby-inspired versions of “When You’re Smiling,” “an uptempo “Pretty Baby,” “Sweethearts on Parade,” and — for a socko finish, “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” The Irish connection? One of the owners, Brian Connell, hails from Blanchardstown, a Dublin suburb, and we traded local lore. I hope that the place prospers as a site for live jazz: the acoustics are wonderful, the food delicious, the staff cheerful.

After a brief interval devoted to non-jazz realities, I drove downtown to The Ear Inn for a hail-and-farewell* Sunday night with The Earregulars — Jon-Erik, trombone marvel Harvey Tibbs, bassist Pat O’Leary, and guitarist Chris Flory — joined for the second set by Dan Block, on his third gig of the day. If the mood at Bourbon Street had been distinctly New Orleanian, this band had its heart firmly set in late-swing-early-bop (think 1946 Savoy, Keynote). Perhaps without any hidden egocentrism, they chose songs for the second set that had their first word in common: “I Never Knew,” “I Want A Little Girl,” “I Would Do Most Anything For You,” a heartfelt “I Only Have Eyes For You,” featruing Dan, Chris, and Pat, and “I Want To Be Happy.” A closing “C Jam Blues” broke the pattern but was a delicious slow-rocking exploration. I got to chat with Jackie Kellso and the young trombonist Emily Asher (known for her work with the ensemble “Mighty Aphrodite,” which lives up to its billing) — another pleasure.

I don’t know if I could keep up this pace on a regular basis — occasionally my eyes threatened to close of their own accord, and I did go outside and stand on the street between sets to gulp some air — but my jazz marathon was richly rewarding.

Never fear, though, loyal readers: I will be posting on this blog wherever I go.

*I was doing the farewelling: happily for New Yorkers, that band will continue even when I’m not there.  Reassuring, that.

Although I can’t envision life without daily infusions of stride piano, I’ve never managed to warm up much to boogie-woogie. At its peak, that late-Thirties style featured three rotund, cheerful players — Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis, and Pete Johnson — whose collective sonic effect was a roaring express train aimed at the listener. But each one of the trio was a splendid soloist who could venture beyond eight-to-the-bar conventions, given the chance. Their slow and medium-tempo blues, especially, moaned and rocked. And they were superb leaders and accompanists: Big Joe Turner and Johnson made a wonderful team. But Albert Ammons is not often given his due.

Born in 1907, Ammons died young, but he made some marvelous band recordings. There’s a 1936 Decca session recorded in Chicago featuring trumpeter Guy Kelly (whose mournful voice you hear on Jimmie Noone’s “The Blues Jumped A Rabbit,” recorded around the same time). That’s the band pictured at the top of this posting, his “Rythm Kings.”

Slightly later, there was a romping session with Harry James (a Texan who knew how to play the blues), the Port of Harlem Jazzmen for Blue Note, and a 1944 Commodore session that produced four titles. One of them is an instrumental slow blues, “Bottom Blues.” Whether the title refers to the tempo, the overall funkiness, or the reference is anatomical, the music is imperishable.

On February 12, Milt Gabler, the patron saint of Commodore (pictured here in his record shop — thanks to the late William Gottlieb for capturing this shrine for posterity), put together one of those compact bands that blossomed in 1944 on Keynote, Savoy, Blue Note, Wax, Jamboree, and other small jazz labels. Most jazz historians ritually excoriate James C. Petrillo, then president of the musicians’ union, for provoking the record ban of that period, but the irony is that the ban provoked some enterprising jazz-lovers into capturing transcendent music that the major labels wouldn’t have been interested in. For once, commerce and art — however unintentionally — worked together.

Jazz listeners are always frustrated record producers, who think, “That band would have been just perfect if I had been able to replace Kid Pippin with Sox McGonigle,” on into the night, but this sextet admits no such after-the-fact meddling.

In the jazz family tree of recording dates, we can find connections among the three horn players, but this is the only record date I know of with this front line: Hot Lips Page on trumpet, Vic Dickenson on trombone, and Don Byas on tenor sax. As a teenager, bassist Israel Crosby had worked and recorded with Ammons in Chicago, and Big Sid Catlett — everyone’s first choice — was in town.

The four selections recorded that day are all blues — medium slow, medium, fast, and slow. Page and Dickenson were known as splendid bluesmen, squeezing Dionysiac ecstasies into the narrow confines of twelve bars. Byas’s style may have seemed more urbane, but he had deep Basie - Kansas City roots as well, and he plays nobly. The slow tempo, in addition, keeps him from falling back on the up-hill-and-down-dale rhythmic patterns he liked when he picked up speed, echoing Coleman Hawkins.

Gabler liked to give his musicians a chance to stretch out both live and in the studio, and he usually recorded on 12″ 78 RPM records — almost always earmarked for classical discs — that allowed another full minute of playing.  (Had this been recorded on the much more common 10″ disc, the ensemble would have concluded, probably in haste, when Lips Page’s chorus was over.) 

“Bottom Blues” is structurally very simple — a series of solo improvisations on the twelve-bar blues form, leading up to ensemble riffing at the end. Ammons begins with a musing, suspended-animation four-bar introduction, almost tentatively setting the key, the tempo, and the mood, before moving into a simply played blues — with only Catlett, on brushes, behind and alongside him. It’s as if he’s thinking about what he might be playing while he is doing it.

Catlett, as I’ve written in this blog, could play with great force and volume.  Although he adds notable intensity as the performance builds, he sticks to the wire brushes rather than using sticks.  In his solo chorus, Ammons offers brief glimpses of familiar piano blues motifs, but with surprising delicacy.  He does suggest eight-to-the-bar rolling rhythms at several points, but they are implied rather than stated: his bass patterns hint at Teddy Wilson, Earl Hines, even Fats Waller. The effect is thoughtful rather than assertive, and someone hearing this recording for the first time might not identify him as a famed boogie-woogie stylist.

Vic Dickenson takes the next two choruses, and Ammons’s accompaniment has a simple, forceful architectural logic, as he restricts himself to simple block chords in the first chorus and becomes more ornate in the second. Dickenson’s playing has always been praised for its “vocal” quality, its smears, growls, and moans. Justly so, but was there ever was a singer as eloquent as Vic is here? Could any voice create such sounds, bearish growls and sinewy moans, moving from side-of-the-mouth satirical asides and grief?  At points it sounds as if his sound is huge, barely contained, exploding into our ears.  Vic’s second chorus, propelled by Catlett accents, takes a simple phrase and turns it around and around, holding it up to the light before moving more rapidly into double-time and a few exultant shouts, like a man with so many things to say who knows his time is running out.  We should also hear, behind the growls and snorts that seem to characterize Vic’s solo and his style, a deep allegiance to the vein of exuberant melancholy we hear in Twenties and Thirties Louis — play this solo next to “Gully Low Blues” and hear the emotional kinship.   

By contrast, Byas sounds supple and suave, gliding from one phrase to another, extending the harmonies as if to remind us that this is, in fact, 1944, and that Dizzy and Bird are in town.  He is aided immensely by the two horns humming behind him, felt more than heard — voices in the choir adding harmonic support. 

Saving Lips Page for last was not just a good idea; it was inevitable, for no one wanted to follow him on a blues performance.  His solo isn’t appreciably high, loud, or fast, but it is the very quintessence of intensity.  Like Vic, he manages to get so many different sounds out of an unforgiving piece of brass tubing — slides, glissandos, half-valve effects — that would be impossible to notate.  And I defy any trumpet player today to reproduce these twenty-four bars convincingly.  But what we hear is light-years away from trumpet plus rhythm, as the four players drift into electrifying multi-layered polyphony, with Crosby getting even more earnest, Ammons varying his accompaniment, and Catlett urging, commenting, and agreeing to what he’s just heard.

When Ammons returns, it’s not merely an interlude to give the horns time to get into position: he is more rhythmically assertive, with wonderful dialogues going on between his spattering Hines right-hand figures and the ocean-motion of his bass line.  The orchestral polyphony broadens, as the three horns take the simplest moaning figure, as old as King Oliver’s solo on “Dipper Mouth Blues” — rocking back and forth between two notes with plenty of vibrato — and balance it against Ammons’s interjections, Catlett’s accents (he has become an entire section in himself!) building and building, with his cymbal crash the last word.  What a moving interlude!                 

Jazz, like other arts, always implicitly asks the question of how can we make the familiar new and vividly alive?  In this case, how do these six musicians, individually and collectively, take the same phrases that every jazz improviser in 1944 knew by heart and make them seem fresh?  The answer may lie in a strong sense of self, of defiantly individual voices, of superb technical mastery, of intense passion.  The question of HOW may defy words, but “Bottom Blues” shows itself as lasting, emotionally powerful art.

Happily, I can report that someone besides myself cares deeply about Albert Ammons — in this case, his granddaughter Lila has set up a site to celebrate his memory: www.albert-ammons.com.  And although the ASV CD which contains some of his finest work may be out of print, “Bottom Blues” should be available.  It is down-to-earth and celestial at the same time, worth repeated listenings.     

Last Monday, the French stride wizard Olivier Lancelot flew in from Paris for ten days of tri-state jazz immersion – a duet gig at Smalls with Dan Levinson, and appearances at the Hot Steamed Jazz Festival in Essex, Connecticut, with serendipitious sitting-in here and there. 

Photograph by Lorna Sass.  Coptright 2008.

When Olivier sat down at the keyboard at Roth’s Westside Steakhouse (680 Columbus Avenue at 93rd Street) only five hours after his plane had landed, he looked serene and cheerful.  And he approached his four-hour gig with enthusiasm, playing nearly fifty songs in the course of the night, drawing on a huge repertoire.  His musical standrads are high: thus, no “Feelings,” no “The Way We Were,” no “New York, New York.”  Rather, he explored ”Body and Soul,” “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” “That Old Feeling,” “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” “Darn That Dream,” “Blue Moon,” all at a gentle jog reminiscent of middle-period Teddy Wilson.  True to his reputation, he gave out with a few stride showpieces, most memorably ”Handful of Keys” and a blazing “Song of the Vagabonds.”  A very pretty “La Vie En Rose” reminded us of Piaf and Louis at once, a neat accomplishment. 

But the unfamiliar material was even more intriguing: a song neither I nor the Beloved could place turned out to be ”Somethin’ Stupid,” a Sixties AM radio hit for Frank and daughter Nancy Sinatra.  Late in the evening, driven by some private whimsy, Olivier went into “I Wanna Be Loved By You,” once the tradmark song of Helen Kane, reprised by Marilyn Monroe in SOME LIKE IT HOT.  Following that line of thought, he leapt into a jaunty ”Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend,” a song James P. Johnson would have loved — although who, besides Olivier, ever thought of it as worthy material?  “Do-Re-Mi,” from Rodgers and Hammerstein, became a Donald Lambert fantasy.  

Lancelot’s understanding of the music goes beyond his admirable facility at the keyboard.    Many players who identify themselves as stride (or Stride) piano specialists narrow the style as a double handful of composed pieces: here’s “Carolina Shout,” here’s “Russian Fantasy,” here’s “Keep Your Temper.”  Dick Wellstood, ever questing, extended this approach by playing Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” and “Rubber Duckie” (from SESAME STREET) as they would have been done uptown circa 1934.  Olivier has the technique and stamina to play ten or twelve choruses of violently athletic stride without strain, even though he pantomimed exhaustion (a giant wiping-of-the-forehead gesture) after his extravaganzas.  But he didn’t restrict himself to such fireworks: as he told me during the evening, playing these pieces too often in a set blurs the effect quickly.  Rather, he played stride patterns, casually and as a matter of course, remembering a time when that was the accepted way to play, at a variety of tempos — whether the song was an easy “Darn That Dream” or even “As Time Goes By,” suggesting Bogart and Bacall at Monroe’s Uptown House.  His rhythm was impeccable, his time steady, his bass lines varied (not just a metronomic oom-pah).  Combined with a light touch, he made it seem as if we had been invited into Fats’s living room to hear him play some tunes — informal and delightful.           

The last word belongs to our waiter Chad, a gracious import from the South.  “You know our regular pianist Ehud?  He sent this guy in for tonight — he’s from Paris.  Oh, this one’s great!” 

Yes, indeed.     

Last Wednesday, the Sidney Bechet Society, created by Eric Offner, held two concerts at Symphony Space, paying tribute to Kenny Davern, who died in 2006, and Bob Wilber, happily still with us. Here’s what took place at the 9 PM show, with Wilber himself, Dan Levinson, and Nik Payton on a vast assortment of reeds, Dick Hyman on piano, Vince Giordano on vocals, string bass, bass sax, and tuba, Matt Munisteri on guitar, and Kevin Dorn on drums.

After a very brief introduction by Donald Gardner, who, with Phil Stern, will be running the shows in future (Eric will continue to savor them from the audience), Dan and Nik launched into a Soprano Summit original, “Please Clarify,” in the spirit of a 1941 Eddie Sauter composition for Benny Goodman — ornate, needing superb technique.

I noticed, happily, that Hyman’s piano had a lovely acoustic sound rather than the over-miking one so often must endure. Dan commented, as a segue, that Kenny Davern was the reason he had wanted to become a jazz musician — a good thing for us all!

A looser “Love Me Or Leave Me” followed, with earnest playing by Nik and Matt, and sterling work from Kevin on his hi-hat; “Elsa’s Dream,” a Davern line on the chords of “I Found A New Baby,” let us hear the two reedmen trade fours, then twos — very exciting! Nik then had the stage to himself for a too-brief, heartfelt exploration of Bechet’s own “Premier Bal,” where he showed off his rich, woody clarinet tone. “Hindustan,” from the 1918 hit parade, had the horns — in true Summit fashion — swapping the lead and harmony roles. Matt was especially lively, as was Hyman, on this romp. Nik then played his tribute to Wilber (his mentor) whose middle name, he explained, is “Sage,” thus, “The Sage,” an attractive minor theme that suggested both a Goodman Sextet theme with echoes of “Dark Eyes.”

Dan took center stage himself to work out on a Davern variant of Ellington’s “Jubilee Stomp,” aptly dubbed “Fast As A Bastard.” It certainly was, offering Hyman a chance to show his amazing stride, and Vince to slap his aluminum string bass, resonant and focused as ever. Dan’s arrangement of PeeWee Russell’s “PeeWee’s Blues” brought Nik back, but the spotlight belonged to Matt, who bent notes as if Symphony Space had become the Delta for a few choruses. The first half of the concert ended with a deeply felt version of “Trav’lin All Alone.”

The second half began with The Man Himself, Bob Wilber, looking bouncy and boyish, announcing “Eighty is the new fifty!” (I still haven’t figured out how old that makes me: it’s a puzzlement.) Over the rocking rhythm section, with Kevin becoming Jo Jones, Bob and Nik played Kern’s “I Won’t Dance,” delighting in its singular bridge. Bob handed things over to Nik for a ballad, “You Are Too Beautiful,” that initially was a duet with Vince’s bass, reminding me of the Lucky Thompson - Oscar Pettiford - Skeeter Best recordings of the Fifties. A Condon-inspired “California, Here I Come” changed the mood in a flash, with Hyman boiling away behind the horns. Hyman announced his solo feature as a song with three titles: “Moritat,” “The Theme from The Threepenny Opera,” and “Mack the Knife,” and went from a brooding introduction to a minimalist exploration of the simple theme (echoes of Dave McKenna), to his patented uptempo stride, clipped and reminiscent of Forties Johnny Guarneri. It was truly a virtuoso exhibition with every note in place.

Much of the music that had preceded was cheerful, extroverted, which is as a tribute to Davern and Wilber should be. But for me the highlight of the evening was Wilber’s tribute to Johnny Hodges and Billy Strayhorn, “A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing,” where Wilber showed that his tone and power, his singing melodic conception, were all intact. (The brilliant young pianist Ehud Asherie was in the audience; at Smalls, the next night, he created a sorrowing version of Strayhorn’s song, clearly with Wilber’s notes in his head.)

The mood changed for a rollicking Vince vocal on “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” No tribute to Soprano Summit could conclude without “The Mooche,” and the evening concluded with a romp on “Bye Bye Blues,” with a guest spot for Wilber’s newest prodigy, Alex Mendham, on alto, as the youngest member of the lineage that began with Wilber as Bechet’s student in 1946. It was a generous concert — over two hours — in honor of reed players who gave their all to their audiences. Future concerts will feature Evan Christopher (September 15) and Vince’s “Mini-Hawks” (October 20). The smaller room at Symphony Space, by the way, has clear sight lines, good acoustics, and it’s a splendid place to hear jazz like this.

New York City can be irritating: the subway system is bound and gagged by repairs every weekend; a quart of milk is $1.45 at the corner bodega; the ticket I just received for double-parking will cost $115. “Officer, I was only there for thirty-two bars!” didn’t mitigate my criminality.

But it is possible to immerse yourself — no, drown yourself — in fine live jazz here. Consider this past week, if you will:

On Wednesday night, the Sidney Bechet Society hosted two concerts at Symphony Space, honoring Kenny Davern and Bob Wilber. Dan Levinson ran the shows, with Wilber himself, Dick Hyman, Nik Payton, Alex Mandham, Matt Munisteri, Vince Giordano, and Kevin Dorn. I’ll have more to say about this one soon — but it was as rewarding as the names suggest.

The next night, I went to hear Ehud Asherie play duets with Jon-Erik Kellso at Smalls. Wonderful, intimate, thoughtful jazz. Tamar Korn and Jake Sanders of the Cangelosi Cards were in the audience, happily taking it all in.

On Friday, we were lucky enough to go to the Rubin Museum of Art for another of their “Harlem in the Himalayas” series, featuring the irreplaceable Joe Wilder and Loren Schoenberg, Steve Ash, Yasushi Nakamura, and Marion Felder.

I’m writing about the Wednesday and Thursday gigs for the justly famous jazz magazine CODA (http://www.coda1958.com) — a new association I’m very proud of — so these pieces will appear in their “Heard and Seen” pages.

Not sated, we made our Sunday pilgrimage to The Ear Inn to catch the Earregulars (variant spellings proliferate*). The first set featured Kellso, John Allred, Joe Cohn, and Frank Tate. Then the ranks were swelled, and nobly so, by Dan Tobias, Ken Peplowski, David Ostwald, and Bob DiMaio.

My ears are ringing, my eyelids are drooping, but what a blessed cornucipa of jazz!

P.S. Tonight, you could go to hear the Grove Street Stompers at Arthur’s Tavern on Grove Street, or hear Vince and the Nighthawks at Sofia’s . . . . and on and on. I’ll be trying to catch up on my sleep, but that’s no reason you should deny yourself such pleasures.

P.P.S. *This just in! Jon-Erik, Prince of Musical Passions, informs me that the approved spelling is “EarRegulars.” Lexicographers and media please note.

When a Japanese record label issued collections of Lee Wiley’s live recordings, they generously provided these versions of famous lyrics:

“I’ve got a crush on you, weedy pine.”

“Nothing can happen to me anymore / I’m writing turkeys all over my door.”

Thanks to Scott Robinson for these gems.

Whether it’s collective improvisation or a soaring solo episode, jazz has the power to make us even more glad to be alive. The last two Sunday nights at The Ear Inn were thrilling examples of musical and spiritual energy.

On June 1, the Earregulars were led by New Orleans clarinetist Orange Kellin, who, quietly and without fanfare, recreated the hot Wednesday night band from the much-missed Cajun: banjoist-singer Eddy Davis, Scott Robinson on C-melody sax (atypically, playing only one instrument), bassist Kelly Friesen — who gave way to charter member Debbie Kennedy late in the evening. Pianist Conal Fowkes wasn’t there, but two ringers, both clarinetists, gave a truly international flavor: Motoo Yamzaki from Japan, and Adrian Cunningham for Sydney. Eddy used to call this band “Wild Reeds and Wicked Rhythm,” an apt moniker.

After a rocking medium-tempo “Sunday,” there were lovely ballads: “Prelude to A Kiss,” “I Cover the Waterfront,” ”Ghost Of A Chance,” and a Scott Robinson specialty, “A Melody From the Sky,” which brought out the best in the crowd — a tidily-dressed woman at a nearby table half-sang, half-whispered the words to herself, smiling as she did so. (When later I congratulated her on knowing the sweet lyrics, she said, shyly, “Oh, you caught me!”)

Eddy sang one of his favorites, Jerry Herman’s paean to vaudeville, “Two A Day,” as well as asking the audience to join in on “Bourbon Street Parade.” Since the crowd included John Gill and Simon Wettenhall, it was an expertly swinging sing-along. What started out as a mysterious Middle Eastern meditation, rather like “Lena is the Queen of Palesteena,” revealed itself as an early hundredth-birthday tribute to Cole Porter, “I Love Paris,” which kept on threatening to become “My Heart Belongs to Daddy.”

Orange, Scott, and Eddy (supported by Kelly or Debbie), musicians and friends, have a special chemistry. It is how brilliant soloists can intuitively sense what the band needs, create it on the spot, and send it forth. Scott and Orange, tussling like terrier puppies in a pet-shop window, worked wonderfully together: less aggressively than Soprano Summit or Sidney Bechet and Muggsy Spanier, but with feeling and drive. Orange’s style seems plain, even homespun: his inspirations are New Orleans Albert-system deities, not Goodman’s legions — but his simplicity is deceptive, for he is really a racing-car driver negotiating a tight turn at high speed. Before we know it, Orange has slyly got it and gone. Scott energized us with his beautiful tone, his yearning phrases, his deep well of feeling. Eddy pushed the band — not only rhythmically, but with his cheerful front-porch singing and his needling “Whaddaya got? Whaddaya got?” to urge his colleagues to pick the next tune.

In the first set, a lengthy, shouting “Diga Diga Doo” let the band testify at length. Eighty years old, the song is not harmonically complex, and its lyrics are all about the “Zulu man, feeling blue,” who sings the title — Eurocentrism in capital letters, at best. But musicians love it because it lacks complexity; its simplicity enables them to wander around in old friends D minor and C7 without fear of bumping into some radical chord change in transit. Scott created pushing riffs behind Orange; the solos hinted at rhythm and blues, George Lewis, and Charlie Parker, all leading to a driving closing ensemble. The quartet had the force and playfulness of a whole jam session — not in volume, but in variety, as the band changed its approach from chorus to chorus, sometimes in the middle of choruses. Doug Pomeroy, who has heard more inspired jazz than most people, turned to me and said, when it had ended, “THAT was worth the trip to Manhattan for me!”

For any other jazz group, that performance would have been the high point of the evening, reason enough to go home and take a well-deserved nap. But the Earregulars topped themselves in the second set with a rendition of “Good Old New York,” a very simple Jelly Roll Morton tune that he recorded at the end of his life, in band sessions that endearingly have their hearts set on jukebox hits — which did not happen. The song’s two ascending phrases, four notes apiece, that make up its opening melody, are infuriatingly catchy. After a pulsing statement of the melody, veering between unison playing and collective improvisation, Scott and Orange riffed energetically behind Eddy’s banjo solo; Scott and Kelly then played an unaccompanied duet, leading to a rocking, nearly ecstatic close.

Last night at The Ear was equally gratifying, with Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Matt Munisteri, guitar; Joel Forbes, bass; John Allred, trombone. The quartet seemed a little big band, brass and rhythm sections, compact and wasteless. Kellso’s growls, slides, and muted moans were wonderfully in place. Jon pours his heart into every note: although he moves nimbly at fast tempos, each eighth note is a serious matter, with its own weight. Allred’s style bristles with sharply focused thirty-second notes, but his tone gleams, his blues dig in, his ballads sing. Behind them, Matt and Joel worked in idiosyncratic harmony, truly rocking in rhythm.

Jon started off with the wittily apt “June Night,” but the music truly became electric with a brisk “Smiles,” an almost-forgotten sentimental song circa 1920, that inspired the band into jam-session polyphony, counterlines, and riffs escalating in intensity. He then asked the singer Catherine Russell, seated at the bar, to join them. She chose “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey?” — a tune that has had violence done to it by amateurs. Russell is stocky and solid but physically mobile, a playful actress, swaying her body and gesturing as the song indicated. Standing almost in the doorway, she made a spontaneous acting exercise of the lyrics, including the people wandering in and out in her script. It would have been hilarious improvised theatre if she had not sung a word. But Russell’s voice is extraordinary: a huge forceful instrument with power both released and held in reserve. I thought of Bessie Smith and Dinah Washington, but the resemblance was more organic than a collection of phrases copied from records. Singing, Russell can move mountains. But she has more than one approach: on a tenderly sad “I Cover the Waterfront,” with Kellso murmuring behind her, she made us believe the lyrics — honoring Billie Holiday without copying her mannerisms, Then, as if polishing off her imagined homage to jazz singers, she did Fats Waller’s “The Joint is Jumpin’,” with some clever changes to the lyrics. If the joint hadn’t been jumping before, it certainly was now.

The essayist Lorna Sass, whose most recent book won the James Beard Award, said excitedly, “They were cooking!” She knows.

The second set began with a luxuriant exploration of “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue,” complete with verse, and the Earregulars, perhaps still thinking of Fats, went into a slow-drag “Squeeze Me” that suggested the great recording Buck Clayton, Vic Dickenson, and Kenny Burrell made for Vanguard, with honors going to Matt, whose solo evoked Jimmy Ryan’s 1942 and deep rural folk music at the same time, sometimes in the same phrase. A romping three-trombone “Sweet Georgia Brown,” featuring Allred, Harvey Tibbs, and Matt McDonald followed (Kellso sat happily watching). After a deeply Ellingtonian “Just Squeeze Me,” where the three trombones played choral held notes behind Joel’s solo, Jon called up the singer Tamar Korn, known for her work as part of the Cangelosi Cards.

I’ve written about Korn on a previous posting, when she came to the Ear and astonished everyone with a slow-tempo “Dinah,” so I couldn’t wait to hear her sing “Exactly Like You.” She is tiny and looks doll-like, but she’s clearly a hip urban doll; no Dis