WELCOME, JESSICA KING!* (with Clint Baker’s New Orleans Jazz Band, Jazz Bash by the Bay, March 8, 2020) [*AGAIN!]

It’s presumptuous of me to welcome Jessica King — a warm-hearted swinging singer and banjo-guitarist-percussionist — to the world, since she has been making music in the Bay Area most happily for a time.  But this is the first opportunity I have to post videos of her performance, so that could count as a welcome — to JAZZ LIVES, at least.  [On Facebook, she’s Jessica King Music.]

I knew of her work for some time with Clint Baker’s All-Stars at Cafe Borrone, performances documented by Rae Ann Berry, and a few other lovely videos of Jessica with hero-friends Nick Rossi and Bill Reinhart, and Jeff Hamilton at Bird and Beckett, have appeared in the usual places. . . such as here, which is her own YouTube channel.  I am directing you there because there are — horrors! — other people with the same name on YouTube.  The impudence.

In researching this post, however, I found that my idea of “welcome” above was hilariously inaccurate, because I had posted videos of Jess singing with Clint’s band at a Wednesday Night Hop on January 8, 2014.  That’s a long time back, and I am not posting the videos here because she might think of them as juvenilia, but both she and I were in the same space and moment, which shows that a) she’s been singing well for longer than I remembered, and b) that it’s a good thing that I am wielding a video camera rather than something really dangerous, like a scissors.  I tell myself, “It was really dark there.  I apologize.”

But enough verbiage.

Jessica herself is more than gracious, and when I asked her to say where she’d come from, she wrote, “I’d say I’m inspired by blues, traditional jazz, swing, Western swing, and r&b.  Vocally, Barbara Dane has been a big influence on me. I also really love Una Mae Carlisle, Peggy Lee, Nat Cole, Bessie Smith, Anita O’Day, and of course Ella Fitzgerald. I grew up listening to a lot of Nat Cole, Patsy Cline, Aretha Franklin, and Lauren Hill. Random enough for ya? 😂 Clint Baker and Isabelle Magidson have both been so good to me as mentors and dear friends. They’re a huge part of my musical growth in this community.”

Here’s Jessica, with Clint Baker’s New Orleans Jazz Band, on March 8, 2020, at the Jazz Bash by the Bay (the four selections taken from two sets that day).  The NOJB is Clint, trumpet; Ryan Calloway, clarinet; Riley Baker, trombone; Bill Reinhart, banjo; Carl Sonny Leyland, piano; [Jeff Hamilton is on ROSETTA]; Katie Cavera, string bass; Hal Smith, drums.

ROSETTA:

SAN FRANCISCO BAY BLUES:

HESITATIN’ BLUES (or HESITATING or HESITATION, depending on which sect you belong to, Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox):

and her gentle, affectionate take on SUGAR:

She has IT — however you would define that pronoun — and the instrumentalists she works with speak of her with admiration and respect.  And when the world returns to its normal axis and rational behavior is once again possible, Jess has plans for her first CD under her own name.  I suggested that the title be THE KING OF SING, but I fear it was too immodest for her.  She makes good music: that is all I will say.

May your happiness increase!

FIVE FROM DICK OXTOT, GEORGE LEWIS, P.T. STANTON, LEILAS SHARPTON, BARBARA DANE (1956 / 1957)

This afternoon, I was doing research for a post on the eccentric and wholly rewarding trumpeter and bandleader P.T. Stanton and I stumbled across this, hidden in plain sight on YouTube: two sessions from June 1956 and March 1957, featuring New Orleans clarinetist George Lewis playing with banjoist Dick Oxtot’s Traditional Jazz Quartet — whose other members were Stanton, string bassist Leilas Sharpton, and the still ongoing singer Barbara Dane.

Stanton is more restrained on these tracks — a potent shining lead and melodic improvisations — but his individualities come through.  This seems to be the only recording for bassist Sharpton.  Is anything more known about this good player, whose name I might have misspelled?

Let this music guide you out of 2017 and into 2018 in the most hopeful uplifting ways.

SMILES:

THE GLORY OF LOVE, as Barbara explicates it gloriously for us:

and the other side of GLORY, the MECCA FLAT BLUES:

Barbara returns to offer what some might feel on Monday, January 1, 2018:

Always a good question, SHOULD I?:

In the name of holy relics and relevant paper ephemera, here is one UK issue of two of the performances:

Appropriate for the occasion, TILL WE MEET AGAIN:

Other titles were recorded at the first session, but these five performances are the only ones issued, as far as I know.  Another glimpse into the jazz treasure chest, full of surprises always.  Wishing you only the best surprises for 2018 and onwards.

May your happiness increase!

DAVE RADLAUER’S MUSICAL GENEROSITIES

The somber-looking fellow here might not be known to you, but he is the most generous of excavators, finding rare jazz treasures and making them available for free to anyone with a computer and many free hours.  His name is Dave Radlauer, and his site is called JAZZ RHYTHM.

As is often the case in this century, Dave and I have never met in person, but know each other well through our shared fascinations.  But first a word about JAZZ RHYTHM.  When you go to the site’s home page, you’ll see a left-hand column with famous names from Louis Armstrong to Lester Young, as well as many lesser-known musicians.  Click on one to hear a Radlauer radio presentation, with facts and music and anecdotage nicely stirred together.  The long list of names testify to Dave’s wide-ranging interest in swinging jazz.

But here comes the beautiful part.  Click on “Bagatelle jazz club,” for instance, and you will be taken back in time to a rare and beautiful place where delicious music was played.  Possibly you might not know Dick Oxtot, Ted Butterman, Frank Goudie, Bill Bardin, Pete Allen well, but their music is captivating — and a window into a time and place most of us would not have encountered: clubs in and around San Francisco and Berkeley, California, in the Fifties and Sixties.

Dave has been an indefatigable researcher and archivist, and has had the opportunity to delve into the tape collections of musicians Bob Mielke, Wayne Jones, Earl Scheelar, Oxtot, and others.  And the results are delightful sociology as well as musically: how else would I have learned about clubs called The Honeybucket or Burp Hollow? And there are mountains of rare photographs, newspaper clippings, even business cards.

When I visit Dave’s site, I always feel a mild pleasurable vertigo, as if I could tumble into his treasures and never emerge into daylight or the daily obligations that have to be honored (think: ablutions, laundry, bill paying, seeing other humans who know nothing of P.T. Stanton) but today I want to point JAZZ LIVES’ readers in several directions, where curiosity will be repaid with hours of life-enhancing music.

One is Dave’s rapidly-expanding tribute to cornet / piano genius Jim Goodwin — legendary as musician and singular individualist.

And this treasure box, brimful, is devoted to the musical life of Frank Chace — seen here as momentarily imprisoned by the band uniform.

On Dave’s site, you can learn more about Barbara Dane and Janis Joplin, James Dapogny and Don Ewell . . . all presented with the open-handed generosity of a man who wants everyone to hear the good sounds.

Dave has begun to issue some of these treasures on beautifully-annotated CDs, which are well worth your consideration.

I’m told that the music is also available digitally via iTunes, but here is the link to Amazon.com for those of us who treasure the physical CD, the photographs, and liner notes.

A postscript.  Until the middle Eighties, my jazz education was seriously slanted towards the East Coast.  But when the jazz scholar and sometime clarinetist John L. Fell befriended me, I began to hear wonderful musicians I’d known nothing of: Berkeley Rhythm, Goodwin, Skjelbred, Byron Berry, Vince Cattolica, and others. So if the names in this piece and on Dave’s site are new to you, be not afeared.  They made wonderful music, and Dave is busily sharing it.

May your happiness increase! 

BARBARA DANE’S HOUSE RENT PARTY (Part Two): RICHARD HADLOCK, TAMMY HALL, ANGELA WELLMAN, RUTH DAVIES, BILL MAGINNIS (Bothwell Arts Center, July 19, 2014)

Still full of fire at 87: Barbara Dane gave a joyous concert with her Golden Gate Hot Five at the Bothwell Arts Center in Livermore, California, on July 19, 2014. With Barbara are Tammy Hall, piano; Richard Hadlock, soprano saxophone; Angela Wellman, trombone; Ruth Davies, string bass; Bill Maginnis, drums.

Here’s the second part of the evening: the first part can be found here.

OH, PAPA:

WILD WOMEN DON’T HAVE THE BLUES:

JUST SQUEEZE ME (featuring Tammy Hall):

HOW CAN YOU FACE ME?:

OUT OF NOWHERE:

THROW IT AWAY / I’M ON MY WAY:

TWO SLEEPY PEOPLE:

Barbara will be honored in September 14, 2014, in Berkeley, California, at La Peña Cultural Center with an evening celebrating the release of a radio documentary chronicling her life in music and political activism, A WILD WOMAN SINGS THE BLUES.  Information about the documentary here, and you can purchase tickets for the evening celebration here.

Thank you, Barbara Dane.

May your happiness increase!

BARBARA DANE’S HOUSE RENT PARTY (Part One): RICHARD HADLOCK, TAMMY HALL, ANGELA WELLMAN, RUTH DAVIES, BILL MAGINNIS (Bothwell Arts Center, July 19, 2014)

Still full of fire at 87, Barbara Dane gave a joyous concert with her Golden Gate Hot Five at the Bothwell Arts Center in Livermore, California, on July 19, 2014. With Barbara are Tammy Hall, piano; Richard Hadlock, soprano saxophone; Angela Wellman, trombone; Ruth Davies, string bass; Bill Maginnis, drums.

BLUES / GOOD MORNING BLUES:

THE WORLD’S JAZZ CRAZY (AND SO AM I):

SUMMERTIME (featuring Richard Hadlock):

I’M SELLIN’ MY PORK CHOPS:

YONDER COMES THE BLUES:

ROSETTA:

WHAT YOU GONNA DO WHEN THERE AIN’T NO JAZZ?:

More to come — and Barbara will be honored in September and October of this year, I am told: details will emerge here. And thanks to Duane Gordon and a dozen other people for making the Bothwell Arts Center rent party a reality and for allowing me to be there to capture it for you.

May your happiness increase!

BARBARA DANE’S HOUSE RENT PARTY IS COMING (July 19, 2014)

Here’s Alex Hill’s description of a “house rent party,” circa 1934, as enacted by Louis Prima, George Brunis, Eddie Miller, Claude Thornhill, Benny Pottle, Nappy Lamare, Stan King:

The legendary singer and activist Barbara Dane — 87 this May — isn’t exactly raising money to pay her own rent, but she is starring in a musical fundraiser for the Bothwell Arts Center in Livermore, California — on Saturday night, July 19, 2014.  Barbara will be joined by her musical friends Tammy Hall, piano; Angela Wellman, trombone; Richard Hadlock, soprano sax/clarinet, as well as a string bassist and drummer.  More details here.

I can’t promise that the items listed in Alex Hill’s lyrics — corn liquor, chitlins, potato salad, pigs’ feet, spaghetti — will be on sale at the Bothwell.  In fact, I think you will probably have to have your dinner before or after the concert.  What I can promise is enthusiastic, deeply-felt, authentic music from someone who has performed with the greatest artists in all kinds of music — from Louis Armstrong to Pete Seeger, Lu Watters, Earl Hines, Bobby Hackett, Wellman Braud, Lightnin’ Hopkins and many more.

I had the good fortune to see and record Barbara and a hot band at KCSM-FM’s JAZZ ON THE HILL, and I present the results here.  As Jack Teagarden sang in SAY IT SIMPLE, “If that don’t get it, well, forget it for now.”

But don’t forget our Saturday date with Ms. Dane and friends.

May your happiness increase!

SOULFUL SURVIVOR: BARBARA DANE SINGS AT KCSM’S “JAZZ ON THE HILL” (JUNE 8, 2014)

Barbara Dane turned 87 in May, but her heart, her voice, and her energy are still very powerful.  She brought her many selves to San Mateo last Sunday for a set during Bay Area jazz radio station KCSM‘s JAZZ ON THE HILL.

Here are some of the highlights of that performance, where Barbara is supported by Clint Baker, trombone and guitar; Marc Caparone, cornet; Richard Hadlock, soprano saxophone; Tammy Hall, piano; India Cooke, violin (apologies to India for not including her in most visual shots; Dean Reilly, string bass; Bill Maginnis, drums.

If you are unfamiliar with Barbara — someone who looks deep into the darkness and comes out with beautiful music —here is a good place to begin.

But her music speaks much louder than any words.

Barbara’s own THANK YOU, KCSM!:

A new version of Ma Rainey’s YONDER COMES THE BLUES:

Memphis Minnie’s I’M SELLIN’ MY PORK CHOPS:

SUMMERTIME (featuring Richard Hadlock paying tribute to Sidney Bechet, his teacher):

UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION BLUES:

WHAT YOU GONNA DO WHEN THERE AIN’T NO JAZZ?:

As long as Barbara Dane and her friends are on the planet, the question posed by that last song is nothing we have to worry about.

Thanks to Alisa Clancy and all the heartfelt people at jazz radio KCSM for making this free event a glorious gift to the community — not only the people in their seats, but listeners all over the world. You can hear their music broadcast live right now by clicking on the link above. We are grateful they are here.

May your happiness increase!