This one’s for tap dance scholar and friend Isabelle Marquis.
Wow. And again, wow. Who were they? A YouTube commenter says that they played the Palace in New York, on a bill that included Buck [Washington] and [John W.] Bubbles. This performance, beginning with lightning-accurate tapping to IT DON’T MEAN A THING (If It Ain’t Got That Swing), is part of a 1934 Vitaphone anthology short film, VAUDEVILLE REEL # 2. Thanks to Bill Green – YouTube for posting this and other delights.
Research, anyone?
Watch and marvel.
The film, in its entirety, can be found on a six-DVD set from the Warner Brothers Collection, VITAPHONE CAVALCADE OF MUSICAL COMEDY.
I’ll just wander into the kitchen, humming all the way, to reheat my coffee. In my next life, I can tap . . .
My tests for great jazz biography are simple. Even if I know the subject well, a book should have new stories to tell. It should be factual, with sources credited, but it should be more than an annotated discography or a digest of the subject’s gig books. The writing should be clear, not overly ornate or nearly-literate. It should be free from heavy coatings of theory, not laboring under a particular ideology, and (perhaps crucially) it should be warm-hearted, written out of admiration for its subject. I have little to no patience with a book that wants to convince me that one of my heroes was a thief, morally suspect, or secretly wicked. Let others write such books; let others devour them.
That list may seem both stringent and expansive to some, but Steve Bowie’s new biography of Ellington trumpeter Cootie Williams delights on every page. I opened it at random and read something new (Eddie Condon in a 1944 Metronome blindfold test dismissing a Cootie record as bop). When I began the book at its proper place — Bowie’s story of a dream about Cootie is worth the price of the book — I was impressed by the book’s nearly aerodynamic sleekness and speed. Slighting nothing, his fast-moving narrative takes Cootie from his Alabama birth to his first work in New York City in1928 in under thirty pages. In those pages, we learn of his early musical education, his family, and his noble associates: Edmond Hall, the Willis Young family band, Fletcher Henderson, Coleman Hawkins, James P. Johnson, and Chick Webb. And there are almost three hundred pages that follow.
I should write at this point that Ellington, his music, and his orchestra have rightly inspired reverence. And there is a wide readership that wants to know everything about those three interrelated subjects. A quick glance at Amazon shows more than a dozen books on Ellingtonia, not including those out of print and several biographies for children. But Bowie wisely has chosen to be inclusive: this is a book about Cootie Williams, not about the wide world of Ellingtonia, so some readers may miss their cherished familiar anecdotes. Some readers may miss the record-by-record coverage of Cootie’s performances, but Bowie has chosen to focus on his subject rather than say how Take 1 differs from Take 2, which others have done. And the result is rewarding.
Some biographers might have begun with Cootie, only 17, joining Ellington, but Bowie rightly shows that Cootie was already polished and respected by the top leaders before joining Ellington. The eleven years that follow have been documented in the many Ellington biographies, but Bowie has done diligent homework and is seeking truth, so that when the stories conflict, he presents them with useful evidence. I should add that he relies greatly on oral histories of Cootie and other musicians: first-hand unvarnished narratives. The pace is fast, and after Cootie’s most memorable year with Benny Goodman, soon we move to the heart of the book, Cootie’s years as a bandleader. Those years are described in telling detail: wartime restrictions, racial frictions, successful gigs and enthusiastic reviews. We learn of musicians crucial to the band and its music: Charlie Holmes, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Pearl Bailey, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker. Fully one hundred pages of the book are focused on Cootie and his big band from 1941-2 to 1947.
Bowie offers a good portion of surprises: a brief Cootie-Ivie Anderson affair; Cootie’s unhappiness with Ellington not making a better financial offer than Goodman, that Cootie wanted (then ailing) Charlie Christian for his new band, and this — 1941, post-Ellington, Cootie free-lancing on a Jack Leonard record date:
Cootie’s years as the leader of a small combo, 1947-62, are covered in the same detail for fifty pages. His big band, once tremendously popular, was handicapped by second-tier recording companies and unscrupulous management (Moe Gale’s contract with Cootie entitled him to fifty percent of Cootie’s earnings). Cootie was also prey to the same socio-economic shifts that made other bandleaders either disband or change to smaller combos. In these years, Cootie and a smaller band toured with Dinah Washington and the Ink Spots; in 1953, his band was the house band at the Savoy Ballroom until it closed, five years later. An RCA Victor recording contract offered him a chance to make recordings that would be expertly produced and distributed, even if the results were aimed at the rhythm and blues audience rather than a jazz one. However, George T. Simon enabled Cootie to make a completely memorable jazz session, “Cootie and Rex in the Big Challenge,” featuring Lawrence Brown, Coleman Hawkins, Hank Jones, and other sympathetic players. Several other successful sessions followed, as did a brief European tour (13 cities in 13 days) detailed in great depth by jazz fan and critic Frank Tenot — a highlight of Bowie’s saga. But for the next three years, Cootie worked mostly as a single with local rhythm sections, often a dismaying prospect. After a descent into accompanying the naughty comedienne Belle Barth, Cootie asked to return to the Ellington band, where (aside from scuffles with trumpeters Cat Anderson and Ray Nance) he remained, happily, until Ellington’s death in 1974 and then stayed on as a cherished member of the Mercer Ellington-led orchestra, an invaluable “senior citizen.” The biography, at this point, also has the advantage of highly personal reminiscences from living Ellingtonians John Lamb, Jeff Castleman, Art Baron, and Steve Little.
We learn of Cootie’s admiration for Louis Armstrong and, later, Buck Clayton’s admiration for and attempts to emulate Cootie; about the relative order and disorder of the Goodman and Ellington orchestras; about Cootie’s lifelong marriage to Catherine (she was eighteen, he, sixteen) and the house they bought in St. Albans, New York (175-19 Linden Boulevard) in the Addisleigh Park neighborhood, open to African-Americans, where at one time Milt Hinton, Ella Fitzgerald, and John Coltrane lived. We learn of Cootie’s often-successful gambling, one wager winning him six custom-made suits; and a lawsuit brought against him by a fruit and vegetable peddler who claimed that Cootie’s loud trumpet playing scared his horse. All this and more.
Cootie deserves this biography because of his nearly fifty years of extraordinary recorded work. He isn’t well enough known, although one could make the case that in 2025 only a half-dozen musicians are known outside the small circle of jazz enthusiasts (you can name them). But Cootie, even though he led his own bands for twenty years, was so strongly identified with Ellington that he is known less as himself.
The book offers many delightful newspaper clippings and photographs, a user-friendly sessionography and list of Cootie’s compositions, pages of footnotes (Bowie is a careful researcher) and a bibliography. Also, and most endearingly, we get a sense of Cootie as a person: loyal, ready to take offense, proud, and although apparently laconic in person, he comes through powerfully in the oral histories Bowie uses well. I cannot imagine a more satisfying or thorough job.
This recording might be familiar but it should remind anyone of Cootie’s passionate greatness:
and his own G-MEN:
Please note that Bowie has also produced a four-CD set covering 93 of Cootie’s irreplaceable recordings: a lovely addition to the biography and restorative listening on its own. One place to purchase it is, of course, here. One could get through the coming winter happily with the book and the CDs. The two combined would make a rewarding holiday package.
A postscript: Stuart Zimny told me attending a New York Jazz Repertory Concert c. 1975 devoted to Ellington, where Cootie was a star. Before the concert, a Carnegie Hall soundman attempted to put a microphone in front of Cootie, and Cootie told him firmly to take it away as both unnecessary and demeaning, “I play STRONG!” And he always did.
Recently, a friend of mine had some medical distress that sent him to urgent care, then to one doctor, then to a vascular specialist. He got more anxious with each visit but was very happy when the specialist told him he had “a bounding pulse” and there was no need to come back.
When he told me this story, the reassuring phrase stuck in my head and I found myself thinking of this musical offering from the 2025 Jazz Bash by the Bay. Talk about a bounding pulse!
Just a few seconds less than an hour of joy.
“Danny Tobias and his Chosen Four”: Danny Tobias, trumpet, Eb alto horn*; Andy Schumm clarinet, alto saxophone**; Paul Asaro, piano; Dan Anderson, double bass; Hal Smith, drums.
HAPPY FEET / ALL BY MYSELF / A PORTER’S LOVE SONG TO A CHAMBERMAID / IF I COULD BE WITH YOU ONE HOUR TONIGHT* / SHIM-ME-SHA-WABBLE / SWEET LORRAINE / RIFFS (Asaro-Smith) / APEX BLUES / NO ONE ELSE BUT YOU** / WHEN IT’S SLEEPY TIME DOWN SOUTH //
Memorable, sweet and hot. But with these players, we would expect no less. Blessings, cats!
And if you are in the tri-state area and are reading this early on Friday, November 28, Danny and the Lucky Seven (an accurate band name!) will be swinging out at Winnie’s Jazz Bar on West 38th Street tonight. We aren’t in the area, so savor the sounds in our honor.
If you click on the link above, you’ll hear some glorious hot and savory music performed by youthful luminaries. You’ll also read all the explanation that anyone might need. For this post, though, let’s get right to the music performed on that Sunday afternoon by Colin Hancock, cornet, alto saxophone, vocal, sweet erudition, and Jon Thomas, piano.
MARY LEE:
CLAP HANDS, HERE COMES CHARLEY:
SLOW DOWN:
I’M RUNNIN’ AWAY FROM MY BLUES:
ORIENTAL MAN:
CAROLINA SHOUT (Jon Thomas, solo):
KING PORTER STOMP:
FALLIN’ DOWN:
Thank you, Colin, Jon, Matthew, and the receptive audience, for reminding us to SLOW DOWN and SOUND OUR HORN.
Have you visited the Hot Club of New York, either in person or online? More joy than you can imagine.
We must remember the creators, those people whose music continues to uplift us.
This session happened forty years and twenty days after Teddy Wilson and Billie Holiday entered the Brunswick studio to record I WISHED ON THE MOON, WHAT A LITTLE MOONLIGHT CAN DO, MISS BROWN TO YOU, and the marginalized A SUNBONNET BLUE. Billie could no longer be present, but her colleagues shone: Teddy Wilson, piano; Doc Cheatham, trumpet; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Bob Wilber, clarinet; Buddy Tate, tenor saxophone; George Duvivier, double bass; Bobby Rosengarden, drums.
Never mind that the piano at Nice (outdoors in the summer heat) was slightly out of tune: these things must be forgiven. But Teddy sounds happily inspired — catch his spare effective accompaniment and his striding second chorus on THEM THERE EYES, his short-story-in-four-bars introductions. Doc and Vic are especially fine (hear Vic’s commentary in the first ensemble chorus of MEAN TO ME, lamenting any meanness in the world. Teddy’s solo chorus on MY MAN is a delight, and when Wilber joins him, we might forget it is no longer 1935. Doc paints yearning cloud-portraits, Buddy is his usual passionate self, and Vic — so richly himself — improves the melody at every turn. I might be assuming too much, but I feel that Teddy’s colleagues on this set are reflecting their happiness to be playing with him.
In his later decades, Teddy occasionally turned in performances of material he knew so well that he could do it half-awake, and once in a while he seems to be offering a nicely polished piece of lapis lazuli for our inspection, but this set shows him as inspired, playful, completely engaged.
The instrumental song choices were Teddy’s (he announces MEAN TO ME): nothing oddly unfamiliar like the aforementioned SUNBONNET, but songs that everyone would know well. Thus the band frolics, and at points sweetly echoes the ambiance of JAZZ GIANTS ’56, especially in the rapport of Teddy and Vic.
Being asked to sing “Billie’s songs” in such a setting is a task for any vocalist, and the temptation to imitate her must be powerful: Ms. Klein is expert and sincere, although her evocations of 1957 Billie are sometimes jarring. She seems to have chosen to emphasize her effective mimicry Billie as a career-identification: the recording below has her singing alongside Roy Eldridge, Dexter Gordon, and Slide Hampton.
I choose to admire Teddy and the orchestra in these two performances, and I am cheered when the band returns for an instrumental NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT. If, in Vic’s playing, you hear echoes, you aren’t imagining them: he recorded the Gershwin classic on the second volume of his Vanguard SHOWCASE.
Teddy Wilson, piano; Doc Cheatham, trumpet; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Buddy Tate, tenor saxophone; Bob Wilber, clarinet; George Duvivier, double bass; Bobby Rosengarden, drums; Miriam Klein, vocal. THEM THERE EYES / MEAN TO ME / MY MAN / EAST OF THE SUN (MK) / WHAT A LITTLE MOONLIGHT CAN DO (MK) / NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT // Grande Parade du Jazz, July 22, 1975.
Another graduate seminar in aerodynamic swing for moderns, the Professors being Scott Hamilton, tenor saxophone; Dick Hyman, piano; Dan Barrett, trombone; Howard Alden, guitar; Brian Nalepka, double bass; Kevin Dorn, drums.
And you really don’t need me to point out just how wonderful all the spots on the tour are. Or, if you do, you know how to find me.
Jazz at Chautauqua was created by the late Joe Boughton, visible and audible here; he also had these sessions video-recorded for his own pleasure and for posterity. This comes to us through the kindness of Sarah Boughton Holt and Bill Boughton. Joyous and life-changing.
Fine and dandy? Yes. Sweet and lovely? Yes. I can only say OW (a cry of joy, not pain)!:
Bless these musicians — all happily with us! — and Joe Boughton, well-missed.
From left, Matthew Rivera, guiding genius of the Hot Club of New York; Sam Chess, trombone; Riley Baker, double bass; Andrew Stephens, trumpet; Devan Kortan, banjo; Jay Rattman, clarinet; Brennen Ernst, piano. Not seen: Davide Sgarra, clarinet. Photograph by Nathan Tokunaga.
Here’s what I wrote about it the next morning:
Last night at 20 West 20th Street, the home of the Hot Club of New York, was a delight. The occasion was the centennial of Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five recording for OKeh. We heard a few of the original 78s in glowing unaltered fidelity, thanks to the Wizard of Shellac (and more), Matt Rivera. And we heard more, and properly so, about “Miss Lil,” pianist, composer, and masterful intelligence behind so many creations.
But what followed after was like a trip to jazz paradise, up close and vibrant. Trumpeter-scholar Andrew Stephens led his own Hot Five through a dozen selections, all but a few from Louis’ repertoire on record 1925-28. The other members of the group were Sam Chess, trombone; Jay Rattman, clarinet and alto saxophone; Brennen Ernst, piano; Devan Kortan, banjo, Riley Baker, double bass; and guest Davide Sgarra, clarinet. In the audience, transfixed, was clarinetist Nathan Tokunaga.West 20th Street will never be the same: workmen were out surveying the seismic changes of that band and a roaring audience. They played MY HEART — first as a waltz, the way Lil wrote it — and then as a rocking stomp. Other delights were Jay Rattman’s soulful alto feature on IF WE NEVER MEET AGAIN, ORIENTAL STRUT, STRUTTIN’ WITH SOME BARBECUE, and TWO DEUCES.
Yes, there will be video. But as we say in my hood, “You shoulda been there.” Oh, I forgot: the room was sold out and there was a waiting list.Thank you, musicians; thank you, Matthew; thank you, Lil and Louis!
The band was thrilling: honoring the shapes of the original recordings and some of the solos, but this wasn’t an exercise in reverent reproduction of honored sounds, notes transcribed and then played from the paper. Nor was it a loose jam session on the themes. Rather, it felt and sounded like an exuberant dramatic exercise in imagination: how would Louis and friends have sounded if they weren’t a) forced to stand around a recording horn, and b) confined to 3:20? So the band romped. And there were other imaginative ventures that came off splendidly: Lil’s MY HEART as it was originally conceived, as a waltz; Jay Rattman’s soulful reading of the Thirties IF WE NEVER MEET AGAIN; the Louis-and-Lil classic TEARS, performed when both were members of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band.
THE FIRST SET: GUT BUCKET BLUES / YES! I’M IN THE BARREL / MY HEART (waltz) / MY HEART (stomp) / WHO’S IT / TWO DEUCES / NO ONE ELSE BUT YOU / YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU //
THE SECOND SET: ORIENTAL STRUT / IF WE NEVER MEET AGAIN (Jay, alto) / SKID-DAT-DE-DAT / DON’T FORGET TO MESS AROUND (When You’re Doing the Charleston) / TEARS / STRUTTIN’ ITH SOME BARBECUE //
Andrew has plans for another celebration in February 2026. Keep your eyes on the Hot Club of New York, and the race (for tickets) is to the swift after the HCNY got beautiful coverage in the New York Times on Halloween (here) sessions at West 20th Street have sold out, and fast. Carpe Hot, my friends.
Just a postscript from your friendly local blogger. I am very fortunate to have seen so many life-changing jazz sessions, beginning with the first one, on April 23, 1967: Louis Armstrong and his All Stars. Yes, I started at the top. But what happened on November 12, 2025, will be reverberating in my mind and heart for a long long time. Beauty, passion, exactitude, wildness, and communal joy. We cannot ask anything more from music and musicians, I am sure.
Exalted, earthy, and sophisticated improvisations, aware of a century of jazz, without cliche, pretensions, or ideological trappings.
A too-brief set led by Harry Allen, tenor saxophone, with Howard Alden, guitar; Dan Barrett, trombone; Joe Wilder, trumpet, flugelhorn; Bob Reitmeier, clarinet; Phil Flanigan, double bass; John Von Ohlen, drums. (Living in New York, I have the good fortune to see and hear Harry with Danny Tobias’ Lucky 7: he is a model of inspired consistency!)
This set offers a marvelously refreshing choice of repertoire: a 1934 Sigmund Romberg song associated with “traditional jazz,” deep bows to Oscar Pettiford, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Frank Sinatra. How spacious!
Jazz at Chautauqua was created by the late Joe Boughton, visible and audible here; he also had these sessions video-recorded for his own pleasure and for posterity. This comes to us through the kindness of Sarah Boughton Holt and Bill Boughton.
When I grow too old to dream, I’ll remember these life-enhancing sessions that Joe made possible.
Three-quarters of an hour of delight, from a time and place (a mere half-century ago) where hot jazz and dinners with friends and family were allied in the nicest ways. I’ve written about the intersections of this music with suburban dining-out in New York and New Jersey here.
If it still offered music, I would lead a party to the Watchung View Inn. The ancient records dispute whether it was in Somerville or Pluckemin, but we will not linger over that dispute.
and
More to the point is the music played, and, yes, informally recorded there. This set, around 45 minutes long, is a marvel.
Eddie Hubble, a phenomenal trombonist who first recorded in 1945, never had his own record date and may have been content to be a sideman. But his combination of technical prowess, taste, and warmth makes him more than remarkable. Here he is accompanied by then-young spitfire Warren Vache, cornet; the inspiring yet understated Jimmy Andrews, piano; the reliable Jackie Williams, drums, and the two who were international stars in 1975, Marty Grosz, guitar, vocal; Major Holley, double bass.
On paper, the repertoire verges on the hackneyed: INDIANA / a slow AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ / BLUES MY NAUGHTY SWEETIE GIVES TO ME / A HUNDRED YEARS FROM TODAY / SWING THAT MUSIC, but the lively affectionate expert playing, solo and inventive ensemble, makes for something unforgettable. At least I cannot forget it.
At points the rhythm trio of Andrews, Grosz, and Holley makes us feel as if the Basie rhythm section of 1939 has paid a surprise visit. Marty’s singing on A HUNDRED YEARS FROM TODAY is proof, if we needed it, that under his acerbic stage persona there beats a passionate romantic heart. He is a compelling balladeer, even if he is never heralded as one. Eddie and Warren remind me of super-Teagarden and super-Hackett, and they toss phrases back and forth like two slapstick leads in a Twenties comedy film faced with a live grenade:
and older:
Here’s the music. The tape is unbalanced at the start but gets itself together before long.
Marvels, and marvelous, especially since there is so little of Eddie Hubble out in the open, relaxed and bravura, with an athletic but never exhibitionistic approach and a glorious tone. I don’t know his story, but he should have been in the pantheon, someone making records as a leader, for decades. This makes up for it in some small way.
“WOMAN DELIGHTED BY ABILITIES OF MATURE GENTLEMAN” would be another way to put it.
The indefatigable Colin Hancock has just shared one of my favorite rare records: Maude Mills, Florence’s sister, singing an irresistible Mike Jackson song with frisky accompaniment by young Fats Waller:
As I hope you know, Colin is an astonishingly versatile musician and bandleader (and recording supervisor); his YouTube channel, Desdemona202 – YouTube, presents one splendidly rare record after another, given generously, with the best sound possible and ample documentation. Entrancing.
Energetic scholars who like this performance will want to know that the Mills-Waller collaboration produced six sides: two versions of MY OLD DADDY; two of ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS JUST PLEASES ME (another delight); two of I’VE GOT THE JOOGIE [or JOOBIE] BLUES. All of that music was issued in 2007 on a four CD-box set which covered Fats’ recordings chronologically: JSP CD 927. Worth searching out.
Here is a longer tribute, by a larger group of musicians, performed at the 1977 Nice Jazz Festival, twice. It is in color; the French television network had many cameras and camera operators. It is nearly one hundred minutes long, with many solos and vibrant ensemble playing — and almost no talking (!). There are a few alternate versions of early songs.
The program moves from New Orleans funeral music to HELLO, DOLLY! And we cannot ignore that since this program was presented at the Nice Jazz Festival (under the brilliant leadership of Dick Hyman) other musicians appearing that week could join in: chief among them Earl Hines, revisiting his 1928 partnership with Mister Strong.
I think this is monumental, and hope you agree.
This presentation is a melding of three or four French television programs broadcasting concerts performed at the Nice Jazz Festival on July 8 and July 13, 1977. Songs, soloists, and dates are offered in the subtitles. The collective personnel is Dick Hyman, piano, leader, arranger; Bob Wilber, Kenny Davern, Eddie Barefield, Budd Johnson, Kathy Stobart, Billy Mitchell, reeds; Joe Newman, Pee Wee Erwin, Jimmie Maxwell, Dick Vance, Doc Cheatham, trumpet; Kai Winding, Vic Dickenson, trombone; Earl Hines*, piano; Bucky Pizzarelli, guitar; Milt Hinton, George Duvivier, double bass; Bobby Rosengarden, drums; Carrie Smith, vocal.
FLEE AS A BIRD – OH, DIDN’T HE RAMBLE / CHIMES BLUES / CHIMES BLUES 2 / CAKE WALKIN’ BABIES / CAKE WALKIN’ BABIES 2 / POTATO HEAD BLUES / POTATO HEAD BLUES 2 / ST. LOUIS BLUES / YOU’VE BEEN A GOOD OLD WAGON / WILLIE THE WEEPER / CORNET CHOP SUEY / WEATHER BIRD / WEST END BLUES* / MY MONDAY DATE* / S.O.L. BLUES / SWEETHEARTS ON PARADE / STRUTTIN’ WITH SOME BARBECUE / WRAP YOUR TROUBLES IN DREAMS / MAHOGANY HALL STOMP / I’M A DING DONG DADDY / BASIN STREET BLUES / HELLO, DOLLY! / MACK THE KNIFE / SLEEPY TIME DOWN SOUTH //
Brothers and Sisters, receive the blessings of Louis through his friends and disciples.
All she did was suggest that the lighting might be too bright, borrowing words and music from Ray Charles, and look what happened! NASA, NORAD, and The Weather Channel recorded the phenomenon, even though it only lasted about six minutes.
I was there, and I am glad she uses her powers for good.
Alice performed this song at the end of the Redwood Coast Music Festival, and her fellow house-rockers are Duke Robillard, guitar; Marc Caparone, trumpet; Riley Baker, trombone; Jacob Zimmerman, alto saxophone and clarinet; Jake Sanders, guitar; Chris Dawson, keyboard; Sam Rocha, double bass; Josh Collazo, drums.
I think that by now Eureka, California has returned to level.
See for yourself. Be sure your chair is on stable ground. Practice safe rocking, please:
Damn, as we say. Don’t be embarrassed to watch it again, with the volume raised.
Alice and friends will be at the 2026 Redwood Coast Music Festival. Make plans.
Jazz enthusiasts like to celebrate anniversaries, but this one has weight: on November 12, 1925, Louis Armstrong went into the OKeh studios in Chicago to record his first session as a leader. So let us all say AMEN.
The jazz community understood in some deep way that when Louis Armstrong left Corona, New York, for the ethereal realm, that mourning was in order but celebration even more so. More than fervent renditions of HELLO, DOLLY!, or MACK THE KNIFE, or WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD. One such celebration took place thanks to The New York Jazz Repertory Company, another one of George Wein’s fine ideas, which began giving concerts in 1974.
There were tributes to Lunceford, Ellington, McShann, Monk, Bix, and of course Louis — his scope requiring two evenings. I saw several of these concerts and they were heartfelt and energized, because so many of the originals were alive and well, and the supporting cast was made up of the best New York musicians. Cootie Williams was part of an Ellington tribute; Joe Venuti, Paul Mertz, and Chauncey Morehouse graced a Bix evening; Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Hines, and Jay McShann gave a tribute to Charlie Parker deep authenticity. There was a good deal of transcription — a big band playing note-for-note reproductions of, say, BLACK AND TAN FANTASY — but they seemed fresh and compelling, and there was room for on-the-spot improvising.
In Carnegie Hall, to pay tribute to Louis, Wein could call upon Bobby Hackett, Ray Nance, Vic Dickenson, Taft Jordan, Ruby Braff, Doc Cheatham, and other colleagues and admirers.
The Louis program was so successful, especially with his solos scored for three trumpets with electrifying results, that it became a touring package under the deeply swinging and perceptive leadership of Dick Hyman. What began at Carnegie Hall (and I attended both 1974 concerts, with concealed cassette recorder) went worldwide. I have posted videos of the NYJRC at the Nice Jazz Festival, but what follows, although in black-and-white, is a true surprise. Ladies and gentlemen, Louis evoked in Poland.
The New York Jazz Repertory Company in Poland, a975, arranged and conducted by Dick Hyman, piano, Pee Wee Erwin, Jimmie Maxwell, Joe Newman, trumpet, vocal; Kenny Davern, soprano saxophone, clarinet; Eddie Hubble, trombone; George Duvivier, double bass; Marty Grosz, guitar / banjo; Bobby Rosengarden, drums; Blanche Thomas, vocal. WEST END BLUES / CREOLE BELLES / FLEE AS A BIRD – OH, DIDN’T HE RAMBLE? / CHIMES BLUES / CAKE WALKIN’ BABIES FROM HOME / POTATO HEAD BLUES / ST. LOUIS BLUES (Thomas) / YOU’VE BEEN A GOOD OLD WAGON (Thomas) / WILD MAN BLUES (Davern) / WILLIE THE WEEPER / MONDAY DATE (Hyman) / WEATHER BIRD / S.O.L. BLUES /DING DONG DADDY (NC):
Louis Armstrong is in our hearts. And his friends sound so happy when evoking him.
This just in: another marvel from 1948, too good to ignore —
I had so many possible titles for this, but I settled on RHYTHM GANG because Marty’s friend, the irreplaceable Frank Chace, wrote me that Marty was “a one-man rhythm gang.” So true.
This marvelous get-together took place at the 1994 Conneaut Lake Jazz Festival, the creation of jazz enthusiast and producer Joe Boughton. I think that Marty, whom Joe respected fervently, was given a free hand for perhaps an hour to gather the people he most wanted to play with and vice versa (also the people who might not have just played the previous hour) to have a riotous subtle good time. A one-man rhythm gang got to play with a whole stage full of like-minded splendid artists.
We are blessed that it happened and that Joe wanted it to be more than a delicious memory, thus having it recorded in the best 1994 technology. Video and audio (more about that at the end.) We don’t have the whole hour, which I am sure began with a rouser, then something groovy, before Bobby Gordon’s wistful feature, but those of us who revere Marty can imagine the possibilities. And more Marty from Conneaut Lake and Jazz at Chautauqua will appear on JAZZ LIVES in due time.
Bill Boughton and Sarah Boughton Holt generously have made it possible for me to share this with you. And bless the unnamed recordist: the image is not perfectly sharp, but he or she was paying attention, and the close-ups are priceless.
Marty Grosz, guitar, vocal, arrangements, banter; Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Paul Bacon, comb, vocal; Bob Havens, trombone; John Otto, alto saxophone; Randy Reinhart, trombone; John Sheridan, piano; Bill Crow, double bass; Wayne Jones, drums. (Don’t miss Wayne’s chorus on ‘WAY DOWN YONDER: a percussion seminar for those who wish to learn the arts.)
WHEN DAY IS DONE [incomplete] / WAY DOWN YONDER IN NEW ORLEANS / LINGER AWHILE / THERE’LL BE SOME CHANGES MADE:
I have replayed this performance countless times since I first was given access. It is swinging joy, and I hope it uplifts you as it does me.
For those of you feeling deprived because Bobby’s WHEN DAY IS DONE is incomplete on the video, I offer an excellent audio recording of this wistful interlude:
Amazing that it unfolded as it did; miraculous that it was preserved for us.
It was never documented in any of the biographies. Alas, no photographs exist. Even Albert Haim hasn’t explored this interlude.
But for a short time in 1929, Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trumbauer toured Hawaii.
They had ten days off from their work in California with Paul Whiteman. Frank had his pilot’s license and rented a small plane. For seven days and nights, they ate local food, drank good liquor (Hawaii wasn’t yet a state, so Prohibition had not done its work) and jammed with the jazz luminaries. The trip is mentioned in a sentence in Frank’s diaries, but even more tellingly, we hear its effects in the work of Sol Hoopii and Andy Iona.
Guitarist Mikiya Matsuda learned of this trip from friends of his great-aunt, but asked me to reveal no other details. But that knowledge was the seed for an evocative tribute to the music of 1929-30, inspired by Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trumbauer, created by Andy Iona and Sol Hoopli and others.
I was privileged to see and record this one-hour tribute, which took place at the Redwood Coast Music Festival in Eureka, California, on Sunday, October 5, 2025.
The small but lyrically expansive orchestra on the stage of the Sequoia Center was Mikiya Matsuda and the Alcatraz Islanders: Mikiya Matsuda, leader, guitar, lap steel guitar; Andy Schumm, cornet; Colin Hancock, alto saxophone; Jacob Zimmerman, clarinet; T.J. Muller, guitar; Jonathan Doyle, bass saxophone.
Their song choices, some of them clear homages to Bix and Tram, others honoring Hawaiian hot jazz of the time, others memorable standards of the period, were SINGIN’ THE BLUES / HANA HANA HAWAII / HULA BLUES / I SURRENDER, DEAR / HULA GIRL / MORE THAN YOU KNOW (a chamber quartet of Mikiya, Jacob, T.J., and Jonathan) / REACHING FOR SOMEONE (And Not Finding Anyone There) / KEIKO / THE MOON OF MANAKOORA / I’LL BE A FRIEND (With Pleasure). The results are both emotionally deep and historically fascinating.
Mikiya and friends will be appearing at the 2026 Redwood Coast Music Festival (October 1-4) and I can’t wait to hear what delights they will have for us.
When I was younger, I valued Thought. Reasons, evidence, problem-solving. In the last twenty years, I have tipped the scales and I am inhabited by Emotion much more. Thus, music that is endearing and perceptive hits me hard, and I want to immerse myself in it.
I am in love with “Great Big Heart,” written and sung by the estimable vocalist and violinist Heather Stewart, whose work I have just praised here — on Leigh Barker’s wonderful new CD, CROSS STREET.
What wonderful singing, passionate and controlled, with a touch of folk-rawness and a singularly refreshing phrasing. And the song itself: hummable, with lyrics that neatly walk the tightrope between snarky and sentimental.
Because I love this performance, here are Heather and friends performing SAY IT ISN’T SO:
and with the Blue Mockingbirds, DINAH — such splendid animated grace and precision!
Heather can also be heard with The Dirty Ragtimers, a group I’ve written about here.
I met Heather and Leigh in person just once, at Casa Mezcal on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, when they featured divine music amidst oblivious chatter. Maybe that was 2015. I hope that our paths cross someday in Paris.
And speaking of internationalism, I would not have known any of these people without the divine intervention of Bob Barnard and John Scurry, two heroes who have visited New York on occasion. Bob is no longer with us, but I have only to take a minute to hear his glowing sounds. John, happily, is, and I have only to turn my head to see his artwork: I am so fortunate in my friends.
Heather creates warm humane music that tells deep stories, and she demands the spotlight for the song, not for herself. A great big heart made audible and tangible.
Postscript: Heather is an integral part of a new CD with tenor saxophonist Nicolas Montier, “3 for Swing,” which won the Prix du Hot club de France 2025. I haven’t gotten a copy yet because of baroque restrictions on parcels to New York, but I look forward to it. As should you.
I couldn’t leave this post without offering this, a true love-bouquet with every flower in blossom:
The occasion is the issuing of Leigh Barker’s CD, CROSS STREET. Don’t let his serious face put you off. The music romps and gambols, as you already have heard.
You can hear more here, and even purchase the music should you be so inclined, as I am, but let me put a few details in place. Perhaps you can read while you listen.
Leigh’s brief introduction:
2025 already!
At the end of 2022, we finished a wildly successful tour of eastern and southern Australia. It was a real homecoming and the biggest treat in the world to share the stage again with Eamon, Matt, Sam, Don, John, Jason and of course Heather was there from Paris too, delighting everyone and coalescing the group like only she can.
We managed to organise two full days in the studio and made the most of some very special guests Alf Jackson, Grant Arthur, and Brennan Hamilton-Smith. The repertoire is a collection of music developed each night during the tour in ensembles ranging from three musicians to the mighty eight-piece ensemble.
All of the tracks were recorded live and in one single take with zero overdubs or editing, with Heather singing live in the same room. Since the very beginning it has always been the goal, mission, dream, concept, vision (whatever you want to call it) to try and cover the widest territory of Jazz that we love whilst avoiding any feeling of pastiche.
Leigh Barker Seine et Marne Sud, France March 2025
The songs are I WANT SOMEBODY TO LOVE / VIPER’S DREAM / BLACK AND TAN FANTASY / GREAT BIG HEART / ROOT HOG, OR DIE / COUNTING BASIE / TOMMY’S BEBOP / VARIATIONS ON A BENNY GOODMAN / DEEP NIGHT / BRAVE MAN BLUES / JASON’S SWANAGE SIESTA / SHIM-ME-SHA-WABBLE / POOR BUTTERFLY //
and the musicians:
TRACKS 1-3, 6, 12
BAND 1 / DAY 1 Leigh Barker – bass Heather Stewart – voice and violin Eamon McNelis – trumpet Matt Boden – piano John Scurry – guitar and banjo Sam Young – drums Jason Downes – clarinet and alto sax Grant Arthur – trombone
TRACKS 5, 10, 13*
BAND 2 / DAY 2 Alfred Jackson – drums Brennan Hamilton-Smith – clarinet and alto sax Donald Stewart – trombone *No Donald **Add Phil Noy – tenor saxophone (CD ONLY!)
TRACKS 4,7-9
QUARTET Alf drums, Leigh Heather and Matt TRIO Alf drums, Leigh and Matt
It is possible that for some insular jazz enthusiasts, these names are, shall we say, foreign. A pity indeed. If you’ll permit me, I would like to apply an aural topical antibiotic to that insularity. It will clear it right up.
If that isn’t the most compelling two minutes and thirty-seven seconds of jazz recorded in this century, I don’t know what might be.
A few lines from me. There are many bands at this moment attempting with varying degrees of success to visit the past — the hundred-plus years of recorded jazz and written songs — and to bring it back alive. I wish them all well, or, perhaps, most of them. Some might profitably go back to what musicians raised away from big cities used to call “the woodshed,” and not to gather kindling.
What distinguishes the music you hear here, and on related discs by Leigh, Heather, Jason, John, and others, is a wondrous mixture of humility and cheerful invention.
Humility, to me, means meeting BLACK AND TAN FANTASY or I WANT SOMEBODY TO LOVE on their own terms, both with reverence for the sounds and the idiom from which the sounds emerge, but also tempering that reverence with personal elasticities . . . that is, none of the musicians cherished on this and other discs would be happy to hear their recorded solos imitated as sacred text. (I know that many musicians live and die for this spiritual exercise, and I salute them, but I don’t think the original creators would regard an evening of imitation as more than acrobatics on the highest level.)
The innovators of the past wanted the generations that followed them to be just as brave, just as willful (if you will) in what Lester Young called “going for yourself.” I don’t think that my idea of “cheerful invention” needs explication: not only improvised solos and energized ensemble playing, but original compositions and arrangements that scrupulously avoid “any feeling of pastiche.”
The music, from first to last, is engaging, warm, funny, and surprising. Leigh knows how to gather splendid soloists and let them be themselves, and the more I hear Heather Stewart sing, the more I want to hear her sing more. And I had the same reaction to CROSS STREET: one hearing was not enough, so I dove in again, with even more delight.
CROSS STREET is a great accomplishment, full of thought and elation. Eminently worth hearing. Thank you, Leigh, and these deeply fluent, extravagantly talented artists.
I am deeply in favor of inspired monogamy. I enjoy it and I enjoy witnessing it in action.
One of the nicest examples I’ve seen at close range is the marriage of Laurene and Duke Robillard. When we were standing behind them on the TSA line a month ago, the warm gleam was nearly blinding. I didn’t snap a photo at the time, but this recent one will stand as evidence.
Even though Laurene is standing in back of Duke here, their relationship is one of adoring equals.
They celebrated their twenty-second wedding anniversary last month, and I offer a cyber-present. Duke’s endearing rendition of EXACTLY LIKE YOU, his heart in every note, his eyes fixed on her, is a gift to Laurene, and a gift to us. A groove like this is better than any set of china.
This love-bouquet happened at the penultimate offering of this year’s Redwood Coast Music Festival, at the end of a propulsive set called DUKE ROBILLARD AND THE LADIES OF SONG. The LADIES were Alice Spencer, Dawn Lambeth, and Valerie Kirchhoff. The splendid band had Duke, guitar and vocal; Marc Caparone, cornet; Chris Dawson, keyboard; Jake Sanders, guitar; Jacob Zimmerman, clarinet and alto saxophone; Riley Baker, trombone; Sam Rocha, double bass; Josh Collazo, drums:
Not incidentally, let’s cheer for Dorothy Fields’ sly sweet lyrics. When I hear an instrumental version of EXACTLY LIKE YOU, her words unfold and charm in my head. Always.
Congratulations, Duke and Laurene. Keep beaming at each other and inspiring us. Exactly!
And it’s not too early to think about next October’s celebrations . . .
Assembling several musicians who play the same instrument onstage often turns into a competitive display. The musicians may not feel the need to dominate one another, but the audience finds the appearance of schoolyard-skirmish exciting: the WWF in jazz.
This presentation, Sunday brunch at Jazz at Chautauqua, September 19, 1999, is animated by a genuine camaraderie, apparent throughout: as it should be, for these musicians were and are certified adults. From left, the tenor saxophonists are Ken Peplowski, Bob Reitmeier, and Scott Hamilton; the animated rhythm team is Dick Hyman, piano; Brian Nalepka, double bass; John Von Ohlen, drums.
This music exists because of the musicians, of course, but the occasion was created and the performance was preserved because of the jazz enthusiast and producer Joe Boughton. It is shared here through the kindness of Sarah Boughton Holt and Bill Boughton.
The songs are familiar but uplifted by soulful improvisation and unflagging swing. TOPSY / BODY AND SOUL / YOU’D BE SO NICE TO COME HOME TO:
If you live in the New York area, you have a delightful chance to come home to a good part of this music. Tomorrow, Tuesday, November 4, guitarist Greg Ruggiero, someone whose playing is devoid of cliche and instead full of small surprises, will be leading a quartet at Cafe Ornithology in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with sets at 7:30 and 9:30. The other players? No less than Mr. Peplowski, above; Daniel LaCour Duke, double bass; Steve Little, drums. Cafe Ornithology is a pleasure for its good acoustics, genial staff, and fine vegan food. It’s at 1037 Broadway, at the corner of Suydam Street. I certainly approve of this message.
When we “change the clocks” at the end of Daylight Savings Time, I always think of my mother, wrapping her sweater more tightly around herself, saying unhappily, “It’s so dark so early these days,” drawing out both words sadly.
Here, in the name of emotional authenticity, are my parents, happy: probably Thanksgiving fifty years ago.
They would shake their heads in affectionate puzzlement about what follows, but I hope they feel the love I have for them. They didn’t particularly understand their son’s obsession with Louis Armstrong, but I am fairly certain they were relieved that my obsession was only that rather than other alternatives.
But I would tell my mother, “Ma, it is certainly dark and cold and awful and depressing now. But we have an extra hour to listen to Louis and the All-Stars (that’s Earl Hines, Sidney Catlett, Jack Teagarden, Barney Bigard, Arvell Shaw, and Velma Middleton) in beautiful high fidelity — music we have never heard before. Do you want me to get you a warmer sweater?”
Thus.
In a battle between Seasonal Affective Disorder and Louis Armstrong, it is no contest. When the music starts, rooms all around the world get brighter and warmer.
And thank you, Mom and Dad, for putting up with me so lovingly.
And the Hot Club comes alive with the best sounds, bringing joy to a community of people in person and in cyberspace. Matthew is also a long-time WKCR-FM broadcaster, filmmaker, and scholar digging deep into the mystical intersections of music and culture, race and creativity. His essay on trumpeter-composer Frankie Newton is an inspiring piece of research-into-lively prose, fascinating even if you have never heard or heard of Newton. But I digress.
Right now I am celebrating a piece in The New York Times about the Hot Club of New York: worth reading. And when you’re through reading it, I hope you’ll investigate the Hot Club for yourselves.
A Sacred Space Where 90-Year-Old Jazz Records Reign At the Hot Club of New York, patrons revisit the music’s past by spinning shellac 78 RPM discs of recordings made in the 1910s to ’50s.
By Ken Micallef Oct. 29, 2025 At the Hot Club of New York, time bends to the rhythm of the past.
Jazz from the 1910s through the ’50s crackles to life, spun on 78 RPM discs made of shellac. Once you enter through the Manhattan nightspot’s thick red velvet curtains and nab a seat, music flows through a restored vintage hi-fi system: a Japanese Technics SL-1510 turntable from the 1980s, a 1960 McIntosh C20 preamplifier, a 1950s RCA vacuum-tubed amplifier and a single, towering 1940s RCA LC-1 loudspeaker.
It’s mono, not stereo, and the bandwidth is limited. But since 78s were recorded live without postproduction edits, every note carries the immediacy of a live performance.
On a recent Monday night, Matthew Rivera held court at his intimate 30-seat listening room and venue, nestled between housewares shops and nondescript office buildings in the Flatiron district. Rivera, a D.J. at Columbia University’s WKCR and a protégé of the Juilliard professor and jazz oracle Phil Schaap, is the sole curator at the Hot Club of New York, where shelves sag under thousands of 78s, books and magazines. He delivered a brief lecture on Fletcher Henderson, the groundbreaking pianist, bandleader and arranger whose innovations defined the big band era. Then he reached for the records.
The original “King Porter Stomp” from 1933 burst from the speaker with juicy, crisscrossing brass and reed melodies and careening drum rhythms. “The Stampede,” from 1926, featuring a young Coleman Hawkins on tenor saxophone, was jubilant, dense, heated. Lester Young, also on tenor, traded ideas with a young Billie Holiday on a recording of “I’m Fooling Myself” from 1937.
“Seventy-eights have this volume and this intensity and energy that you can really feel,” Rivera, 29, said later. “They’re not high fidelity for the most part, though the end of the era of 78s crosses into the hi-fi era, but the impact and the dynamics and the presence of 78s is really transfixing to me.”
There’s been a boom in high-end, intimate listening spaces in New York since the pandemic, largely inspired by Japan’s postwar jazz kissa — intimate vinyl listening bars where the music commands silence and full attention. While many are bars and restaurants, the Hot Club is distinguished by two things: it’s a nonprofit and only plays shellac 78s.
The 78 RPM disc was the primary medium for music distribution during the first half of the 20th century, replacing cylinder recordings. Although the Long Player (LP) and 45 RPM disc were popularized in the early 1950s, 78s were produced concurrently — and originally were created from beetle secretions. They remained a way to purchase recorded music in the United States until the close of the ’50s. Internationally, production continued into the 1960s. You can even find 78 RPM discs of the Beatles.
The Hot Club, which is owned by Rivera and the family of Melissa Jones — a jazz scholar who died in 2021 and specialized in research on Hot Clubs from the early 1930s into the Swing Era — holds about 10,000 discs, gleaned from a 20,000-disc donation and other major gifts. Locked away in a cabinet, Rivera keeps his especially rare and valuable 78s, which include “Me and the Devil Blues” by Robert Johnson; “Squabblin’” by Walter Page and His Blue Devils and “Stockyard Strut” by Freddie Keppard and His Jazz Cardinals.
“I feel like I don’t really own these, and I need to live up to the responsibility that people have put and entrusted in me,” Rivera said of the collection. “There’s a reason that they gave these 78s to me, because of what I’m doing and trying to share them with other people.”
The Hot Club holds about 10,000 discs, gleaned from a 20,000-disc donation and other major gifts. Previously located at 15 Barrow Street, the former home of the jazz mecca Café Bohemia, the Hot Club’s current scarlet-walled sanctuary offers cozy seating and dim lighting that evoke the clandestine allure of a 1920s speakeasy or a Jazz Age New Orleans bordello. The name was inspired by the Hot Club de France, where the guitarist Django Reinhardt and the violinist Stéphane Grappelli enthralled audiences in the 1940s. Rivera said there were American Hot Clubs “dating back to the 1930s.”
“Melissa started the Neo Hot Club movement out of her house in Morristown, N.J., where Phil, myself and other students would go.” Rivera explained. (Schaap, a jazz D.J. and historian, died in 2021.) “Those were the first Hot Club meetings of this generation, starting in 2015.”
The member-supported New York Hot Club includes such patrons as the American jazz vocalist Catherine Russell and the sax player Vince Giordano, who leads the Nighthawks, the house band at the Birdland jazz club.
Every Monday, devoted members and nonmembers gather to experience the raw spirit of early-20th-century jazz and blues via rare recordings, many of which have never been digitized. Presenters spin 78s focused on the exuberant bebop of Charlie Parker, swing’s driving rhythm, impassioned blues, the sophistication of Duke Ellington or the fiery energy of “territory bands” — jazz/dance orchestras of regional, not national, repute. Through the vintage sound system, these old records surge with sonics so rich, present and propulsive that the listening experience feels like a revelation.
Later, members step up to play their own 78s. Free red beans and rice adds a homey touch. There’s a $25 entrance fee, and beers cost five dollars each.
Every Monday, devoted members and nonmembers gather to experience the raw spirit of early-20th-century jazz and blues via rare recordings, many of which have never been digitized.
The crowd that gathers in this intimate space is small and local, but live Zoom broadcasts draw a wide audience. There are also occasional live performances. As the Hot Club’s reputation grows, snagging a seat has become a game of luck and persistence.
“I like thinking that someone was listening to the same record a hundred years ago, perhaps dancing around their apartment as I often am when I listen to a 78,” said Quinn MacRorie, a 39-year-old member. “I think 78s have value as a cultural object as well. It’s kind of magical and amazing that the very beginning of recorded music is still so accessible to us.”
The club offers “Jazz 101,” a series of courses on the history of the music, and a three-hour class about 78 RPM discs. It also has an archive of thousands of hours of downloadable essential jazz recordings dating from 1913 to 1950, transferred from 78s. For piano players, the Hot Club has a restored 1876 Steinway.
Rivera said the most frequent comments he hears about the club are, “‘This is like going into a complete, immersive experience.’”
“I wanted that to be the case,” he said, “but I’m so happy that that is the experience people are having.”
All you need to know can be found at https://hotclubny.org/ — including rare music by Johnny Keats and his Grecian Urn Boys on Gennett. Seriously, even if you don’t collect records, if you are not a jazz aficionado, the Monday meetings of the Hot Club are informative without being academic, warm, funny, and uplifting. Matthew has also begun monthly live-music gatherings, which he calls “Sittin’ In,” and I’ve been to two: they are rousing fun. Another one is coming down the pike on Wednesday, November 12: check out the Hot Club site or the HCNY postings on social media in a day or two.
And since a post about jazz 78s would be scrawny without music, here’s a sample (it doesn’t sound as good as it does on West 20th Street, but it can be an appetizer to the banquet):
JAZZ LIVES 