Perhaps because I am both nearsighted and fallible, “I MAY BE WRONG (But I think You’re Wonderful)” is a favorite song of mine — written by Henry Sullivan (music) and Harry Riskin (lyrics) no matter what the cover states. The lyrics only make sense if one realizes that the singer is seriously myopic. Here’s the verse:
A delightful November 929 recording (the song was a duet in the original presentation) thanks to the splendidly musical Peter Mintun:
and here is my favorite instrumental version, with decades of playing this track on the “Swingville All-Stars” session on the Prestige-Swingville label. (Coleman Hawkins, Joe Newman, J.C. Higginbotham, Jimmy Hamilton, and Claude Hopkins were on another session, which is why Hawk is credited here.)
The band is a gathering of gentle idiosyncratic deities, each singing his own song: Joe Thomas, trumpet; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Pee Wee Russell, clarinet; Al Sears, Buddy Tate, tenor saxophone; Cliff Jackson, piano; Danny Barker, guitar; Joe Benjamin, string bass; J.C. Heard. drums. New York, May 19, 1961:
I think these performances are wonderful, and in this I don’t think I’m wrong.
My gratitude to Peter Mintun and to Michael Burgevin, who introduced me to Joe Thomas.
I think WHO’S SORRY NOW? (note the absence of the question mark on the original sheet music above) is a classic Vengeance Song (think of GOODY GOODY and I WANNA BE AROUND as other examples): “You had your way / Now you must pay” is clear enough. Instrumentally, it simply swings along. It seems, to my untutored ears, to be a song nakedly based on the arpeggiations of the harmonies beneath, but I may be misinformed. It’s also one of the most durable songs — used in the films THREE LITTLE WORDS and the Marx Brothers’ A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA — before being made a tremendous hit some twenty-five years after its original issue by Connie Francis. Someone said that she was reluctant to record it, that her father urged her to do it, and it was her greatest hit.)
Jazz musicians loved it as well: Red Nichols, the Rhythmakers, Frank Newton, Bob Crosby, Lee Wiley, Sidney DeParis, Wild Bill Davison, Harry James, Benny Goodman, Benny Carter, Eddie Heywood, Woody Herman, Buck Clayton, Sidney Bechet, Paul Barbarin, George Lewis, Big Bill Broonzy, Archie Semple, Charlie Barnet, Raymond Burke, Rosy McHargue, Oscar Aleman, the Six-and-Seventh-Eighths String Band, Kid Ory, Teddy Wilson, Earl Hines, Miff Mole, Hank D’Amico, Teddi King, Kid Thomas, Bob Scobey, Franz Jackson, Chris Barber, Matty Matlock, Bob Havens, Ella Fitzgerald, Armand Hug, Cliff Jackson, Ken Colyer, Jimmy Witherspoon, Jonah Jones, Capt. John Handy, Jimmy Rushing, Tony Parenti, Claude Hopkins, Jimmy Shirley, Bud Freeman, Ab Most, Benny Waters, Peanuts Hucko, Billy Butterfield, Kenny Davern, Humphrey Lyttelton, Bill Dillard, New Orleans Rascals, Barbara Lea, Allan Vache, Paris Washboard, Bob Wilber, Lionel Ferbos, Rosemary Clooney, Rossano Sportiello, Paolo Alderighi, Vince Giordano, Michael Gamble . . . (I know. I looked in Tom Lord’s online discography and got carried away.)
Almost a hundred years after its publication, the song still has an enduring freshness, especially when it’s approached by jazz musicians who want to swing it. Here’s wonderful evidence from Cafe Bohemia (have you been?) at 15 Barrow Street, Greenwich Village, New York, one flight down — on November 22, 2019: Ricky Alexander, tenor saxophone; Chris Gelb, drums; Daniel Duke, string bass; Adam Moezinia, guitar, and special guest Dan Block, tenor saxophone:
That was the penultimate song of the evening: if you haven’t heard / watched the closing STARDUST, you might want to set aside a brief time for an immersion in Beauty here. And I will be posting more from this session soon, as well as other delights from Cafe Bohemia. (Have you been?)
These Boys don’t disappoint in their hot and sweet renditions of Twenties and Thirties Chicago-style jazz and pop music. The CCB are Andy Schumm, cornet, clarinet, tenor saxophone; John Otto, clarinet, alto saxophone; Paul Asaro, piano, vocal; Johnny Donatowicz, banjo, guitar; Dave Bock, tuba. I recorded these performances on November 15, 2018, at the San Diego Jazz Fest.
BLUES IN A MINOR honors the Blue Ribbon Syncopators, a reasonably obscure territory band from Buffalo, New York, who recorded this song in 1925 for OKeh. It’s not a blues; it’s not in A minor. An error in labeling? You’re on your own:
Jelly Roll Morton’s dark lesson in keeping your own counsel, BIG LIP BLUES:
Clarence Williams’ rousing CUSHION FOOT STOMP (and I need a good answer about the etymology of the title):
The very pretty melody, A GARDEN IN THE RAIN:
Cliff Jackson’s (stride pianist with intriguing bass patterns, also leading the “Krazy Kats”) THE TERROR:
I have more video of the CCB in various places, but you should also know about their debut CD for Rivermont Records, BUSY ‘TIL ELEVEN, and that wonderful new oddity, a 10″ 78 rpm microgroove stereo vinyl record — a limited edition of 550 copies — that plays four songs in lovely fidelity while its ornate label rotates at the reassuringly high speed of a vanished time and place. Learn more, hear more, and buy more here.
No blues lyrics that I know begin with “The mail carrier came today, and (s)he brought me good news,” but it happens to be the case. Evidence herewith:
Once again, prowling eBay about ten days ago, I saw ten issues of Art Hodes’ THE JAZZ RECORD — a short-lived and wonderful magazine on sale — and I took money out of the grandchildren’s retirement fund and splurged. The issues were the prized possession of someone whose name I can’t quite read, and their original owner not only read them avidly, but had a cigarette in his hand . . . typical of the times.
I will in future offer selections — a concert review, or a letter to the editor complaining about varying prices for King Oliver Gennetts — but this is what caught my eye immediately, and the neighbors called to complain that my whimpering was upsetting the dogs in this apartment building. You will understand why.
On the inside front cover, there is a print column titled I Thought I Heard . . . Buddy Bolden wasn’t audible in 1945, but his heirs and friends were certainly active in New York City.
Stuyvesant Casino, 2nd Ave. at 9th St. — Bunk Johnson’s New Orleans Band
Nick’s, 7th Ave. and 10th St. — Miff Mole and orchestra with [Bujie] Centobie, [Muggsy] Spanier, [Gene] Schroeder, George Hartman, bass, Joe Grauso.
Down Beat, 52nd St. — Art Tatum.
Onyx, 52nd St. — Roy Eldridge.
Three Deuces, 52nd St. — Slam Stewart, Erroll Garner, Hal West.
Ryan’s, 52nd St. — Sol Yaged, clarinet; Danny Alvin, drums; Hank Duncan, piano.
Perhaps, for the Youngbloods in the audience, I should explain. Older telephone numbers were patterned after words — presumably easier to remember — in the same way some business numbers are (whimsically) 1-800-BUY JUNK. My childhood phone number began with “PE” for Pershing, the general; now it would simply be 7 3. All clear?
I love Eddie Condon’s music and everything relating to it. I wan’t of an age to visit West Third Street, nor the club on Fifty-Sixth, although I spent some delightful evenings at the posthumous version on Fifty-Fourth (one night in 1975 Ruby Braff was the guest star and Helen Humes, Joe Bushkin, Milt Hinton, Jo Jones, Brooks Kerr and a few others sat in).
This delightful artifact just surfaced on eBay — from 1958:
The English professor in me chafes at the missing apostrophe, but everything else printed here is wonderful: the names of the band and the intermission pianist. The reverse:
I didn’t buy it — so you might still be able to — but I did have fleeting thoughts of taking it to a print shop and ordering a few hundred replicas, more gratifying than the glossy cards with pictures of Tuscany on them.
We don’t need a time machine, though, because a version of that band (with Vic Dickenson, Billy Butterfield, and others) did record, in glorious sound. Don’t let “Dixielan” Jam or the CD title keep you away. Savor the sound of Eddie’s guitar. The music here was originally issued as THE ROARING TWENTIES, and the sessions were produced by the amazing George Avakian:
I did buy something, though — irresistible to me — that struck a far more receptive chord. Whether I will use it or frame it has not yet been decided. I’ll know when it arrives.
If you have no idea what this is, ask Great-Grandma, who used such a thing to stir her whiskey sour.
There are only two record albums (in the 78 RPM sense) circa 1944-45 that have Pee Wee Russell as leader. One is on Disc, and features an uncredited Muggsy Spanier, Vic Dickenson, Cliff Jackson, Bob Casey, and Joe Grauso: the cover is a drawing by David Stone Martin.
The other, a year or so earlier, was part of a project started for the musicians appearing at Nick’s in Greenwich Village to have records to sell — to publicize their efforts and the club’s music. Three 78 albums were created: featuring Muggsy Spanier, Miff Mole, and Pee Wee. Other musicians on these dates included Lou McGarity, Gene Schroeder, guitarists Fred Sharp or Carl Kress (Eddie Condon was under contract to Decca), and drummer Charles Carroll, if I recall correctly.
A friend passed this one on to me. It is inscribed, but more about that in a moment:
The inscription reads
To The Good Doc.
Henry Sklow
Pour me one more Pal
Best to you
Pee Wee Russell
If I could time-travel, one of my requests would be to be back somewhere in the Forties, so that I could ask Pee Wee Russell for his autograph and be called “Pal.” Or perhaps “Chum.” What more could I ask for?
I learned from Hank O’Neal and Eddie Condon’s EDDIE CONDON’S SCRAPBOOK OF JAZZ that Henry Sklow was a dentist who loved the music and his job was to keep an eye on the bottle or bottles at the Jimmy Ryan’s jam sessions . . . so the request Pee Wee made in his autograph must have been one he made often in real life.
Authenticity is immediately recognizable, no matter where one finds it.
Hearing Mike Lipskin at the piano, it’s immediately evident that he didn’t learn his stride from a DVD or a book of transcriptions. No, he lived and breathed it as a young man — studying with Willie “the Lion” Smith, learning from Cliff Jackson, Willie Gant, and by playing alongside such modern masters as Dick Hyman (their friendship goes back 45 years and continues to this day). Experience and improvisation rather than copying gestures and figures.
Although Mike is seriously influenced by the great players who were the Lion’s contemporaries — James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, Don Lambert — and later generations, his style is much more than pastiche: he has his own sound, a steady yet flexible pace, delicious voicings, a nimble tread at the keyboard.
In addition, Mike is a humorist at play: in any performance, there will be playful surprises — modulations up a step or down, key changes for a few bars, and more. Anything to keep the terrain from becoming too level and too predictable.
The Beloved and I had the great good fortune to hear a mini-recital by Mike, happily at his own piano in his Nicasio home (with the very loving audience including his wife, the swinging Dinah Lee). Here’s one of the highlights: Mike’s solo rendition of SWEETIE DEAR, composed by Joe Jordan, most well-known for the quick one-step recording from 1932 by Sidney Bechet, Tommy Ladnier, and Hank Duncan (as the New Orleans Feetwarmers) — riffing seriously all the way through:
Mike’s version is calmer, although subtly propulsive. In the great piano tradition, his sweet improvisation begins in affectionate rubato mode (love can’t be rushed), moves into a strolling tempo, and then to a jaunt before settling down for a conclusion.
On the West Coast, Mike can be found at Bix Restaurant and Pier 23 in San Francisco, and there will be another Stride Summit in Filoli in 2014. You can keep up with him on his Facebook page or website.
He brings joy, and young players should be coming to study him. He has much to share with us — not only about music but about joy.
And if you missed the Stride Summits of August 2013, or the resulting videos, you have only to click here to admire Mike amidst his friends Dick Hyman, Stephanie Trick, Clint Baker, and Paul Mehling. Swing, you cats!
I’d heard pianist Mike Lipskin in New York City in the Seventies, and treasured his recording with his mentor Willie “The Lion” Smith, CALIFORNIA HERE I COME — appropriately — but what the Beloved and I heard tonight at San Francisco’s Pier 23 was a delightful revelation. Mike led a trio with Clint Baker, trumpet and clarinet, and Paul Mehling, leader of the Hot Club of San Francisco, guitar. Their interplay was delicious — a gleeful tossing back and forth of phrases and musical ideas — but Mike has remained one of the contemporary giants of Harlem stride piano.
Stride playing is an athletic art (ask anyone from Stephanie Trick to Dick Hyman to Rossano Sportiello) and even the greatest players occasionally falter as they come out of middle age. Mike Lipskin’s fastball still blazes.
It’s not simply that he plays rocketing tempos, but his time is steady (no matter what the groove) and his inventions dazzling without being exhibitionistic. And his style is his own — not simply a collection of mannerisms learned from the Lion and the great players he heard and followed — Donald Lambert, Cliff Jackson, and others. So although he may whimsically offer a Fats gesture or a Lion roar, he is always creating small surprises, key changes and small modulations in the manner of a far less rococo Tatum. He doesn’t call attention to such things, and they could slide by listeners absorbed in the greater aural picture, but his playing is a series of small explosions that serve the song rather than detract from it.
Mike, Clint, and Paul offered music that was at once complex, endlessly rooted in the traditions and common language, but remained sweet and clear. Special pleasures were several Ellington medleys, a rocking SPREADIN’ RHYTHM AROUND, a somber I’M COMIN’ VIRGINIA, a sweet MEMORIES OF YOU and IF I HAD YOU, and a few hallowed but little-played Thirties songs, ZING! WENT THE STRINGS OF MY HEART and I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU — all played in ways that were both witty and heartfelt. Clint and Paul distinguished themselves by deep melodic playing, taking risks, and swinging out in ensemble and solo.
Someone as devoted to his video camera as I am occasionally takes a rest: I’d decided it would be a refreshing way to spend an evening with the Beloved where I wasn’t staring at the viewfinder, so there is no video evidence to accompany this. But anyone willing to spend an extra minute on YouTube can find videos of this trio captured by the assiduous RaeAnn Berry . . . and I might have some good things for JAZZ LIVES in future. Mike will be playing solo at Bix Restaurant in San Francisco this coming Saturday and two Sundays a month (call ahead) and you can visit here to keep up with his schedule and recordings.
He’s absolutely genuine: a true explorer of those sacred arts.
We love the music we have — the wooden boxes of phonograph records and cassettes, the wall shelves of CDs, the iPods with thousands of songs. But our hearts beat faster for those things imagined but not realized. Poring over discographies, we breathe faster when reading of unissued takes, the performances rumored to exist, acetates held by someone in another country, the film footage . . .
But thanks to Lorenz Yeung and Fernando Ortiz de Urbana (I’ve had the good fortune to meet the latter in person) are a few bite-sized bits of one kind of Holy Grail: http://jazzontherecord.blogspot.com/
(Fernando’s blog, EASY DOES IT, is a wonderful cornucopia on its own.)
Who assembled this I do not know. It is a tribute to Sidney Bechet, who well deserves such honors. But obviously someone followed Bechet around in 1949, on his penultimate visit to the United States. And Bechet appeared a number of times on television (think of it!) in the States — most often, I believe, on the Eddie Condon Floor Show oon WPIX.
It’s always heartwarming to be able to praise Mr. Condon, so allow me a few sentences. Whenever he could (later with the help of his wife Phyllis and the publicist Ernie Anderson) he looked for venues where his music could be played — in mixed bands on Fifty-Second Street, at the Park Lane Hotel, at Town Hall, the Ritz Theatre, and Carnegie Hall, several incarnations of his own club . . . on records, radio broadcasts, transcriptions for the servicemen and women . . . and television.
The Floor Show was his rewarding pioneering television series, broadcast between 1948 and 1950 on WPIX-TV. It brought together the best jazz players and singers — Louis Armstrong, Sidney Catlett, Jack Teagarden, Lee Wiley, Billie Holiday, Earl Hines, Pee Wee Russell, Woody Herman, Buddy Rich, Hot Lips Page, Count Basie, Bobby Hackett, Buzzy Drootin, Ralph Sutton — alongside Rosemary Clooney and tap-dancer Teddy Hale, and fifty or so other luminaries.
Eddie was wise enough to understand that the human ear and psyche would wilt on a steady unremitting diet of Hot, so in his club there was an intermission solo pianist; there were ballad medleys, slow blues, medium-tempo pop tunes, as well as RIVERBOAT SHUFFLE.
And his understanding of “show,” of variety, developed in the visual world of early television — hot numbers interspersed with slow ballads, sweet singing, tap dancing, and more. (I’ve seen a still photograph of what must have been a perfect jazz trio: Hot Lips Page, James P. Johnson, and Zutty Singleton. Pardon me while I rhapsodize silently.)
Some small portion of the music survives on vinyl issues on the Queen-Disc label and in the collectors’ underground trading world, but we know that the kinescopes made at the time — films of the programs — no longer exist. I have this on very solid authority, unless there were multiple sets made.
However . . . this YouTube surprise package has color silent footage of Sidney with Cliff Jackson, Kid Ory, Muggsy Spanier, Teddy Hale, Peanuts Hucko, possibly Kansas Fields, Gene Schroeder, Buddy Rich, Chubby Jackson, George Wettling, and another saxophonist named Charlie Parker.
You will have to watch the video several times to fully appreciate all its great gifts, including shots of Bechet acting in several French films, occasionally at the stove or battling an over-assertive shirt dickey.
About the television footage: I imagine that someone who loved Bechet followed him onto the soundstage with a movie camera (the kinescopes would have had sound and been in black and white) — blessings on this intrepid soul and those who saved the footage and shared it with us. (I’ve written to Lorenz Yeung, the poster, to ask the source of the Condon material; he generously told me that it was part of a Bechet CD package he bought in Australia, a bonus CD (!) I’m also quite amazed that none of the orinthologists have noticed this — and it’s been on YouTube since 2011. Research! In color!)
The question, is, of course, “What else is out there?” And the answer is unfathomable. But all things are possible.
My personal Holy Grail might no longer exist. I can’t remember where I heard or read this story, but Ernie Anderson knew a fellow in the advertising trade, quite wealthy, whose son loved jazz. Father wanted to give his son a present, and asked Ernie to set up a recording session for the boy: Ernie assembled Bobby Hackett, Sidney Catlett, and the fine pianist Harry Gibson (later Harry “the Hipster” Gibson), had them record some music, had the records pressed in perhaps one set, and I assume the boy was terrifically pleased. But where are those records now?
Readers are invited to submit their own versions of the jazz Holy Grail . . . we could start with the airshots of the King Oliver band with Lester Young in it and go from there.
Thanks to Lorenz Yeung, Fernando, to David J. Weiner, Maggie Condon, Loren Schoenberg, Dan Morgenstern, and to Sidney Bechet (of course): the soundtrack is DANS LES RUE D’ANTIBES.
The days slip away, and I see that I haven’t written a word about the final 2012 concert of the Sidney Bechet Society — an evening devoted to Sidney’s involvement with the New Orleans trumpet players. Even though he said he disliked trumpeters because they got in his way, Sidney played alongside the very best. This band at the Kaye Playhouse evoked but didn’t copy the great recordings he made: in their thirteen performances, they managed not only to summon up Bechet’s musical worlds from 1925 on, but suggested how his spirit animated music being made in November 2012.
In short, a hot time was had by all.
The members of this band exuded the fraternal delight one would expect from long-time comrades: Jon-Erik Kellso, Matt Munisteri, and Pat O’Leary are regular EarRegulars, with Evan Christopher an honored guest; Ehud Asherie and Marion Felder bring their own associations with sessions at Smalls and Birdland to the mix.
The first half of the concert was a more formal evocation of the title and of the hallowed recordings (some of them rather complex songs with multiple themes) highlighted by three vigorous romps — WEARY BLUES and I FOUND A NEW BABY (harking back to the 1932 Feetwarmers session with Tommy Ladnier and Hank Duncan); CAKE WALKIN’ BABIES FROM HOME (honoring Bechet’s early collaboration — or battle — with young Louis Armstrong on Clarence Williams’ dates).
A slower COAL CART BLUES swung with all its might, even though the tempo was less arduous (echoing the 1940 Decca “reunion” session for George Avakian’s NEW ORLEANS JAZZ album). Three mood pieces took seriously divergent directions: Matt sang BLUES MY NAUGHTY SWEETIE GIVES TO ME in his own half-earnest, half-ironic way, very combustible; Evan took center stage for one of Bechet’s Haitian rhapsodies, TROPICAL MOON (“kind of a funky thing”) which had everyone swaying . . . as did the band’s EGYPTIAN FANTASY — with an “exotic” flavor that also drew on the “Spanish tinge.”
After an intermission during which we all could compare tales of Storm Sandy (many in the audience, I think, were going home to dark cold houses and apartments), the band reassembled for a looser second half . . . as if they had done their required assignment and could now play a bit more.
Some of the repertoire for the second half was drawn from the Kellso-Christopher-Munisteri BLUE ROOF BLUES: A LOVE LETTER TO NEW ORLEANS (Arbors) — one of the most completely realized jazz CDs I know: an intoxicating habanera-flavored PANAMA, a street-parade HIGH SOCIETY, with the famous Picou chorus played softly at first; Kellso’s lyrical JUST LIKE THAT, Evan’s intense improvisation on Tommy Ladnier’s MOJO BLUES, a solo feature for Ehud on WILLOW TREE, where Art Tatum, Cliff Jackson, and Christopher Columbus came for brief visits with Mr. Asherie; the concert ended with a rousing HINDUSTAN, with the always-surprising and always-gratifying key changes.
It was a great band: Marion Felder is one of those exalted drummers who cares deeply about sound, dynamics, and rhythms — a phenomenon rarer than you might think. He will patiently stay on his snare drum or tom-toms and play simple rhythms for their sweetly intensifying dramatic effect; he can play a song as did Zutty Singleton but he’s always playing himself. Pat O’Leary stayed in the background, but he is one of the essential guiding forces of any ensemble: his tone, taste, and choice notes keep everyone focused on melodic swing.
Matt Munisteri never fails to surprise: guitarists marvel at his technique, but I marvel more at the way every kind of music seems to osmotically work its way through him — and the end result never seems like a conscious synthesis. Ehud Asherie continues to delight: his deep soulful range, bridging Then and Now, is a pleasure — because the influences have long since become a cohesive artistic whole, without one saying, “Oh, there’s a Fats lick!” again.
The horn players, as we have come to expect, worked together in friendship but there was the slightest edge of playful tussling — the kind of sweet competition that makes sessions rise above the ordinary. Both of them are instantly recognizable, with big sounds: you know who’s playing in a bar or two, and the restrained intensity bubbles with elegant down-home ferocity.
It was fun — in case you haven’t guessed. I’ll say more about the 2013 concerts when we cross into the spring.
Joel Press (tenor and soprano saxophone) and Spike Wilner (piano) created life-affirming music at Smalls (138 West 10th Street, New York City) on July 7, 2011. Joel and Spike had played together once before, but this was their first official performance — and we hope it’s the first of many.
Both Joel and Spike love to create energetically rollicking melodies — theirs is true playfulness. And the ideas that come from one are heard and bounced back by the other. Although Joel says he’s only a Boston boy, I hear a true Southwestern depth of feeling in his playing, with Herschel Evans sitting alongside Lester Young and Charlie Parker . . . although what comes out is unmistakably Joel, from those mobile knees on up. I first heard Spike six yers ago and admired his playing — orchestral but incisive, making space for Cliff Jackson and Bud Powell. Now, in 2011, he has grown so much more into himself, with a joyous inventiveness that inspires both Joel and hearers from the first note.
See and hear for yourself!
IT’S YOU OR NO ONE:
For Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, and Lester Young, PENNIES FROM HEAVEN:
A SLOW BOAT TO CHINA taken at a hilariously brisk tempo — are we in Beijing already, Captain?
A GHOST OF A CHANCE, explicitly for Lester:
Charlie Parker’s DEWEY SQUARE, complete with geo-historical commentary by Joel:
I REMEMBER YOU, with a lovely rubato beginning:
BLUES IN B FLAT:
THREE LITTLE WORDS:
Fats Navarro’s line on OUT OF NOWHERE changes, NOSTALGIA:
Finally, YOU STEPPED OUT OF A DREAM:
Thanks to Joel and Spike for such joyous surprises, and to Doug Panero and Louise Farrell for just the right kind of moral support!
Last night, Wednesday, December 1, the Beloved and I went to Birdland to catch another edition of David Ostwald’s Louis Armstrong Centennial Band. The weather had kept many people away, but the band played beautifully to the small, attentive audience.
That band? David, tuba; Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Dan Block, clarinet, alto, and a surprise vocal; Jim Fryer, trombone, euphonium, and vocals; Kevin Dorn, drums.
And Rossano Sportiello, piano.
Rossano — “The Maestro” to me any many others — made the most of his solo feature. He decided, without any fanfare, to create a small but powerful Cole Porter tribute, beginning with a sad, delicate EV’RYTIME WE SAY GOODBYE and moving into a JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS that was a rollicking extravaganza.
Students of the jazz tradition will be able to say, “Oh, there’s a Dave McKenna walking bass,” or perhaps, “Catch those hints of Cliff Jackson, will you?” But it’s all Rossano: the gliding agility, the dazzling intensity that doesn’t rely on raising the volume or pounding the keys; the singular voicings, his beautiful touch.
It was an astonishing performance — and halfway through this video, I couldn’t resist panning away from the piano to catch the rest of the LACB, leaning silent and awestruck at the other end of the room, savoring every nuance.
Maestro Sportiello melds lyricism and swing so beautifully, that a performance like this, extraordinary for us, is what he does so well every time I’ve ever heard him play.
On the left, Al Hirt (possibly during his fame in the Sixties). More interesting is a very thin Bobby Hackett on the right, working hard, with someone I can’t identify standing behind him, looking quizzically at the invisible photographer.
At top, the King of Swing, possibly at the Madhattan Room — on the air for CBS. Below, circa 1948: is that Wardell Gray to the extreme left in the saxophone section?
Early Thirties, on the West Coast — CREOLE REVUE . . .
Ellington in the Forties (the first band shot has Ben Webster, Sonny Greer, probably Junior Raglin — 1943?); the second is twenty years or so later, with Lawrence Brown, stalwart, on the far left.
Probably Chicago? Earl Hines, Billy Eckstine on trumpet, Budd Johnson on tenor saxophone. Are the two other musicians Scoops Carey and Shorty McConnell?
I have to say very quietly that I am less interested in Glenn Miller and his many orchestras than many people: what interests me here is not the ghost band below, but the top portrait that has a portly Irving Fazola sitting in the reed section on a gig in Texas, early in Miller’s bandleading career.
Who’s the pretty lady with the astounding hat sitting with Glen Gray on the right? Looks like Miss Mildred to me, grinning happily. Whatever Glen said to her must have been delightful!
Two unrelated Johnsons, J.J. and Gus (they both swung)!
Circa 1937 or 38 — Teddy, Hamp (concentrating hard), and Benny (paying attention): Gene got cut off, but we know he was having fun, too.
The top portrait is just amazing to those of us who are deeply immersed in this art — an autographed picture of Kaiser Marshall in 1938, in Europe (wow!); the second is listed as guitarist Jimmy McLin and saxophonist Earl Bostic, when and where I can’t tell. The beautiful double-breasted suits say “late Thirties,” but that’s only a sartorial guess.
This portrait of the John Kirby Sextet lets us see the diminutive O’Neill Spencer in action — something more unusual than seeing Charlie Shavers, Russell Procope, Buster Bailey, and a pianist who’s not Billy Kyle.
Clockwise: Benny Carter in a familiar publicity pose; a small band featuring Fats Waller’s reliably swinging drummer Slick Jones, and a famous shot from the Columbia studios, 1940, of John Hammond’s noble experiment melding the Basie and Goodman stars in what might have been the world’s finest small jazz band.
A famous Chicago studio portrait from 1936 but still gratifying: the rhythm section of Fletcher Henderson’s Grand Terrace Orchestra: Israel Crosby, bass; Bob Lessey, guitar; Horace Henderson, piano; Sidney Catlett, drums.
Late Twenties, early Fifties, perhaps for Ben Pollack? Jack Teagarden and Benny in the first photo, perhaps Charlie Teagarden (and the Pick-A-Rib Boys) in the second.
Lee Young and J. C Higginbotham, both middle Forties if the suits are evidence.
There’s that Louis fellow again! Ecstatically with Trummy Young (and an invisible Barrett Deems) at top, with Danny Kaye in THE FIVE PENNIES (1959) below.
GOING PLACES indeed! Louis, Maxine Sullivan, Johnny Mercer . . . no doubt rehearsing JEEPERS CREEPERS.
And a delightful piece of memorabilia from Phil Schaap’s new website — which not only features artifacts autographed by Wynton Marsalis and jazz broadcasts from WKCR, but also tangible morsels of jazz history. Can you hear Lips Page and Johnny Windhurst swapping lead and improvised countermelody? I certainly can imagine it! Visit http://www.philschaapjazz.com for more.
The recordings that Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra did in the Victor studios in Camden, New Jersey, are sacred music to jazz listeners. How could they be otherwise? Riffs by Eddie Durham, extraordinary playing by Bill Basie, Walter Page, Ben Webster, Eddie Barefield, and Hot Lips Page.
This video clip of Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks storming through TOBY at the February 2010 Central Illinois Jazz Festival is as close as we’ll get to recapturing that version of Hot Nirvana.
It was captured by “tdub1941” of YouTube and appears there by special permission of Mr. Giordano himself.
The hardest-working men in jazz here are Jon-Erik Kellso, Mike Ponella, Jim Fryer, Peter Anderson, Dan Block, Dan Levinson, Andy Stein, Peter Yarin, Ken Salvo, Vince, and Arnie Kinsella.
Now do you believe in reincarnation?
Yeah, men!
Visit “tdub1941” for more from this same concert (Jelly Roll Morton’s BOOGABOO, Ellington’s OLD MAN BLUES, Cliff Jackson’s THE TERROR, several versions of SUGAR FOOT STOMP, and Jimmie Lunceford’s JAZZNOCHRACY) as well as a host of live jazz delights.
This is the second part of what I hope will be a long series on the jazz photography of Charles Peterson, who mystically saw the essence of jazz.
Here’s Peterson the documentary photographer — his casual, offhanded shot of a quartet led by Sidney Bechet, who is characteristically both in command and absolutely at the service of the music he is creating, the experience ecstatic and powerful. What I find fascinating are the expressions on the faces of his sidemen: Cliff Jackson (whom I remember seeing in later photographs as white-haired) looks up at the Master to see where the currents of music are going; Eddie Dougherty, a wonderful and little-known Brooklyn-born drummer, seems anxious, although he may have only been caught in mid-comment, and Wellman Braud is quietly gleeful, rocking in rhythm. They seem small objects drawn into Bechet’s vortex. The photo suggests that any cohesive jazz group forms itself into a unit, but each musician retains his or her essential personality, and in this picture we see the quiet tension between the Selves and the Community. And this photo brings up another of Peterson’s unintended gifts to us: how many people ever were fortunate enough to be at the Mimo Club in Harlem to hear this quartet, much less at this moment on February 16, 1942? But — with a substantial record collection, some memory and imagination — we can invent the music that this band is creating.
This is a new split-second capture from a famous jazz session and photo shoot: the Commodore Records session of April 20, 1939, where Billie Holiday recorded STRANGE FRUIT, YESTERDAYS, I GOTTA RIGHT TO SING THE BLUES, and FINE AND MELLOW. The musicians are bassist Johnny Williams, trumpeter Frank Newton, altoist Stanley Payne, and tenorist Kenneth Hollon. Billie is holding a long-noted syllable; is it the “Yes” in YESTERDAYS? And she is very young, very beautiful, also giving herself up to the music, her hands folded, her eyes almost-shut, Peterson’s lighting capturing her mouth, chin, and throat. What distinguishes this portrait from others at this session is Billie’s lovely and obviously-treasured fur coat. I find it ironic, seventy years after the session, that there is such a gap between Billie in her fur — which she deserved more than anyone — and the material she sings with such deep emotion. One song, most famous, describes lynchings in the South; another describes a “fine and mellow” lover who doesn’t treat his woman well; a third and fourth describe bygone happinesses, all gone now, and the blues one sings when one’s lover has left. And Billie sang these four songs as if her heart would break . . . wearing that fur coat. Later in the session, of course, she got warm and took it off. And no doubt the irony didn’t occur to her and she would have laughed it off if someone pointed it out, “Lady, you look too good to be singing those blues!”
Hard at work is all I can say. The caption states that this is the Summa Cum Laude band — led in part by Bud Freeman, arrangements by valve-trombonist Brad Gowans — performing at Nick’s in December 1938. The band must be negotiating some serious ensemble passage, for they all look so intent. Bassist Clyde Newcome stares out into space, as does Pee Wee Russell; Gowans and Freeman, especially Brad, are watching the band warily, or perhaps Brad is reading the music off the stand in the center. I would guess that the drummer is Al Sidell, but I would hope that it is Stan King* — drummers shuttled in and out of this band. The rather somber effect of this picture suggests to me that the band is playing one of its medleys of current hits (you can hear them on the airshots in 1939-40 from Chicago’s Panther Room at the Hotel Sherman . . . grown men of this artistic stature playing SIERRA SUE, but what can I say?) Serious business indeed. (In his later comment, Mike Burgevin points out that I left out Max Kaminsky. How did I do this?) *Don Peterson confirmed that the drummer is indeed Stan King — one of jazz’s entirely forgotten men.
This photo lets me imagine a time before I was born when James P. Johnson could wear his pin-stripe suit and play the piano, which is what he was meant to do. It was taken in 1946, on a “Jazz on the River” cruise organized by Rudi Blesh and Art Hodes to go up and down the Hudson River. From left, there’s the hand of an unidentified bassist, James P., Baby Dodds, Marty Marsala on trumpet (with the appropriate handkerchief) and guitarist Danny Barker — some of the same crew who turned up on the THIS IS JAZZ radio broadcasts. But my secret pleasure in this photograph comes from the pretty woman whose head seems (although much smaller) in the same plane as James P.’s. She is tidily dressed; her cardigan, pulled together at the collar, reveals a neat floral blouse beneath; we sense that she wears a neat wool skirt. Her eyeglasses gleam in Peterson’s flashbulb; her hair is demure; her modest lipstick is in place. Her hands are decorously in her lap. Yet it’s clear — although she is prim, restrained, the last person to whoop and knock over her highball — that she is deeply pleased by what she hears. As much as Bechet or James P., she is in the grip of the music, wanting it to go on forever.
Berenice Abbott told Hank O’Neal that most of photography was having the patience to wait for the right moment. I’ll end this series with a superbly right moment — with only two musicians, Eddie Condon and Bobby Hackett, playing at the “Friday Club” jam sessions held at the Park Lane Hotel in Manhattan — this one on February 17, 1939. Hackett here is much as I remember him, up close, in 1972: a small, slender man, neatly dressed, dark eyebrows, thin wrists with black hair on them. Here he is all of 24, and so small that while standing he is only inches taller than Condon, sitting. The expression on his face might be a smile or it might be that he is working hard to bring off a particular nuanced phrase. But our attention is drawn to Condon, also young and healthy. Condon called Hackett “The Impostor,” because — with his peculiarly ornate wit, he said “Nobody can be that good.” The teasing compliment almost slips away, but you get the point. What is more important in this picture — more than Condon’s neat attire — is his grin, his head turned in delight and pleasure and admiration towards Hackett, who is clearly playing something marvelous, inimitable, lovely. Condon is astonished by what he’s hearing, but he’s expected no less from Bobby. This photograph captures the joy (and the labor) of this music better than any prose.
Thank you, Charles Peterson!
P.S. It didn’t surprise me that Peterson’s offspring were particularly talented in music, film, and writing. His daughter, Karen Yochim, a successful country-and-western songwriter, lives in Louisiana, has written extensively about Cajun culture for newspapers and magazines — and is branching out as a crime novelist. Peterson’s granddaughter Schascle “Twinkle” Yochim (her name is Cajun, pronounced “Suh-Shell”) is a professional singer with several CDs, concentrating on soul, rock, and to a limited extent, country-and-western. She’s also a songwriter, with songs accepted in feature films currently in production.
After a career in the Navy, Peterson’s son, Don, worked for the Navy Department in Washington, DC, doing motion picture & television scriptwriting. Don also wrote scripts for many film and television productions. He retired in 1986 and now concentrates on marketing his father’s photographic legacy, most lavishly accessible in the book SWING ERA NEW YORK.
Here we are at Smalls again (Seventh Avenue South and West Tenth Street in New York City) for another Thursday night duet between gifted friends, eloquent and swinging.
“Manhattan,” Rodgers and Hart’s sweet valentine to this metropolis, always makes me think of Bobby Hackett and Lee Wiley; the duo reclaims it for themselves, with hints of Ben Webster and Teddy Wilson, a royal pair. Listen to Ehud’s small homages to the lesser-known stride masters in his solo: a touch of Luckey Roberts’s “Moonlight Cocktail,” a passage of Cliff Jackson’s distinctive stride left hand. And Harry’s tone and gliding phrasing are like a sonic caress:
Then, an old-time stride romp on Vincent Youmans’ exultant “Hallelujah!” — with Harry negotiating every turn so easily, after Ehud has dramatically explored the verse. Ehud loves Fats Waller but isn’t a prisoner of the recordings; in fact, his single-note lines have all the snap of Bud Powell. Flip was very pleased to be able to present two Ehuds — the real one and his mirror-image. What riotous fun as the duet changes keys and the players trade ideas:
I don’t think I am being hyperbolic when I say that these two performances exemplify what jazz is all about: the melding of individual impulse and communal creativity (whether on a tender ballad or at top speed, trading phrases) — amazing for its emotions, intellect, and sheer technical athleticism.
My esteemed correspondent Mr. Jones (“Stompy” to his poker friends) writes,
You mentioned Eddie Condon’s Floor Show. We got a TV early, in the fall of ‘49. There were lots of little musical programs in those early, primitive days of live TV: Morton Downey, the Kirby Stone Quartet, a black pianist-singer named Bob Howard, others. I think they were all 15 minutes. They were filler; the stations didn’t have enough programming to fill their schedules. (Hey, we thought it was exciting to watch a test pattern!)
I watched Eddie Condon’s Floor Show (on channel 7) before I knew anything about jazz. I remember immediately noticing this trumpeter who played out of the side of his mouth. They had a regular segment in which someone from the studio audience (probably 15 people dragged in off the street) requested songs for the band to play. Once somebody requested “Rag Mop”. In those days, when a novelty like “RM” hit, it hit huge. For a few weeks it would be everywhere, I mean everywhere – then it would disappear without a trace. (The same thing happened with “One Meatball” and “Open the Door, Richard”.) Well, it was the fall of ‘49 and the Ames Brothers’ record of “RM” had just hit – only it hadn’t hit Condon and his cohorts, so when somebody requested it, the Condonites were incredulous and dismissive. I remember them laughing derisively saying “There ain’t no such song” or some such. Too bad they didn’t know it was just a blues. Wild Bill would have played the hell out of it.
You can see our Stromberg-Carlson with 12-1/2” screen in the attached photo, taken during my Bar Mitzvah party in Jan. ‘52. Amazing that such larger-than-life memories (Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, the Army-McCarthy hearings, Edward R. Murrow, Sugar Ray Robinson, Toscanini conducting with fire in his eyes, countless Dodger games, Jackie Gleason breaking his leg on live TV, my first encounter with Wild Bill Davison) could have come out of such a little box!
That one of my readers saw the Eddie Condon Floor Show on television is wonderful and startling. For those of you who aren’t as obsessed as I am with this particular bit of jazz history, I will say briefly that Condon, who was organizing jazz events before most of us were born, had angled a few brief television programs in 1942 — when the medium’s reach was unimaginably small. Then, in 1948, he began a series of programs that offered live hot jazz with everyone: Louis, Lips Page, Billy Butterfield, Roy Eldridge, Muggsy Spanier, Jonah Jones, Jimmy McPartland, Cootie Williams, Wild Bill Davison, Dick Cary, Jack Teagarden, Cutty Cutshall, Benny Morton, Brad Gowans, Big Chief Russell Moore, Peanuts Hucko, Ernie Caceres, Sidney Bechet, Pee Wee Russell, Willie the Lion Smith, James P. Johnson, Earl Hines, Count Basie, Gene Schroeder, Sammy Price, Ralph Sutton, Cliff Jackson, Joe Bushkin, Teddy Hale, Avon Long, Jack Lesberg, Zutty Singleton, Sid Catlett, George Wettling, Kansas Fields,Buzzy Drootin, J. C. Heard, Buddy Rich, Lee Wiley, Rosemary Clooney, Sarah vaughan, Thelma Carpenter, June Christy, Johnny Desmond, Helen Ward, and on and on . . .
In case some of the names surprise you, Condon’s appreciation of good music was deep and never restrictive. Ironically, his name is now associated with a blend of “Dixieland” and familiar routines on Twenties and Thirties pop songs.
Some music from the Floor Shows was preserved and eventually issued on the Italian Queen-Disc label. To my knowledge, nothing from these recordings (and the collectors’ tapes) has made it to CD.
In addition, no one has found any kinescopes (they were films of television programs, often recorded directly from the monitor or set) of the programs. We continue to hope. Perhaps one of my readers has a pile of 16mm reels in the basement. Let me know before you begin the obligatory spring cleaning! My father was a motion picture projectionist, so such things are in my blood.
The earnest, cheerful young pianist in this photograph is Ehud Asherie. At Smalls, the happily atmospheric jazz club at 183 West 10th Street, he has been at the helm of small groups with Harry Allen, Jon-Erik Kellso, Mchael Hashim, and others. Smalls, incidentally, is a compact jazz shrine — one of the owners, Mitch Borden, launched a conversation about trumpeter Bill Coleman — a name you don’t hear very often, more’s the pity. And behind Jon-Erik on the small stage you will see a famous picture of a young, nattily dressed Louis in London, around 1932 (catch the plus fours), giving his blessing to everything that happens in the room.
I went to hear Ehud and Jon-Erik play duets on Thursday night, and their one-hour set was varied, heartfelt, and swinging. If you visit Ehud’s beautifully designed website (www.ehudasherie.com), you might think you were listening to a most capable Mainstream – Bop pianist, nimbly improvising in the treble, supporting his treble flights with percussive chords in the bass. But I had heard from musicians, among them drummer Kevin Dorn, that Ehud knew what it was to swing, to play stride piano, most convincingly. Kevin was right.
Solo piano is extremely difficult, because there’s no Walter Page /Jo Jones cushion to rest on. Ehud is more than up to the task: his melodic embellishments never abandon the beauties of the songs, and his style is a rewarding melding of thoughtful, graceful Teddy Wilson treble lines, deep harmonies that took in the whole history of jazz piano, and flexible rhythmic support with modern touches. He has the quiet drive of late-period Ralph Sutton, with the harmonic surprise of Jimmy Rowles. At times, I thought of Fats Waller having a drink with Thelonious Monk, but the music isn’t an academic exercise, a player showing off how many styles he’s learned. Ehud’s playing is an organic whole, with one phrase leading to the next, one chorus logically building on its predecessor. If solo playing is a difficult task, duet playing requires special intuition and empathy so that it isn’t Dueling Ego. Jon-Erik is not only a priceless soloist but a generous ensemble player, so what happened at Smalls was an aesthetic conversation that occasionally became spiritual communion. If I tell you that both players were ginning at each other throughout the set, that should convey their (and our) pleasure.
They began with an ambling “I Would Do Anything For You,” written by the now almost-forgotten Claude Hopkins, a Thirties song usually taken at a breakneck pace, with Jon-Erik using one of his many mutes. They picked up the tempo to explore a traditional melody Ehud thought had Irish roots, “When You And I Were Young, Maggie,” at a tempo that suggested that the past must have been more than usually athletic. Jon-Erik thought that such reminiscences deserved the naughty growls and moans that only plunger-muted trumpet can convey. A lyrical “Body and Soul” followed (a classic that deserves to be played on its own terms at least once a night at every jazz gig), then a Bixish “I’m Comin’ Virginia,” complete with its verse. Perhaps as a nod to Fats Waller, or to Ruby Braff, Ehud called for “I’m Crazy ‘Bout My Baby,” which was ferocious. Here he showed his inspiring stride playing — technically assured, with delicious variations of the bass patterns — subtly propulsive rather than mechanistic. Jon-Erik then announced that Ehud, “the band within a band,” would play a solo, and the “Echo of Spring” that followed did honor to its creator, Willie “the Lion” Smith. A “funky – groovy” “Lonesome Road” was the occasion for an extended Kellso solo, impassioned yet controlled. A playful “i’m Putting All My Eggs In One Basket” featured some truly joyful interplay, and the set closed with “Tea for Two,” taken straight, Ehud beginning with an elaborate Waller-tinged reading of the verse, and wittily slipping in reference to “Some Other Time” into his improvisations.
As I left, I saw the fine pianist Rossano Sportiello at the back of the room: he, too, had come to admire. And there was so much to admire! Future Thursdays will feature other distinguished New Yorkers joining Ehud: something not to be missed!
JAZZ LIVES 