FINE TIMES at FEINSTEIN’S with HARRY ALLEN and FRIENDS (Oct. 3, 2011)

The first Monday night of every month has taken on new significance since Harry Allen and his world-class musical friends (courtesy of Arbors Records) have been appearing at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency in New York City (540 Park Avenue (at 61st Street, 212-339-4095). 

The Beloved and I went there for the festivities of October 3, 2011, for what was whimsically but accurately called a Cavalcade of Singers.  The singers?  Rebecca Kilgore, Nicki Parrott, and Lynn Roberts — backed by Harry Allen (tenor sax); Mike Renzi (piano); Joel Forbes (bass); Chuck Riggs (drums), and guest star Dan Barrett (trombone). 

Feinstein’s at the Regency is a very warm place – we got a friendly greeting and a very nice table with a good view of the stage, in a comfortably appointed, intimate room.  The atmosphere was very relaxed: a few of the musicians made their way from table to table, greeting old friends and making new ones, chatting and joking.  By the time the music started, the room was full, a very good sign — and we talked with Bill and Sonya Dunham (celebrating their 36th wedding anniversary!), Will Friedwald and friends, photographer Alan Nashigian, jazz friends Steve and Dafna, singer Melissa Hamilton, and a sweet surprise – I finally met Jeanie Wilson (whom I’ve known in cyberspace), the great good friend of Barbara Lea.

Everyone felt included, as if we had come to the most hip living room for a great yet casual evening of music.  And this warm feeling was firmly established even before I embarked on the Bloody Mary I had ordered, of a size and depth to require the Coast Guard.  The well-chosen soundtrack / background music was authentic Swing Era hits, entirely in keeping with the music we had come to hear, sweet and propulsive both. 

The instrumental quintet — Harry and Dan in the front line — began with a chipper PENNIES FROM HEAVEN, perhaps a nod to the weather that night, then moved to a sweet EMBRACEABLE YOU, where Dan showed off his Tommy Dorsey blue-steel control in the upper register, a rocking BEAN AND THE BOYS that featured some heartening cymbal playing from Chuck, a solo feature for Dan on a plunger-muted THE GLORY OF LOVE.  They ended the set with a deep-down version of Harry Edison’s blues, CENTERPIECE, which Dan introduced with the appropriate suggestion, “Turn out all the lights.”  Harry Allen usually looks serious, unflappable (unless he’s laughing or has his tennis racket), but he was rocking from side to side while the rhythm section was playing, and his solos soared throughout the set.

The Cavalcade of Singers began with our Becky: a cheerful PICK YOURSELF UP (“Good words to live by”), I’M JUST A LUCKY SO-AND-SO that moved from a pensive start to deep improvising in the second chorus, with Harry purring obbligati behind her.  Nicki Parrott joined Becky for a duet on BETTER THAN ANYTHING, and took off on her own sultry BESAME MUCHO and an unusual WHERE OR WHEN — taken at a fast tempo with the verse.  Lynn Roberts (whose experience dates back to Tommy Dorsey in the Fifties but looks perky) joked with the audience before singing in her trumpetlike way THE LADY IS A TRAMP and a forceful AFTER YOU’VE GONE.  At the end of the set, the three women of song stood side by side and floated a deft S’WONDERFUL over Mike Renzi’s powerful chording, Joel’s splendidly deep bass, and Chuck’s floating hi-hat.

After a break, the band assembled for a vigorous LADY BE GOOD – Dan and Harry playing Lester Young’s 1936 solo in unison, before Lynn offered I’M CONFESSIN’ and a medley of Sinatra’s “saloon songs.”  Nicki created a sweet HEY THERE in honor of Rosemary Clooney, and then moved from the wistful to the straight-ahead with THE MORE I SEE YOU.  Becky returned for a sweet OUR LOVE IS HERE TO STAY in honor of the Dunhams’ anniversary (her singing provoking the Beloved to turn to me and say, “She has an understated elegance,” which is entirely true) and — in amusing contrast — an energetic THIS CAN’T BE LOVE.  The three singers assembled for a proper finger-snapping rendition of FEVER, for which they received great applause. 

When we went out into the night, we had been cheered, amused, elated, and warmed.  Great music, good value, and fine times at Feinstein’s at the Regency.

And for the future — the first Monday in November will be Harry’s Brazilian evening, and the December show will be John Sheridan’s Christmas extravaganza, with reindeer and drummer boys in residence elsewhere . . . not to be missed!  Visit http://feinsteinsattheregency.com/. for all the useful details.

A WINDOW INTO ANOTHER WORLD: “FINDING CARLTON: UNCOVERING THE STORY OF JAZZ IN INDIA”

I’ve written a few lines about Susheel Kurien’s new documentary, but last week, the Beloved and I saw a rough cut of it at DCTV in downtown New York City.  I am delighted to be able to write that “FINDING CARLTON: UNCOVERING THE STORY OF JAZZ IN INDIA” is a deeply rewarding film. 

Even people who are not terribly interested in jazz in the intricate ways some of us are will also find much to admire in the portraits captured in it.  And the jazz-fanciers in the audience sat up, enthralled, throughout it. 

The film concentrates on two musicians: guitarist Carlton Kitto, who found himself entranced by the sound of Charlie Christian on the records his mother played at home while she cooked or cleaned — and Louiz Banks, a Grammy-nominated producer and jazz pianist.  Carlton takes our attention and never lets it go, both because he swings delicately yet powerfully, and because he is a sweetly endearing character. 

Unlike some documentaries I have seen where the story is compelling yet the characters are off-putting, everyone in the audience fell in love with Carlton, his sweet sincerity and his devotion to his music.  It did not surprise anyone that when Carlton got pushed on stage when the Ellington orchestra played a concert in India, that Ellington himself warmed to the young guitarist, invited him to sit in, and that Carlton improvised six choruses on SATIN DOLL with the band.  I’m only sorry that the Duke wasn’t able to hire Carlton on the spot and take him on tour.

FINDING CARLTON is full of the results of the most fascinating archival research, but it is not simply a film for those people whose heads are full of record labels and matrix numbers.  The fruits of that research are vivid onscreen, in the photographs, sounds, colors and textures of the Indian jazz scene from the Twenties onward — with quick but telling portraits of deeply inspiring players including the world-class pianist Teddy Weatherford, the elusive trombonist Herb Flemming.  The stories Sushiel has uncovered talk of Larry Coryell and Billy Taylor, of Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, of jamming with Sonny Rollins in an ashram.  As well as these famous names, we encounter people and players who go straight to our hearts: the first-rate singer Ruben Rebeiro, the devoted jazz fan Farokh Mehta, singers Pam Crain and Christine Correa — we watch the radiance on Christine’s face when she is able to hear a broadcast of her father’s band for the first time, music she heard as a child but never knew existed. 

Kurien has a splendid eye — even though this is his first film — for the little human details that bring both individual characters and a larger world (now, perhaps no longer quite so vibrant) into focus and into our hearts.  FINDING CARLTON blossoms with lovely montages of the present and the past, the aural and the visual, the moving and the still.  It is respectful but never dull, informative but never preachy or didactic. 

I understand that it will have its first formal screening in New York City on November 4, 2011.  I urge you to make a small jazz pilgrimage to see it: it is fully realized, lively, and deeply moving.  I came away from it with some feelings of loss: one of the later scenes shows Carlton at a gig in a hotel lounge, playing swing for an almost empty room, but I thought of his resilience and that of the music we love. 

For more details, please visit http://www.findingcarlton.com.  And here is the link to Susheel Kurien’s blog, http://bluerhythm.wordpress.com/

WORDS TO LIVE BY

It works for me. 

Transcription available on request, but JAZZ LIVES readers won’t need it.  You’re already Swingin’ . . . !

CLASSIC BLUES, SNAPPY TODDLE, and A DOWN HOME CHANT

From eBay: an original paper sign for QRS piano rolls, nicely preserved, just the thing to hang over your piano if you like CLASSIC BLUES or perhaps SNAPPY TODDLE . . . by the master of jazz piano, James Price Johnson.  It’s a bit early in the day for SNAPPY TODDLE, but it will be possible after breakfast.  Hail James P.!

I’ll bet that the store where this advertisement was displayed had a wonderful section of those race records, too — Paramounts and Gennetts.  Where’s my time machine and my largest suitcase?

“IT’S IN THE GROOVE,” or FORTY-FIVE SECONDS WITH EDDIE CONDON (1949)

If you were to take all the video footage of Eddie Condon and his bands before the early 1960s, it wouldn’t add up to an hour, and that is sad.  But this clip from a 1949 March of Time short just came up on YouTube thanks to “pappyredux,” and although I’ve seen it before, it is delightful. 

BILLBOARD’s reviewer disliked “IT’S IN THE GROOVE” and seemed bored by the shallow coverage of the history of records offered in its eighteen minutes, I don’t share that negative opinion at all: 

The actual date for this rehearsal is unknown, although a version of this assemblage — identified on the labels of the Atlantic 78 as “Eddie Condon and His N.B.C. Television Orchestra” recorded four sides for that company on May 25, 1949.  The reference to television is of course to the Eddie Condon Floor Show.  And it is tragic but true that no kinescopes of those shows have ever surfaced: we are lucky to have as much audio from those shows as we do (even though little of it ever made its way to CD — my collection exists on cassette tapes and five records issued on the Italian Queen-Disc label). 

On two of the Atlantic sides, recorded on May 29, 1949 in New York City, the band played rather undistinguished scored background (arranged by Dick Cary, I would guess) for the new singer Ruth Brown — those titles are IT’S RAINING and SO LONG.  The recording band was composed of Bobby Hackett, trumpet; Will Bradley, trombone; Dick Cary, Eb alto horn; Peanuts Hucko, clarinet; Ernie Caceres, baritone sax; Joe Bushkin, piano; Eddie Condon,guitar; Jack Lesberg, bass; Sidney Catlett, drums. 

The other two sides (a 78 I now have in my collection again, thanks to David Weiner and Amoeba Music) are SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES — identified in a subtitle as the theme for Arthur Godfrey’s television show — and a fast blues seated midway between Basie and late Goodman, called TIME CARRIES ON, a nod to the MARCH OF TIME.  Eddie and friends had recorded for Decca a slow blues theme — their version of DEEP HARLEM, retitled IMPROVISATION FOR THE MARCH OF TIME, so I suspect Atlantic wanted a similar recording.  The Erteguns were deep into what we would call the best small-band swing, and I wish only that they had signed Eddie up for record session after record session.  Herb Abramson told Chip Deffaa a story that suggests that this whole session was the idea of Condon’s friend, the indefatigable publicist Ernie Anderson, and that the two vocal sides launched both Ruth Brown and Atlantic Records.  I wonder myself whether Condon was temporarily released from his contract with Decca Records (overseen by Milt Gabler) to make this session, or whether Decca hadn’t signed another contract with the musicians’ union after the 1948 recording ban.

But all this historical rumination matters less than what we see here.  For me, it took a few serious episodes of staring-at-the-screen to get past the newsreel touches (the overly serious voice of the narrator, the animated stack of discs growing larger, then the large-print display of one statistic (a repetitive tendency predating Power Point by sixty years).  Then, after a visual reminder of Atlantic Records — the disc on the turntable (yes, try this out at home), we are in a quite small room, microphones visible but pushed aside, two soda bottles on the piano — an oddity, perhaps. 

Everyone is arranged around the piano for a rehearsal of TIME CARRIES ON, a fast blues with arranged passages, riffs, and a four-bar drum break at the end.  However, Lesberg seems hidden to the right, and I would not swear that I hear either Cary or Caceres . . . were they added only for deeper background harmonies on SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES?

The music seems reasonably well synchronized with the film, suggesting that the players were not miming to a prerecorded soundtrack.  Great things happen: we can hear and see Eddie playing the guitar; his bowtie is especially beautiful.  (Hucko’s necktie is superb as well.) 

The players are so tidily attired in business attire that Hackett’s black or dark blue shirt comes as a small shock; we expect drummers to dress more casually, so Rich’s open-necked shirt is not surprising.  The music is hot but insufficient . . . but after the audible splice (or jump from one passage to another) we have a chorus that seems reasonably free-wheeling. 

Readers of JAZZ LIVES have long understood my deification of Sidney Catlett, and I am glad that he is on the record to play his own four-bar break, but I lament that he is not here.  It is possible that he was on the road with Louis Armstrong and that Rich made the film shoot, or (heresy according to my lights) that Rich was the drummer of choice and he couldn’t make the record date.  Buddy, by the way, plays splendidly on many of the Condon Floor Shows. 

It’s not a Town Hall Concert or a 1949 kinescope, but it is a wonderful glimpse into a world we would not other have seen had the March of Time people not wanted to array a variety of live musical groups to depict its own version of the history of recorded music.

REMEMBERING FRANK DRIGGS — WITH MUSIC (Oct. 18, 2011)

What better way to remember and celebrate the jazz historian and archivist Frank Driggs, who died last month at 81, than with the hot music of Vince Giordano and his Nighthawks? 

A lively “memorial service” in honor of Mr. Driggs will take place on October 18, 2011, at Sofia’s Ristorante, downstairs in the Edison Hotel (211 West 46th Street) from 8-11 PM.  Doors open at 7 PM. 

This setting and the nature of the celebration are more than appropriate, because Vince nd the Nighthawks play the music that Mr. Driggs both loved dearly and documented.  In fact, I first met Mr. Driggs and his companion, the writer Joan Peyser (she died in April 2011) at Sofia’s and saw the two of them there, enjoying the music, many times. 

I think that every musician in the Nighthawks could point to a beloved recording first issued on a compilation (record or CD) supervised by Frank Driggs or one which he annotated.  We all owe him a great deal, and I expect to be at Sofia’s to join in the celebration of a life devoted to the music we love.

If you know only a little about Frank Driggs, here is his obituary in The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/arts/music/frank-driggs-jazz-age-historian-and-photo-collector-dies-at-81.html?_r=1

And here is a link to eleven photographs Mr. Driggs had acquired — out of the one hundred thousand photographs and pieces of jazz arcana:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/09/25/arts/music/DRIGGS.html

Make your reservations early!  Details below:

LIZA, MAGGIE, PHYLLIS, and EDDIE. ESSENTIAL READING: “HOUSEDEER,” Issue No. 1

I am always fascinated by the music that my beloved players and singers make — how do they do that? — but I am also intrigued by them as people.  Since many of my older heroes are now dead, I have occasionally tried to speak to their spouses and children to find out more about the mysteries of creativity.  I realize that some of this is the sweet silly fantasy of a born hero-worshipper, that if I knew what Bobby Hackett liked to eat for dinner I would understand just a little more about how he made those sounds.

My questing hasn’t always been rewarding.  Many of the spouses of jazz musicians have understandably been reluctant to retell “the good old days” at length because the memory of all those who are no longer here is mixed with the awareness of their age and pain . . . making them blue.  And the children of jazz musicians (with some lovely exceptions like Leo McConville, Jr.) have often been reticent.  I once spoke to the daughter of one of my heroes and asked if she would be willing to talk about her father to me, someone who admired him greatly.  She was truly puzzled.  “What would there be for me to tell you?” she asked, and when I made some suggestions, she politely said she would have to think about it,  which we all know is a sweet way of saying No.  And the conversation never happened.

Eddie Condon is one of my demigods — small in stature, deaf in one ear, but the catalyst for some of the greatest moments of the last century (if you think I hyperbolize, please listen to any recording of his Town Hall Concerts or — if you have only three minutes, try TAPPIN’ THE COMMODORE TILL) and someone who made racial harmony possible two decades before Jackie Robinson.  I have met and talked with his older daughter Maggie — and am honored by her conversation and grace.  I never spoke to Eddie’s Phi Beta Kappa wife Phyllis, and I only saw Eddie’s younger daughter Liza (she died in 1999) at a distance, when she was photographing the Sunday afternoon jam sessions at Your Father’s Mustache in 1972.

All this is long prelude to an announcement.  Romy Ashby (writer and artist) sat down with Maggie in early 2011 — in the Washington Square North apartment that was once Amy Vanderbilt’s, then Eddie and Phyllis’s — and the two of them spoke at length about the Condon family and especially Liza, beautiful, creative, mysterious, irreplaceable.  It has been published as the first issue of a magazine called HOUSEDEER (that’s another story) and it is available for six dollars here: http://www.housedeer.com.

Much of what is called “memoir” has a certain self-absorbed rancidity.  People who have not been able to accept the past as in some ways past use their pages to punish the dead, to settle old scores — or to explain their own unhappiness.  The essay on Liza and her family in HOUSEDEER is free from rancor.  It is full of feeling but not formally sentimentalized.  Liza’s beauty and strangeness and generosity of spirit comes through.  At the end of my first reading, I felt so sorry that I had missed her (even though my nineteen-year old self would not have known the right thing to say) but I felt as if she had been brought back, living and supple, to enter my thoughts.

For those of you who live for jazz gossip. there’s a-plenty here as well.  You can visit or eavesdrop or spy on Eddie shaving, on Phyllis lying on the bed reading the newspaper, on Eddie as a domestic sculptor, of dinner with Johnny Mercer and ice-cream sodas with Lee Wiley . . . and it develops into a full-scale portrait of Liza, someone who always insisted on taking the scenic route.

If you love this music and you are fascinated by how human beings try to progress through this world, you will want to read the first issue of HOUSEDEER.

TRULY SWEET, TRULY HOT with CONNIE JONES, TIM LAUGHLIN, CHRIS DAWSON, CLINT BAKER, MARTY EGGERS, HAL SMITH, and CHLOE FEORANZO (Sept. 3, 2011)

Yes, the Champions sports bar was somewhat exuberant in its general atmosphere, but that did not stop these masterful musicians from creating sweet and hot jazz at the music festival of the same name held in Los Angeles in September 2011.

Here’s a memorable trio of selections from a great band — Tim Laughlin on clarinet; Connie Jones on cornet; Clint Baker on trombone; Chris Dawson on piano; Marty Eggers on bass; Hal Smith on drums; and (sitting in) Chloe Feoranzo on reeds (dig that party dress and that Miss Chloe just can’t keep from dancing — it comes through in her playing, too!).

Walter Donaldson’s lament for his deceased wife is such a beautiful song on its own — MY BUDDY — that the jazz players of the Thirties picked it up and made it their own (I think of Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton, and Coleman Hawkins — some triumvirate).  This band does it justice:

Two clarinets need some sweet music to work on: here’s SOMEDAY SWEETHEART, expression of wishes and desires that may come true in the indefinite future.  No, right now — while this band is at work and at play:

Finally, hot rhythm of this caliber could make even the most solid citizen feel a little rebellious, willing to kick over the traces and make every day a casual Friday.  Hence, CRAZY RHYTHM:

What a band!  Hot lyricism in every bar . . .

SUNDAY MORNING with THE REYNOLDS BROTHERS, ED POLCER, and DAWN LAMBETH at SWEET AND HOT 2011

Depending on your habits and pleasures, Sunday morning might be a time to sleep in, to curl up with the metropolitan paper and your Beloved, to have a leisurely breakfast, to go to church, to visit friends and relatives . . . . all of them fine responses to a day of rest.  (All, that is, except for heading to the mall.)

But I propose one activity more singular and much more gratifying: spending Sunday morning with the Reynolds Brothers, those irrepressible rhythm rascals, and their friends.  I don’t know if the Brothers do house calls, so you will have to bask in the music they made on Sunday, September 4, 2011, at the Sweet and Hot Music Festival.

The Brothers were reliably themselves: Ralf on washboard and rulebook; John on guitar, vocal, and whistling; Marc Caparone on cornet and vocal; Katie Cavera on string bass and vocal; Larry Wright on alto saxophone and ocarina, with guest artists Ed Polcer, cornet and vocal; Dawn Lambeth, vocal . . . and a special (although unseen) member of the audience in his stroller, James Arden Caparone, the happy child of Marc and Dawn.

Just to be perverse, perhaps, Ed called FROM MONDAY ON as an opening selection (possibly preparing the audience for the idea of having to go back to work, even though that Monday was Labor Day) — playing and singing it:

It was just after breakfast, so in other hands a beef dish might have seemed too heavy to tolerate, but with the Brothers, PEPPER STEAK went down very easily:

Katie Cavera sweetly and wistfully asked the question raised by the Boswell Sisters and the Washboard Rhythm Kings– a plea to the somewhat hard-hearted lover in question: WAS THAT THE HUMAN THING TO DO?

After such knowledge, nothing but a rouser would suffice, so the band offered NAGASAKI.  By jingo, it was worth the price:

SUNDAY was appropriate in mood as well as on the calendar, and it offered Dawn Lambeth a too-brief chance to serenade us.  And the serenade took place off the bandstand as well, as Ed strolled over to James in his stroller to blow a chorus just for him.  I was sitting there and saw James grin — a baby in jazz bliss!

Who gathers all the talk of the town?  Why, DR. HECKLE AND MR. JIBE, according to Johnny Mercer:

With James in the audience, Papa Marc decided to sing a chorus of the Louis Dunlap – Charlie Carpenter song YOU CAN DEPEND ON ME — the lyrics don’t always fit, but the sentiment comes right from the heart:

I don’t think John Reynolds was following up on some subliminal associative strain by calling for PARDON ME, PRETTY BABY, but one never knows:

And — as is their habit — the Brothers ended with a truly hot AFTER YOU’VE GONE:

Keeping live music alive!

BY THE POOL in LOS ANGELES: DAN BARRETT, EDDIE ERICKSON, HOWARD ALDEN, JOEL FORBES at SWEET AND HOT 2011

My experiences with music at poolside have been less than ideal: someone’s iPod or a boom box, or even oleaginous background music being piped through speakers.

None of that for the Sweet and Hot Music Festival in Los Angeles this past Labor Day weekend (September 2011)!  Here are two wonderful instrumental performances by members of the Rebecca Kilgore Quartet that took place beside the pool on Sunday afternoon, September 4, 2011.  In the spirit of accuracy, I have to point out that the bluish lighting is not an entirely accurate representation of everyone’s skin tone, and the wind does cut through the singing and playing . . . but it is so far above anything I’ve ever heard by any pool that it deserves to be presented and immortalized.

Here’s a deeply lovely duet — DAY DREAM as caressed, sadly, by Eddie Erickson and Howard Alden.  I make Eddie blush and mumble when I say this, but he is the best male ballad singer I know . . . full of tenderness and spirit.  He doesn’t belt or overact; he gives us his heart.  And Howard’s playing is subtle, sweet, and restrained.  Don’t blame the wind: it wanted someone to request THE BREEZE AND I.

Something more festive followed — a trio of Dan Barrett, Howard, and Joel Forbes, working their happy way through Earle Warren’s 9:20 SPECIAL — a Basie classic:

What a way to linger in Los Angeles!

ALL THE CATS JOIN IN (at SWEET AND HOT 2011): MOLLY RYAN, DAN LEVINSON, MARK SHANE, DAN BARRETT, MARC CAPARONE, COREY GEMME, CHLOE FEORANZO, CONNIE JONES

It began, as many good things do, with just a trio performing a late-night set (Saturday, Sept. 3, 2011) in the sports bar “Champions” at the 2011 Sweet and Hot Music Festival.  But by the end of the hour, the band had expanded considerably, with many delightful surprises.  The trio was reedman Dan Levinson, singer and guitarist Molly Ryan, and peerless pianist Mark Shane.  To me, that’s a full orchestra — as you can hear for yourself on their version of Jimmie Noone’s EL RADO SCUFFLE, named for a Chicago jazz club:

Molly sweetly sings (no surprise here) the national anthem of hot jazz fans, GET RHYTHM IN YOUR FEET — reminding me of the mid-Thirties Red Allen recording:

That would have been fun enough for anyone with ears!  But sharp-eyed viewers will notice two superheroes coming in to the Champions sports bar — cornetist Marc Caparone and trombonist-plus Dan Barrett.  Since Dan had been exploring the Jimmie Noone repertoire, he called READY FOR THE RIVER (one of those I’m-going-to-kill-myself-in-swingtime songs, which has the singer threatening to drown himself).  Watch closely, as the three members of the front line discover that 1) they have something in common, and 2) great minds think alike, even if Dan Barrett later characterized their shared knowledge as evidence of misspent childhoods.  (See below* for additional information!)

Perhaps that is true, but I got delighted chills up and down my spine, and it wasn’t the air conditioning:

This happy quintet (three horns, two rhythm, no waiting) then proceeded into SAN:

Molly honored a request for the lovely / wistful / witty song about dreams coming true when there’s no money to help them along (I know it from an Eddie Cantor record), WHEN MY SHIP COMES IN.  Talk abuot music that makes the most delicious lemonade when there are no lemons to work with!

Other musicians had obviously heard the good vibrations (one of the nicest aspects of both Sweet and Hot and Dixieland Monterey is the cross-fertilization, or — in less scientific terms — the exalted sitting-in): how about Chloe Feoranzo on clarinet and Corey Gemme on C-melody saxophone for that immortal yet nagging question, DO YOU EVER THINK OF ME?:

Then, presumably with pants on, the SHEIK OF ARABY:

And (in preparation for his set, which followed, but also because he wanted to get in on the fun), the superb cornetist Connie Jones joined in for Molly’s exultant rendition of CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME!  I would suggest that the state tourist board needs her to sing this song, but perhaps the people in power already know this:

Sweet and hot and irreplaceable, too.

*Some kind soul / hot music scholar transcribed the lyrics — verse and chorus! — for the Coon-Sanders recording, and I print the transcription below.  Possibly a song for group harmony on long car trips?

VERSE: Tell the world that I’m all through with it.
No more will I moan.
Burn my home. What can I do with it?
Can’t live all alone.
No use wastin’ time,
For I just know that I’m—

CHORUS: Ready for the river, the shivery river,
The river that goes down to the sea.
Gonna drown my troubles, and leave just the bubbles
To indicate what used to be me.
Made my will, wrote some notes,
Gonna keep a-walkin’ ’til my straw hat floats.
I’m ready for the river, the shivery river,
So get the river ready for me.

THE CURE FOR WHAT AILS YOU: THE REYNOLDS BROTHERS and CLINT BAKER at SWEET AND HOT 2011

Feeling blue?  Grumpy?  Old Man Existential Dread got you this morning?  Well, hope is at hand; there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.  Begone, dull care!

The Reynolds Brothers are back to banish strife and ennui, something they do so splendidly.  Here they are at the 2011 Sweet and Hot Music Festival (recorded on an astonishing day for hot music, September 3, 2011).  The collective cast of characters (a term I don’t use lightly here) is John Reynolds, guitar, vocals, wryness; Ralf Reynolds, washboard, refereeing, vocals, asides; Marc Caparone, cornet, passion; Katie Cavera, all manner of stringed instruments, vocals, charm; guests Clint Baker, trombone, vocal; Westy Westenhofer, tuba, vocals; Chris Calabrese, piano, fatherhood; Larry Wright, alto saxophone, ocarina, kazoo, quotations, vocals; Doug Mattocks, banjo.  Wardrobe by Edith Head.  Empathy by Lorna Sass.

Here’s SOME OF THESE DAYS (you’ll be lonely if you abandon me, son!):

And my favorite Buddhist song — more to come on that subject soon — NEVER SWAT A FLY:

JUBILEE features one of the few singing tubaists I know, and a good one in Westy:

Got those SAINT LOUIS BLUES, the rocking embodiment of what Dicky Wells called (and Jim Leigh celebrates), “fuzz”:

Katie has a hectic schedule all the time — but TOO BUSY is about another subject.  Her joy comes through even when she’s hidden behind that forest of microphone stands:

Where’d she go?  SOMEBODY STOLE MY GAL, mercy:

And the set closes with an inducement to dance, or perhaps an incitement, in HAPPY FEET:

Feeling better?  It works every time.

BLINK AND THEY’RE GONE: GAUCHO COMES TO BROOKLYN (October 2011)

Who or what is GAUCHO?

Without a lengthy explanation, they are a wonderful small band — their main allegiance is to the music of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelly, but they aren’t Gypsy drones, running up and down the fretboard in defiance of melody and common sense.  Usually they have two guitars (solo and rhythm), an accordion, string bass, and friends.

Here’s a sample — GAUCHO performing AFTER YOU’VE GONE — Rob Reich on accordion, Ari Munkres on string bass, Dave Ricketts and Michael Groh on guitars,  with our own Tamar Korn:

San Franciscans are already used to having GAUCHO in their midst, and the first time I heard some version of this group was in 2005 on a visit to that city — I believe at Amnesia.

But for those New Yorkers who aren’t flying westward any time soon, GAUCHO has come to us.  Here are the dates (on short notice, for which I apologize):

Monday, October 3:
Pete’s Candy Store, 10 pm
709 Lorimer St, Brooklyn

Wednesday, October 5
Radegast Hall and Biergarten, 8 pm
113 N 3rd St, Brooklyn

Thursday, October 6
Downhouse Lounge, 9 pm
250 Ave X, Brooklyn

Saturday, October 8
Zebulon 8 pm
258 Wythe Ave

GAUCHO is slightly smaller than usual (you know, weight restrictions on airline travel).  The Brooklyn version is  Dave Ricketts (guitar); Rob Reich (accordion);
Ari Munkres (bass); Yair Evnine (cello, guitar).

And who knows who might want to sit in?  Miss Korn, her ethereal self, lives in Brooklyn.  GAUCHO swings mightily and tenderly, and they are worth seeing.  I guarantee it.

SO SWEET: “PETER HAD A WOLF”: PETRA VAN NUIS and JUDY ROBERTS

Some performances announce themselves in capital letters as soon as they start.  Others sneak into your heart, deeply and sweetly, with every note and inflection.  I hadn’t heard the song PETER HAD A WOLF before, but when I found out about this video performance of the fine singer Petra van Nuis and pianist Judy Roberts (a great singer herself) performing it, I began to watch and was entranced before the first four bars were over.

Children’s stories for adults — speaking to the yearning that is in all our hearts!

And after you’ve watched it once, amused and touched by the song’s simple power, watch it again to admire Petra’s charm, her tenderness, and Judy’s masterfully generous accompaniment.

And then — like a chain letter from the heart — send it to someone you love.  Or several people you love . . .

POSITIVE ENERGIES: BILL BING CELEBRATES UAN RASEY

UAN RASEY WILL BE MISSED

I had never known anything about the late trumpeter Uan Rasey beyond noticing his unusual name in discographies — until my friend Marc Caparone told me about taking a lesson with Uan, what a remarkable person he was, how he emphasized something larger than “technique,” which was the making of beautiful sounds.  Through Doug Ramsey’s RIFFTIDES, I learned this morning that Uan had died, age 90.  You can read more about this unique man and musician here –

http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/2011/09/uan-rasey-rip.html

But I want everyone to read one short paragraph about Uan Rasey — proof of how special a man he was.  It’s a story told by Uan’s grandson:

When he was 89 years old, he learned that his seven-year-old granddaughter Taylor had no way home from school because her mother had been delayed. Rather than let her wait, possibly for a long time, he called Access Paratransit. Blind and in his wheelchair, he got into the Access van and traveled three miles to the school. When he got there, he wheeled himself into the school, found Taylor and took her home in the van. Then, when they got to the house he fixed her a meal, and when Taylor’s mom got home, she found the two of them partying, having a great time.

Uan Rasey was a beautiful sound in human form, and we could do him honor by remembering that story and trying to live our lives that way.