The wonderful artist — whose work combines fantasy, comedy, and beauty — Ivana Falconi — has a show of her work at the Swiss Consulate in Manhattan (open by appointment until February 23, 2003). She regularly displays new creations on Facebook: see more here and here.
Ivana’s husband is the splendid tenor saxophonist Harry Allen, and he and the marvelous string bassist Gabriele Donati gave us a little night music. I recorded this on my iPhone because I couldn’t bear to let it go away into the air. “Splendid!” to quote our mutual friend and hero, pianist Rossano Sportiello.
I have had the immense good fortune to know Harry (thanks to Jazz at Chautauqua), Gabriele (thanks to the 75 Club, as well as his charming family), and Ivana (through becoming an art-delighter) for years now, and they repaid me and the OAO and everyone else in the room with beauty.
and . . . .
and the delightful sight-and-soundtrack:
Beautiful music is in the air; it surrounds us. Of course, it helps to be in the right place at the right time, surrounded by brilliant generous friends. Often you have to leave the house, but no surprise there.
Attentive readers will note that it is not yet Sunday, so this post is to inform or remind you that a wonderful duo-concert is about to happen, featuring Danny Tobias, trumpet and perhaps Eb alto horn, with Rossano Sportiello, piano. It’s given by the Pennsylvania Jazz Society at Congregation Brith Sholom, 1190 West Macada Road, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I believe the times are 2 to 4:30. I don’t know the admission price, but my previous experience with the PJS has shown they are reasonable people; should any JAZZ LIVES readers show up and find themselves short of a few dollars, I will be happy to offer the official Blog-Subsidy.
In announcing and promoting concerts, I’ve always tried to offer musical evidence — the equivalent of the tasting table at Trader Joe’s — but here I am slightly at a loss. One of the most exciting aspects of this concert is that, although I know Rossano and Danny have played together, they have not yet recorded in duet. So I cannot say to you, “This is what it will sound like on Sunday!” However, Danny’s newest CD, SILVER LININGS, features himself and Rossano along with Scott Robinson, reeds and brass; Joe Plowman, string bass; Kevin Dorn, drums — so I present two delightful musical interludes as somewhat larger versions of the blisses to come our way on Sunday.
I know there will be Pretty:
and I know there will be Swing:
As Elizabethan-era bloggers used to write c. 1604, “Get thee hence.” “Thee” means you; “hence” means 1190 West Macada Road, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
People who draw “jazz history trees” love to create categories that are often divisive, at best restrictive. For those so inclined, whether critics, journalists, or “fans,” the art form is defined as discrete sections, painted lines in an aesthetic shopping-center parking lot.
The musicians laugh about such dopiness, and not only talk to their friends but play alongside them. Happily.
Here’s a passionate interlude that refutes such categorization, from the Nice Jazz Festival of July 15, 1976. The set was called “Jeru and some friends,” “Jeru” being the baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, who made himself at home with musicians “from different schools” where and whenever he could, including Count Basie, Jack Teagarden, Pee Wee Russell, and Joe Sullivan — and I am sure that is only a fraction of the friendly gatherings he participated in.
I love the fact that the common language is “the three B’s,” or in jazz terms, “Basie,” “the blues,” and “ballads.”
Nice Jazz Festival (audio only); “”Grande Parade du Jazz,” July 15, 1976.
Gerry Mulligan, baritone saxophone; Harry “Sweets” Edison, trumpet; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Marian McPartland, piano; Dave Samuels, vibraphone; Percy Heath, string bass; Alan Dawson, drums. I FOUND A NEW BABY / NIGHT LIGHTS / WHILE WE’RE YOUNG (Marian, solo) / I’LL BE AROUND (Mullgan-Marian) / YESTERDAYS (Sweets) / TEA FOR TWO / SHINY STOCKINGS.
Miraculous to me, but common friendly practice to these wise feeling players:
For the first part of this wonderful set, frankly irresistible — MILENBERG JOYS, SMOKE-HOUSE BLUES, BALLIN’ THE JACK — visit here. And here are the next three.
BLUE BLOOD BLUES:
STEAMBOAT STOMP:
MAMIE’S BLUES (vocal by John Gill):
A wonderful band devoted to the music of Jelly Roll Morton and the music he and his bands played — electrifying, exact, and loose all at once. Led by Hal Smith on drums, the Mortonia Seven is Dave Kosmyna, cornet and vocal; TJ Muller, trombone; Dave Bennett, clarinet; Kris Tokarski, piano; John Gill, banjo and vocal; Sam Rocha, string bass and helicon.
Some words. Jelly Roll Morton was not happy to have his music popularized by others during his lifetime (think of Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman, and others selling millions of copies of KING PORTER STOMP and WOLVERINE BLUES) but in some way there was a Morton “revival” going on for the last decade of his life. And with good reason: the compositions themselves are substantial, full of surprises that haven’t aged, and the recorded performances are fascinating marriages of hot improvisation and established structures.
But because Morton was such a powerful personality — man, composer, arranger, giver of dicta that should be obeyed — tributes to him have often not been easy or their results satisfying. Sometimes ensembles have been reverent and obedient: we must play it exactly the way the Red Hot Peppers did on the record, and those results are dazzling in their own way but I am not sure Omer Simeon would have liked people treating his solo as holy writ, to be repeated forever, with musicians subsuming their own identities in those manuscripts and recordings. (And Morton’s recordings have their own vivid force, not easy to replicate.) The other extreme, with a bunch of good people “jamming” on WOLVERINE BLUES and SWEET SUBSTITUTE, can be thrilling, but the results are at a distance from the exactitude Morton brought to his gigs and the recording studio.
The Mortonia Seven takes some and leaves some from both worlds: you can easily hear the outlines and structures of the original compositions and recordings, executed with style and grace, but the musicians’ personalities come through whole. And the result is lively, not studied — hot and sweet, raucous and melancholy, as the music demands.
There are more performances from this set that I will share with you. For now, I’m going to watch these again, mop my brow, and grin. Join me!
To my ears, that’s a delightful mixture of two appealing jazz genres, loosely defined: “gypsy jazz” harking back to Django Reinhardt and colleagues, and “modern New Orleans,” best defined by one’s ears. Andy MacDonald is an inventive Montreal guitarist-singer-composer who’s always created melodic, light-hearted swing. And he has three new issues on Bandcamp — SEEKING HOME, One, Two, and Three.
Andy has surrounded himself with players who float as he does: Aurélien Tomasi, bass saxophone and reeds; Bertrand Margelidon, trumpet; Joseph Abbott, clarinet and alto saxophone; Olivier Hébert, string bass and trombone; Jeff Moseley, guitar; Drew Jurecka, violin; Kalya Ramu, vocal.
The three issues contain fifteen songs — and I mean “songs” in the best memorably singable sense — with a few standards, APRIL SHOWERS, and I GUESS I’LL GET THE PAPERS AND GO HOME. The overall effect is, once again, charming — looking backwards to Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, and Adrian Rollini as well as the Quintette of the Hot Club of France, all of them magically transported to a balcony in the French Quarter — but it isn’t recreation of past recordings or fixed genres. The music meanders as happily as do Andy and his (now-famous) “pandemic puppy,” named Duke Ellington (no, not just “Duke,” if you please.
Here’s another sample:
If I heard that coming out of a speaker somewhere, I would want to follow those sounds! I hope you feel the same way.
And a sweet whimsy based on HONEYSUCKLE ROSE and the notion of “Don’t buy sugar,” but with Montreal pride mixed in, MAPLE SYRUP:
In the summer of 2021, Leo Forde, a young guitarist from Glasgow, living and playing in New Orleans since 2014, sent me a delightful new CD, which I praised here:
He’s done it again, with a new effort called DOUBLE WHISKY:
One no longer calls music “entertaining,” but this new CD is just that.
OH, LADY BE GOOD is an engaging sample, with legendary pianist David Boeddinghaus joining Leo, solo guitar; Ben Powell, violin; John Rodlii, guitar; Nobu Ozaki, string bass for nearly four minutes of time-travel . . . what if the Quintette of the Hot Club of France had met Teddy Wilson in 1937?
Leo and friends understand something about the genre termed “Gypsy jazz” that is not common practice. Yes, it is a music now often characterized by technical virtuosity. But even more, it is an embrace of melody and melodies. It’s ultimately not about how to execute Django Reinhardt’s gestures at top speed and even more ornately, but it is a passionate embodiment of the classic tradition created by Louis Armstrong and his colleagues. Even though there’s no vocalizing on this disc, Leo and friends sing out every note, fashion every phrase so it goes right to our deepest feelings.
Oh, they can bounce in the most sophisticated postwar ways — hear the title track DOUBLE WHISKY — but their joyous messages, their swing affirmations are never firing notes at the listener, who (even admiring) has to take a rest at the end of each track.
I say THANKS A MILLION — and the aural embodiment of gratitude is right here.
Details. Oh, details. The music is available here. The songs are MY BLUE HEAVEN / OH, LADY BE GOOD! / JUST A GIGOLO / DOUBLE WHISKY / THANKS A MILLION / IMPROVISATION ON TSCHAIKOVSKY’S ‘Pathetique’ / WHEN DAY IS DONE / LOUISE / I SURRENDER, DEAR / DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO MISS NEW ORLEANS? The recorded sound is warm and accurate, which means a good deal.
I can only explain the effect of this session, if it hasn’t come across to you by now, by saying it is like encountering a dear friend after a long absence. Heartfelt, playful, gentle sounds, a small treasure in this noisy world.
Here’s a musical enactment about what academics call “discourse,” and what the rest of us call, at best, “gossip,” from January 1927. The singers are Joe Sims (sometimes Simms) and Clarence Williams; the impressive cornetist is the mysterious “Big Charlie Thomas”; the frolicsome young pianist is one Tom Waller:
Never has a lecture on good behavior swung so much — so take heed.
Although I have spent the better part of my life wholly immersed in this music, I envy those who are coming to it for the first time. Because they don’t “know everything” behind and around what they hear, they are able to hear the music’s energies and shadings in ways that those of us whose minds are portable libraries can’t. The more you know, ironically, the heavier your psychic knapsack becomes, even though some of those accretions are relevant and precious.
I imagine someone coming to the four-minute performance with no knowledge of the players, their personal histories, the cultural context in which this performance happened, and simply thinking, “That sounds wonderful!” They know nothing of “Benny Goodman”; they hear a clarinet, piano, vibraphone, and drums at once being expert beyond belief and playing like children, full of joy. Personal quirks and tragedies aren’t in that knapsack, merely exuberant bright thrilling sounds — the music of great artists having a great time, on the spot.
So I urge the most erudite of my readers to attempt an experiment. Put aside all the gossip you’ve heard about the players, forget your memories of perhaps seeing them live or buying your first recordings by them. Forget what you know or what you think you know, and drop down, trusting and blindfolded, into the rich irreplaceable sounds:
To quote Frank Chace about another clarinetist, “Doesn’t that just scrape the clouds?”
I could write a thousand words on what seems marvelous to me here, but I’d hope that readers take the pleasure of hearing this performance again. And before turning to their other tasks, I invite them to subscribe to the YouTube channel created and maintained by my friend who calls himself, not by accident, “Davey Tough” — a treasure-house of marvels, presented with care, intelligence, and love.
I don’t know where you were on that Saturday night at 8:30 PM. Perhaps you didn’t exist. But I was in Carnegie Hall, close to the stage, for a Newport Jazz Festival in New York concert called SO-LO PIANO.
Even then, I couldn’t bear the evanescence of the beautiful sounds I heard in person, so I had been an illicit tape-recordist, if that is the term, for two years. My methods were coarse and direct. I had an airline bag over one shoulder, my father’s gift, inside it a portable cassette recorder, a decent Shure microphone, perhaps extra batteries.
In those innocent times, I was never stopped going in to a concert hall or club, and there were no metal detectors. When I got to my seat, I positioned the bag in my lap, connected the microphone, slid it and the wire down my jacket sleeve so that the ball of the microphone was concealed in my hand. When the lights went down, I pressed RECORD, sat very still, did not speak and did not applaud. Several friends may remember my odd behavior, all in service to the art.
When I got home with my aural treasure, I transferred it to reel-to-reel tape to edit it, however crudely, and it was the way I could make the mortal, the transient, immortal — something that would never go away and could be visited any time.
What follows is precious to me — a glimpse into a world that no longer exists. And since I have yet to find a more formal source, it seems irreplaceable.
BUT, and it is a huge pause, if the listener comes to it expecting clean digital sound, they should, to quote Chaucer, turn over the leaf and choose another page. The cassette recorder had a limited range; there is a good deal of “air” in the aural ambiance, and the undercurrent of some 3600 people inhaling, exhaling, gently shifting in their seats. The good news is that the piano seems well-tuned, and the only amplification is of master of ceremonies’ Billy Taylor’s microphone. (Carnegie Hall’s sound crew had done violence to pianos in the 1972 concert series; they had learned well by July 1973.)
So, please: if your first response is, “Michael, why didn’t you learn how to improve the sound?” or “Send me that tape and I will fix it for you,” read Hawthorne’s THE BIRTHMARK or get up from your chair and watch the cardinals at the feeder. Or simply imagine you are hearing precious music from another room, and be grateful that it exists. End of sermon.
I offer you thirty-five minutes of joy and wisdom and splendor, captured illicitly and with love. You will notice the audience applauds when they “recognize the tune.” But there were adults in attendance, thus reverent silence during performances. I don’t hear program-rattling or coughing. Blessings on my fellow July 1973 concert-goers. AND the heroes onstage.
Jimmie Rowles: THE MAN I LOVE – BEAUTIFUL LOVE – JITTERBUG WALTZ / EMALINE / LIZA – MY BUDDY //
Bill Evans: I LOVES YOU, PORGY / HULLO BOLINAS / BUT BEAUTIFUL //
Ellis Larkins: HOW’D’JA LIKE TO LOVE ME? / I WANT A LITTLE GIRL / BY MYSELF //
Is it too self-absorbed of me to be happy I was there on that July evening and am still working for this music, in awe? Perhaps. But I hope you are happy that this tape was created and that it can be shared.
Get ready for the room temperature to increase steadily. Music first, words after.
MILENBERG JOYS (vocal by John Gill):
SMOKE-HOUSE BLUES:
BALLIN’ THE JACK (vocal by Dave Kosmyna):
A wonderful band devoted to the music of Jelly Roll Morton and the music he and his bands played — electrifying, exact, and loose all at once. Led by Hal Smith on drums, the Mortonia Seven is Dave Kosmyna, cornet and vocal; TJ Muller, trombone; Dave Bennett, clarinet; Kris Tokarski, piano; John Gill, banjo and vocal; Sam Rocha, string bass and helicon.
Some words. Jelly Roll Morton was not happy to have his music popularized by others during his lifetime (think of Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman, and others selling millions of copies of KING PORTER STOMP and WOLVERINE BLUES) but in some way there was a Morton “revival” going on for the last decade of his life. And with good reason: the compositions themselves are substantial, full of surprises that haven’t aged, and the recorded performances are fascinating marriages of hot improvisation and established structures.
But because Morton was such a powerful personality — man, composer, arranger, giver of dicta that should be obeyed — tributes to him have often not been easy or their results satisfying. Sometimes ensembles have been reverent and obedient: we must play it exactly the way the Red Hot Peppers did on the record, and those results are dazzling in their own way but I am not sure Omer Simeon would have liked people treating his solo as holy writ, to be repeated forever, with musicians subsuming their own identities in those manuscripts and recordings. (And Morton’s recordings have their own vivid force, not easy to replicate.) The other extreme, with a bunch of good people “jamming” on WOLVERINE BLUES and SWEET SUBSTITUTE, can be thrilling, but the results are at a distance from the exactitude Morton brought to his gigs and the recording studio.
The Mortonia Seven takes some and leaves some from both worlds: you can easily hear the outlines and structures of the original compositions and recordings, executed with style and grace, but the musicians’ personalities come through whole. And the result is lively, not studied — hot and sweet, raucous and melancholy, as the music demands.
There are a half-dozen more performances from this set that I will share with you. For now, I’m going to watch these three again, mop my brow, and grin. Join me!
Honoring Sidney Catlett while remaining completely himself: that’s what the masterful artist-percussionist Josh Collazo does here in spellbinding ways. It was the set closer of Marc Caparone’s Back O’Town All-Stars set at the Redwood Coast Music Festival because nothing — except perhaps SLEEPY TIME DOWN SOUTH or the national anthem could follow that.
And for those of us who understand the music, STEAK FACE (named for Louis’ Boston terrier, a happy carnivore) IS a national anthem. It’s thrilling, a complete drama embodied on a drum set.
The band is modeled on Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars, majestically. Marc Caparone, trumpet, vocal; Charlie Halloran, trombone; Jacob Zimmerman, clarinet and alto saxophone; Dan Walton, piano; Jamey Cummins, guitar; Steve Pikal, string bass; Josh Collazo, drums. This marvelous six-minute natural event took place at the Redwood Coast Music Festival, Eureka, California, September 30, 2022:
Josh inhabits the world of that solo so splendidly that it would be an affront to post a photograph of Big Sid here. But I hope he’ll forgive me for posting the source of this composition’s title: “General,” Louis Armstrong’s Boston terrier (Joe Glaser bred dogs) who obviously had deep culinary awareness:
but the real story is told here . . . STEAK FACE in action!
I apologize if the canine candids have distracted you from the glories Josh and the band create — music, to paraphrase Whitney Balliett, that makes you want to dance and shake and shout. All in six minutes: beyond remarkable.
WHY DON’T YOU PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH has a strong pedigree: recordings by Henry “Red” Allen, the Boswell Sisters, Adrian’s Ramblers, 1934 dance bands, and more. (There are two delightfully odd versions on YouTube — a 1935 duet on film by vaudevillians Blossom Seeley and Benny Davis, and a nearly surrealistic piano / vocal explosion by Speckled Red . . . for you to investigate as you might.)
I suspect that the gentleman in the drawing is “all alone by the telephone,” waiting for the call, promised, that hasn’t arrived.
And for those who want to learn the verse or see the original chords, here is a sample of what people in 1934 would have to practice:
I am certain that the stern patriarch of American popular song, Alec Wilder, would have furrowed his brow over this one: its limited melody, relying on simple patterns and repeated notes (a particular Wilder irritation), and its conversational lyrics with perhaps predictable rhymes. But one could say some of the same things about a number of Berlin songs, and PREACH sticks in the mind. Is it because it is singable? Or is the easy colloquial nature of the lyrics part of the charm — one can imagine a writer in the Brill Building saying in a cranky voice, “For God’s sake, Harry, why don’t you practice what you preach?” and Harry, as they did in films, pushing his fedora back from his forehead and saying, “Say that again. We got a song there!”
But I think the appeal of the song is its light-hearted but serious approach to a universal situation. Who among us has been promised something — and I don’t mean thin-crust pizza, but fidelity, devotion, monogamy — to find that the verbal promise was not matched by behavior. This isn’t a “You lied to me and now it’s all over” aria, but it is, “Why don’t you cut out what you’re doing and be straight with me?” which is all too often the song in our heads.
This performance comes from the second set the OAO and I enjoyed at the Redwood Coast Music Festival: Dave Stuckey, guitar, voice, and focused enthusiasm, led his Hot House Gang: Marc Caparone, cornet; Nate Ketner, tenor saxophone; Carl Sonny Leyland, keyboard, Katie Cavera, string bass; Josh Collazo, drums, with the very special guest Jonathan Doyle, clarinet and tenor saxophone. I have heard Dave perform this song before, so I was ready for joy, and I was entranced by the “right” tempo, the glee club effects, the general we’re-rockin’-this-town spirit, all the way to the vocal triple ending. I loved it in the moment and I love it now. I hope you dig it too:
So swing out. But heed the sermon of Deacon Stuckey. Get yourself together. It’s easier to tell the truth. Collect friends, not enemies. And don’t let your mouth write checks your tail feathers can’t cash. Amen, brothers and sisters.
See you at the 2023 Redwood Coast Music Festival . . . even if you bring all your sins with you in checked luggage.
I am delighted to report that the wonderful singer Alice Spencer has just issued her first solo session — on Hal Smith’s TUXEDO CAT label — called SING IT WAY DOWN LOW. She has the eminently groovy support of Marc Caparone, cornet; Kris Tokarski, piano; James Singleton, string bass; Hal Smith, drums. And you can purchase the download and hear samples here. I’m a fan — no, more a devotee — and here are my notes to the session:
I remember very clearly the first time I heard Alice Spencer (on disc: I haven’t had the pleasure of encountering her in person). My reaction was loud pleased astonishment, and the expurgated version would read: “Who in the sacred name of Jack Kapp is she?”
“Jazz singers” proliferate these days, but some seem to have given more thought to their hair stylist or their cover photograph than to the music. Alice’s love for this music and this period bubbles up on every track.
For me the great singer-virtues are a deep understanding of the emotional content of the lyrics — without jokes on one hand or melodrama on the other. An unforced swing, a willingness to improvise without undermining melody or lyrics, plain-spoken diction, and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to convey joy.
We gravitate to music that doesn’t hurt our feelings, or our ears. Alice understands that as well as embodying it.
This disc reminds me, perhaps at an unusual angle, of the miracles Basie and friends created, imbuing the saddest song (hear DRAGGIN’ MY HEART AROUND) with a wink at the listener (“Isn’t it fun to swing along so gloomily?”) or reminding us that there is a touch of melancholy in any elation.
I’d direct you first to I HATE TO LEAVE YOU NOW, one of the gorgeous Thirties songs (linked to Fats and Louis, one of the ideal combinations of Western civilization) that are the gems in the constellation of this disc. What I hear, and I hope you do also, is a rare combination of emotional intelligence — Alice knows how to feel, how to tell a story in song — and light-heartedness.
Her art is both delicate and sincere. She doesn’t have to take off her shoe and hit us over the head, but we know the tale of hope, longing, and ardor the song, and she, convey. And the subtly memorable variations on the theme between her first and second choruses are a Jazz Studies program in themselves. No, better.
It’s also clear that although this might not be Alice’s conventional repertoire (the wonderful program is inspired by the deep listening of Hal Smith, scholar and swing percussionist) that she is being herself on every performance. Yes, I hear echoes of young Ella and of Helen Humes and Connee, but Alice has not spent her evenings mimicking them. What Louis called TONATION and PHRASING are all hers, and they touch our hearts in each phrase. Hear her “I need you!” in BABY, WHERE CAN YOU BE? The way she handles the verse to SUNDAY, rising to pure pleasure at the end. Wow is what I say. The wistful tenderness of THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION and HOW CAN I? The “It’s my birthday today!” delight of I’M HAVING MY FUN. To paraphrase Whitney Balliett, Alice is a great actress who doesn’t need a script.
The same mastery comes through in the instrumentalists who join Alice on her musical journeys. No one needs multiple choruses to tell their tale. Perhaps you’ll hear echoes of the great Holiday-Wilson sessions, of Bing, Jack, Louis: I could call the names of the Heroic Ancestors who have informed the music of honored individualists Marc, Kris, James, and Hal, but I’ll leave that to you — what Barbara Lea called “Sounding Like.” A lifetime research project with a lifetime of rewards.
If these notes go on too long, I might get in the way of your absorbing the delights captured here, not once but many times. In an extended California sojourn, I learned about “sound healing,” how the right vibrations could put a psychically lopsided being into happy balance. I think that Doctor Spencer and her practitioners have just the remedy for what ails us, and I hope the prescription is renewable for many more sessions.
I confess that I held myself back in writing the words above, for fear of hyperbole, but I think this session is a triumph — aesthetically and emotionally — and I hope enough of us agree so that there are more sessions to come. I didn’t list the songs, but here they are: WHEN MY SUGAR WALKS DOWN THE STREET / I JUST COULDN’T TAKE IT, BABY / BELIEVE IT, BELOVED / I HATE TO LEAVE YOU NOW / BLUE RIVER / BABY, OH WHERE CAN YOU BE? / SUNDAY / HOW CAN I (With You in My Heart)? / SING IT WAY DOWN LOW / THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION / I’M HAVING MY FUN / SAY IT SIMPLE / DRAGGIN’ MY HEART AROUND / I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR YOU.
The digital download costs very little, and it is your introduction to Alice Spencer and the swinging affection she inspires among these fine musicians. You will arise from listening feeling gratified. Again, here is the link.
And for those who, like me, are utterly captivated, here’s more evidence, Alice with Hal and Kris, Clint Baker, Sam Rocha, Bill Reinhart, Loren Schoenberg:
“Mahogany Hall,” Lulu White’s ‘Octoroon Parlour,'” photograph by E. J. Bellocq:
The Spencer Williams composition it inspired:
Into the present for a band modeled on Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars, majestically. Marc Caparone, trumpet, vocal; Charlie Halloran, trombone; Jacob Zimmerman, clarinet and alto saxophone; Dan Walton, piano; Jamey Cummins, guitar; Steve Pikal, string bass; Josh Collazo, drums.
Marc Caparone
They performed two sets at the 2022 Redwood Coast Music Festival, Eureka, California, and the wondrous seismic uproar hasn’t quieted down yet.
Power and delicacy, an eye to the details and a rollicking energy. More to come!
. . . we’ll remember all winter long. No videos yet, just some words. Oh, and a portrait.
Twerk Thomson and Jonathan Doyle.
Thursday night, two sets in a row by Dave Stuckey and the Hot House Gang, which began with Dave (vocal, guitar, ebullience) and Marc Caparone, Nate Ketner, Carl Sonny Leyland, Katie Cavera, Josh Collazo — featuring memorable Thirties classics such as GOT A BRAN’ NEW SUIT — and then adding Jonathan Doyle for a set that offered a choral vocal on WHY DON’T YOU PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH? — a song whose rendition led many in the audience to closely consider their past hypocrisies.
Friday, after brief subversive explorations of Willard Robison and others by Jacob Zimmerman at the piano, we had Marc Caparone and his Back O’Town All-Stars, the band honoring Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars even though the sign said “Back O’Day.” They were Marc, Jacob, Charlie Halloran, Dan Walton, Jamey Cummins, Steve Pikal, and Josh, with vocals by Marc and Dawn. The set started explosively with MAHOGANY HALL STOMP and ended with STEAK FACE, and Eureka, California, will never be the same. But in a nice way. Or maybe a Nice 1948 way.
Next, Joel Paterson, Jonathan Doyle, Carl Sonny Leyland, Beau Sample, and Alex Hall got dangerously groovy with compositions by Illinois Jacquet, Freddie King, Bill Jennings, and others. A Chicago club circa 1955, right in front of us.
The Back O’Town All-Stars returned, but with the cosmic gift of Duke Robillard. They began with JUMPIN’ THE BLUES and the set only paused its jumping for a tenderly lyrical PENNIES FROM HEAVEN, sung as if shiny and new, by Dawn Lambeth.
Saturday began with Hal Smith’s Mortonia Seven, with Kris Tokarski, John Gill, Sam Rocha, Dave Kosmyna, T.J. Muller (on trombone), and Dave Bennett: a set notable for energized renditions of MILENBERG JOYS and PANAMA, but also BLUE BLOOD BLUES, MAMIE’S BLUES, and a positively vivid rendition of BALLIN’ THE JACK, sung and nearly-demonstrated by Dave, who told me he was playing a Conn Victor cornet once owned and played by our mutual hero Jim Dapogny. Jim was surely there, “no doubt,” in spirit.
The temperature rose for Charlie and the Tropicales — that’s Charlie Halloran and his musical voyages through the Caribbean, featuring Jonathan Doyle, Nate Ketner, Kris Tokarski, Twerk Thomson, Josh Collazo, and Jamey Cummins. There was calypso — Lord Melody’s FIFTY CENTS, sung nimbly by Charlie, as well as a few waltzes, a “belly-rubber,” and some all-out romps.
Next, the Holland-Coots Jazz Quintet, with Brian Holland, Danny Coots, Marc Caparone, Jacob Zimmerman, and Steve Pikal, which started with Fats Waller’s MOPPIN’ AND BOPPIN’ went SOUTH for that song and PARDON MY SOUTHERN ACCENT, and ended with the Claude Hopkins’ affirmation, I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR YOU.
T.J. Muller switched to cornet for a King Oliver tribute — hotter than a forty-five! Even though he told us he had damaged his lip being over-ambitious on trombone, it was in o way audible. Young Louis was Dave Kosmyna, and the rest of the band was Hal Smith, Clint Baker, Ryan Calloway, Kris Tokarski, John Gill, Twerk Thomson, and their opening DIPPER MOUTH BLUES pushed us back in our seats with its expert hot velocity. I wasn’t around at the Lincoln Gardens in 1923, but this band made me feel that I was.
Then, Jonathan Doyle’s “four horn set,” with a front line of Jonathan, Zimmerman, Halloran, and Kosmyna, and the rhythm of Riley Baker, Tokarski, Cummins, and Collazo. I love Jonathan’s compositions — WHAT’S THE RUMPUS?, WHO’S THAT SCRITCHIN’, YOU CAN’T TAKE THOSE KISSES WITH YOU, but he also performed Moten’s HARMONY BLUES, Clarence Williams’ CUSHION FOOT STOMP, the Ellington-small-band GOOD GAL BLUES, and closed with SIX CATS AND A PRINCE. I had the leisure to admire his arrangements, the ways horns and rhythm gently slid over one another.
Sunday began with Twerk Thomson’s DORO WAT, which was streamlined and gutty at once, with Kris Tokarski, Halloran, Doyle, and Kosmyra — no set list, just a whimsical journey through BOUNCING AROUND, DREAMING THE HOURS AWAY, PONCHARTRAIN, and the whimsically-described CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME. This set — straight out of Marvel comics — also featured an exploding bass bridge (I mean the piece of wood itself) and festival angel Mark Jansen coming to the rescue in seconds with yet another string bass. And yes, I have it all on “film.”
Then, Hal Smith’s Jazzologists, a seriously NOLA band of John Gill, Katie Cavera, T.J. Muller (back on trombone), Clint Baker, Ryan Calloway, Kris Tokarski, offering MOOSE MARCH (a favorite of bassist Mike Fay), BLACK CAT ON THE FENCE, and MY LITTLE GIRL, in honor of Esther Muller, one month old.
In between, we went to the Eagle House (I became a civilian for an hour and left my camera in its nest) to hear Dave Stuckey’s Western Swing ecstasy, which finished with SMOKE, SMOKE, SMOKE — most riotously.
And (for us) the festival closed with a gentle set by Holland-Coots, with a highlight being Dawn’s sweet POLKA DOTS AND MOONBEAMS and a solidly romping IF DREAMS COME TRUE.
Were there other glorious sets we missed? Did I take notes? Did I video everything here except the Western Swing yee-haw? Hell yes. Or “That’s for darn sure.”
Will you get to see the videos? As many of them as the musicians say YES to. And should you come to next year’s Redwood Coast Music Festival?
Do you even have to ask?
October 5-8, 2023.
P.S. I apologize to any musician whose name I misspelled above (I am sure I did): my excuse is that yesterday’s travel day began before 7 AM in California and ended after 1 AM in New York.
JAZZ LIVES 