James Dapogny, September 2014. Photograph by Michael Steinman.
James Dapogny respected the Harlem stride pianists, but didn’t consider himself one. In conversation, he told me that he was amazed that people (his “who didn’t know the difference” was unsaid) said he was influenced by Fats Waller. Not so, he continued: his heroes or influences were Jess Stacy, Joe Sullivan, and Jelly Roll Morton. And he didn’t often go in for what Jimmie Rowles called “racetrack tempos” in solo piano performances, although he could romp like mad with a band. However, he could build a performance, moving from slow-pensive to walking-briskly to showing the other pianists in the room exactly what he could do.
As he did at the Allegheny Jazz Party on September 22, 2014.
This performance begins (after a comic nod to me, his video-stalker) with the rubato verse and then builds so gorgeously, passion and expertise at work:
How gorgeous. And how we miss Jim.
And here’s Part One, Jim’s tender reading of IF YOU WERE MINE:
When Whitney Balliett asked Bobby Hackett how he felt about Louis Armstrong’s death, Bobby said, “He isn’t dead as long as we can hear him.” Those words are the rationalization we create because we really cannot bear the loss of people we love, but they are in some small part valid.
James Dapogny, September 2014. Photograph by Michael Steinman.
Jim Dapogny, Professor, or James, is no longer drinking Vietnamese coffee, extolling the virtues of obscure stand-up comedians, or creating surprises at the piano. But for those who patiently and with open hearts watch the video below, he is here and will never leave us.
For a rapt audience, including me and my camera, he played IF YOU WERE MINE — that lovely 1935 song, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, music by Matty Malneck, from a musical film, TO BEAT THE BAND. We know it through Billie Holiday’s tender recording, but Jim’s piano explorations are just as touching. This performance happened at the Allegheny Jazz Party, September 19, 2014:
Thank you, Professor Dapogny, for teaching us so much about beauty, fun, and courage.
James Dapogny at Jazz at Chautauqua, September 2014. Photograph by Michael Steinman.
Any session with Professor James Dapogny was special and needs to be preserved. In this case, he’s nearly hidden behind the piano, but his sound and swinging energy are vividly present. This music took place at the jam-session-before-the-festival on Thursday night, the festival being the Cleveland Classic Jazz Party, the successor to Jazz at Chautauqua. I have the happiest memories of those weekends, where musicians and civilians mingled at meals and at the open bar and sheet music table, where the music went from Thursday evening to Sunday afternoon. The weekend was originally the creation of the late Joe Boughton, supported by his industrious loving family, Sarah, Bill, and David, and then it was sweetly supervised by Nancy Hancock Griffith and Kathy Hancock. I began attending in 2004 and went every year until 2017, when the economics called a halt to the sizable enterprise.
Joe invited me as someone who would write about and publicize the weekend, which I was happy to do, but initially he was opposed to anyone recording the music — anyone except himself, I should add. I made a good many surreptitious digital recordings in 2006-07, and got his permission to bring my camera in 2008 or 9.
What you’re about to see is from 2009, ROSETTA, featuring Jim Dapogny, piano; Andy Schumm and Randy Reinhart, cornet; Frank Tate, double bass; Hal Smith, drums. The sound is fine but there is some visual goofiness going on. Whoever was controlling the lights decided early on that jazz in an informal setting required a cabaret environment, so they dropped the lighting to near-dark and I frantically adjusted the white balance on my camera to bring it all back into the realm of the near-visible.
I miss gatherings like this more than I can say, even though I have seen Hal, Andy, and Randy, separately, in the last few months. But here we are, romping away on a good old good one:
Thank you, Jim, Frank, Hal, Randy, Andy, Boughtons and Hancocks for making this possible. It was a joy to be there and it remains one to be able to present it to you now.
Some projects — be they concerts, CDs, performances — are easy to write about at first hearing. The music may be dense, but the sounds provoke words in my consciousness, and everything clicks. Other offerings take more time. Much more time. I first heard (and heard about) the CD pictured above more than two months ago: performances of James P. Johnson’s DE ORGANIZER (libretto by Langston Hughes) and excerpts from Johnson’s THE DREAMY KID (libretto by Eugene O’Neill) — both reconstructed by my friend and hero James Dapogny, who also plays piano, with marvelous singing and orchestral playing.
This review is so late because I wanted to honor James P. and Langston Hughes, both artistic deities of my earliest teens, and James Dapogny, whom I knew for slightly more than a decade, and who inspires me still. The words that came to me seemed inadequate and frail, but since I know that Professor Dapogny — “Jim” to the people who love him — would have been impatient with dithering, I will write about the CD and its creators now.
But perhaps some music would help me, writer, and you, readers. Visit here, please.
These operas have been Grail-quests for a long time. Many of us knew a corner of DE ORGANIZER through James P.’s 1939 recording of HUNGRY BLUES, sung by Anna Robinson, and miraculously released at the time. I say “miraculously” because its lyrics are strong and vivid:
and just because it exists and is lovely, a performance by Ruby Smith (Bessie’s niece):
The premise of DE ORGANIZER is simple. It is set in the American South, in the late 1930s; a group of African-American sharecroppers awaits the arrival of a union organizer, who eventually arrives and describes a brighter future through union solidarity. An overseer attempts to disrupt the meeting, but the people unite behind the organizer and agree to unionize. On paper, it looks undramatic, but Hughes’ libretto is emotionally charged — this is not the usual corporate meeting! — and the struggle is real and passionate. (Not incidentally, the flawless Naxos release includes the libretto for both works, invaluable for people who, like me, follow along even when the lyrics are in English.)
I have always found classic “opera” an unstable mixture: lovely melodies but acrobatic feats of vocal athleticism, and plots that, even when they pretended to realism, didn’t get there. The emotional profundity of DE ORGANIZER is its earthy reality, true in 1939 and possibly even truer now. The battle against hunger and for freedom continues, and listening to the singers, one cannot feel that they are in any way distant from the realities they sing about. Hughes’ lines are poetic without being in any way artificial.
And the music! (May I nudge you here a second time?) James P. Johnson wrote for people who danced and sang; the CD is full of lively song, irresistibly lively, orchestrated in varied ways. In some ways, DE ORGANIZER — were we to hear the score on its own — is a vibrant, witty, hertfelt kaleidoscope of African-American music from before 1900 to the then-present of 1939. The music and the energized performance both swing from the downbeat. I hear music that would have been right for a Cotton Club chorus line, melodies that made me think of great jazz improvisations, lovely solos and just-right ensembles.
Although the singers and the orchestra are “classical,” whatever that means, there is no hint of anyone conspicuously removing a tuxedo to change into street clothes. And although the critics of the time did not recognize what they had in front of them, no doubt hampered by implicit and explicit condescension about an African-American jazz musician knocking at the door of the European Tradition, we need not join in.
I have focused more on DE ORGANIZER because, candidly, it hits me very hard. The excerpts from O’Neill’s THE DREAMY KID are gorgeous songs — tied to the story of Dreamy, a young man wanted by the police who chooses to stay with his dying grandmother rather than escape to freedom. Johnson’s first opera offers three arias and a duet, and they are art songs worthy of performance beyond this CD. James Dapogny not only played piano in a way that would have pleased James P., but he also embarked on the difficult process of reconstruction of both works, which process is described in the notes. DE ORGANIZER had one public performance only; I think THE DREAMY KID was never given that opportunity.
I am sorry that this CD appeared after Jim’s death in 2019, but he was proud of the performance and delighted in it. This CD is important for reasons beyond the quality and durability of the music, and the Naxos release is pleasing in every way. The qualities that define James P. Johnson’s composing — its melodic strength and ease, his way of conveying all kinds of emotion, from joyous dance to lament — are all here. If you know him only as “the daddy of the piano” or “Fats Waller’s teacher” or someone Thelonious Monk admired, you will find him, whole and resonant here. His music, vocal and instrumental, is beautiful and compelling: the disc vibrates with feeling, emotions and a moral intelligence not limited by time, space, or context.
That’s the first part of the recital: four beautiful performances by James Dapogny, many words from me.
James Dapogny at Jazz at Chautauqua, September 2014. Photograph by Michael Steinman.
Here are the three remaining precious performances: two solos by Jim, one bravura duet with John Sheridan.
Jelly Roll Morton’s CHICAGO BREAKDOWN:
The Johnny Burke – Jimmy Van Heusen GOT THE MOON IN MY POCKET (1942) from the film MY FAVORITE SPY. To orient the listener, here’s Bing Crosby’s recording of the song — and, yes, that trumpet interlude is Andy Secrest:
Jim picked this one off the sheet music tables (price, one dollar a song sheet) that were a treasure-hunter’s dream at the Chautauqua weekend: who could ignore a Burke-Van Heusen song? His second chorus is a delightful lesson in improvisation:
Joe Boughton, the imagination and commander-in-chief of Chautauqua, had the logical and crowd-pleasing way to make the transition from one pianist to the next at these parlor sessions, where perhaps five pianists played half-hour interludes: the last performance of pianist A’s set would be a duet, four hands at one piano, with pianist B. And so it came to pass . . . RUNNIN’ WILD with John Sheridan:
That applause, like the music, was genuine.
More about Jim here, written the day after he left for another neighborhood.
And Jim’s contributions continue to enrich and amaze: this CD will be released September 1:
Hearing and seeing James Dapogny (Jim, Prof.) at the piano was a privilege. I didn’t have it often enough, and this solo interlude is purely audio, so you will have to imagine Jim’s combination of intense concentration and pure joy. It took place in the parlor of the Athenaeum Hotel during the 2007 Jazz at Chautauqua weekend, on what my calendar tells me was a Saturday and I know it to be the afternoon. Just Jim, the piano, and us.
Oh, the squeaking you will hear is not extra-terrestrials digging Jim’s investigations. The chairs and settees were wicker, and wicker provides its own soundtrack even when people — like me — are sitting reverently still.
James Dapogny at Jazz at Chautauqua, September 2014. Photograph by Michael Steinman.
Jim began with an improvised blues, light and shade and surprising turns, warming up the piano:
One of the most endearing features of this weekend, and there were many, was the table or tables piled high with vintage original sheet music, one dollar apiece. Jim and I often found ourselves shoulder to shoulder here, although he made better use of his treasures than I did. Here’s Victor Schertzinger’s MY START (full title, THAT’S HOW I GOT MY START, lyrics by Frank Loesser):
I’ve never heard anyone but Jim play this — an updated version of MY HEART BELONGS TO DADDY — so I thought I would enlighten those as curious as I am:
and here’s the venerable THE ATLANTA BLUES, embroidery by W.C. Handy on folk melodies:
To conclude the first half of this interlude, Jim’s tribute to / embodiment of our hero, Jess Stacy, called simply JESS:
The second half will appear soon: more of Jim, plus a frolicsome duet on RUNNIN’ WILD with an equally luminescent pianist.
Is this the proper place to say how much I, and others who knew him, miss Jim? In person, his deadpan unpredictability; his delight in strange bits by forgotten comedians (look up Art Metrano for fun); his thoughtful searching-for-the-truth; his gentleness that occasionally he hid under a quiet boisterousness, his unaffected deep knowledge, his essential generosity, his steadfast strengths. At the piano, many of the same qualities: his touch, his ability to romp like mad or to play the blues from ‘way down deep, his singing lyricism, his surprises. The only pianist I can think of on the same level is Jimmie Rowles, and it pains me now that I never asked Jim what he thought of the other Jim. So much pains me about the void Jim left behind in 2019: the meals we might have had, the thousand conversations I wish we had had. I thought he’d be here forever, and I was sadly so wrong.
Here is the piece I wrote the day after Jim moved to another neighborhood: it’s full of music.
To end on a less somber note, NAXOS Records is releasing, on September 1, the music of James P. Johnson’s two operas, DE ORGANIZER (libretto by Langston Hughes) and THE DREAMY KID (based on a one-act play by Eugene O’Neill. Jim talked about this project and was very proud of it: not only did he reconstruct the scores, but he also plays piano for this performance. I can’t wait.
James Dapogny at Jazz at Chautauqua, September 2014. Photograph by Michael Steinman.
The songs are CHICAGO (missing a few bars at the start) / TENNESSEE TWILIGHT / SWEET GEORGIA BROWN (vocal Kim Cusack).
This is interval-music on a certain public radio show where the loquacious host told tales of Lutherans. More you don’t need to know, although the host talks with Professor Dapogny between songs.
The CJB is James Dapogny, piano, leader, arrangements; Paul Klinger, trumpet; Bob Smith, trombone; Kim Cusack, clarinet, tenor saxophone, vocal; Russ Whitman, clarinet, baritone saxophone; Rod McDonald, guitar; Mike Karoub (then a mere 23), string bass; Wayne Jones, drums.
Performed and broadcast in Chicago, November 8, 1986.
The moral: don’t throw out your old cassettes! (I taped this from the radio and saved it for just this occasion, nearly thirty years later.)
Thanks to Mike Karoub for data of all kinds. Mike told me that Butch Thompson got the CJB this gig — their debut on public radio — and that the band “was hyped up and some of that excitement comes through.”
Indeed it does!
And Kim Cusack celebrated a birthday a few days ago: hooray for durability and more!
I decided, for a change, to write a post celebrating the glories that Prof. Jim created so beautifully, instead of saying once again how much I and many others miss him. Let us grin and wiggle in our chairs as tribute: he would appreciate this.
James Dapogny’s absence is painful to me, and I know I am not alone. The eight videos of him and the band he called PLENTY RHYTHM — thank you, Ferdinand — are joyous and poignant. I asked Laura Wyman, videographer and dear friend, to offer commentary, which she does beautifully.
James Dapogny
Laura writes:
Those Thursday nights were relaxed, fun, magical, and giddy while they lasted. It’s hard to believe a hundred people would cram into an old garage to talk, dance, drink, play, and listen to live music. Before Erin Morris moved, before Jim died, before Covid. But this life IS coming back – with most of the same players, carrying much of that music, adding new tunes, in re-opened and new venues.
Plenty Rhythm was started by Erin (on tuba, but you probably know her better as a dancer) and Jim Dapogny, about May 2016. Erin got them the weekly gig at Cultivate Coffeehouse (in Ypsilanti: Ann Arbor’s grittier, less-pretentious cousin, a few miles to the east). They dragged in Erin’s (or was it Jim’s?) upright piano, and Jim brought his music. He’d run a similar group several years earlier, and added more music to the books: 1920s-1940s standards, Dapogny originals, almost everything written in his distinctive handwriting.
The most important part: Jim said Cultivate was his most enjoyable gig – this as a “retired” professor who still had at least 2 gigs every week, and often 4 or 5. (Karoub said it was his MEG also) No setlists, no complicated choreography. Just calling tunes, setting the tempo by starting in, and playing with talented and inventive players, making things happen – and often getting fiery and/or pretty results. Regardless of money or listeners. (Though we see Jim, at times, looking out into the room with a “do you people realize what’s going on up here?!” )
(On that note, I like watching JD and MK work out stuff mid-tune, or Jim pointing to Rod or Shannon: “You’re up!”)
The group was always 4 people. After Erin moved to St Louis, Jim led the group, usually with Mike Karoub on cello, sometimes Chris Smith on trombone, or Chris Tabaczynski on sax/clar. In addition to the official 4, people always sat in – Dawn Giblin on vocals, and Chris T on reeds. It became a laboratory, where the band could try new (or new-old) tunes, in front of a noisy oblivious forgiving audience. All the players loved learning and playing together. There were always dancers in that tiny crowded space.
Cultivate paid the band $100 (a whopping $25 each!) and they divided the tip-jar. CTabs remembers Jim slipping him $5 for sitting in.
I guess that band is extinct now, though Chris S. still uses Jim’s black folders, and continues to add to the library.
I went every Thursday for a few years, but because it was so noisy, filmed only a handful of times. Jim suggested I put an Elizabethan collar around the video camera’s microphone.
I’d help Jim and Rod set up, then get a couple orders of toast (turkey/pear/honey, or PBJ), dark coffee, Chicago popcorn, beer and stout. The music ran from 7-10pm. The building was a former truck repair garage, converted into a community gathering place. The band played inside in cold weather, and outside in their beautiful flower & vegetable garden in warm and hot weather.
Plenty Rhythm stopped playing there in 2017. Cultivate didn’t survive the pandemic and is currently closed indefinitely.
Laura pointed out that the room was noisy. True. On one visit to Cultivate, in August 2016, I also shot video but the results were unusable. So these are a blessing. If you find the chatter intrusive, I understand, but I will bet that the crowd listening to Basie at the Savoy (insert your favorite band and time-travel site) was not hushed, even when Pres was soloing. Savor the music: this band will not come again.
For those making notes: the band performed twenty-five songs in three sets that night, and these are presented in performance order.
SWEET LORRAINE:
TAKING A CHANCE ON LOVE:
CHEEK TO CHEEK:
SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME:
OH, BABY!:
IF I HAD YOU, vocal by Dawn Giblin:
MY BLUE HEAVEN:
SWEET GEORGIA BROWN:
I think you can understand why both Jim and Mike Karoub said that this was their most enjoyable gig. These sounds are precious. Bless Prof, Mike, Shannon, Rod, and Dawn — and a special bow and hug to Laura, videographer, archivist, and friend-of-the-music, without whom this gig would only be something talked about in “Wow, you should have been there!” reverent tones.
November 2014, Bent Persson (right) and a humble admirer at the Whitley Bay Jazz Party. Photo by Andrew Wittenborn.
BENT PERSSON is a true hero of mine, and I know I have company around the world. I think of his friendly kind enthusiasm in person — he is ready to laugh at the world’s absurdities — and the soaring trumpet player, at once exact and passionate, who makes Louis and his world come alive in the brightest ways.
I first met Bent in the way that we used to find our heroes in the pre-internet era, sonically. In the middle Seventies, I was passionately collecting records. That meant that I would spend the day in New York City visiting record stores, coming home when I had used up my money. I prowled through Happy Tunes One and Two, Dayton’s, and J&R Records near City Hall, where I spotted a record on a label I hadn’t heard of before (“Kenneth Records”) featuring Bent Persson (someone new) playing his orchestral versions of the Louis Armstrong 50 Hot Choruses book published in Chicago, 1927. Perhaps it was $6.99, the price of two DJ copies or cutouts, but I took the risk. It was electrifying, joyous, and hot beyond my wildest expectations. Here’s what it sounded like.
HIGH SOCIETY, in duet with pianist Ulf Johansson Werre (1977):
I kept on buying every record (then CD) on which he appeared, and he visited the US now and again — although I wasn’t at liberty to meet him — to make sublime hot music, some of it captured in videos from the Manassas Jazz Festival.
CHINATOWN, with Kenny Davern, Jim Dapogny, Tomas Ornberg, and Steve Jordan (1988):
and duets with Jim Dapogny, CHICAGO BREAKDOWN and BLACK BOTTOM STOMP (1985):
At some point, I had acquired a computer and an email account, and was writing for THE MISSISSIPPI RAG, so I remember starting a correspondence with Bent — admiring and curious on my part, friendly and gracious on his. In the intervening years of record collecting, I understood that Bent was a Renaissance man of hot trumpet (and cornet): yes, Louis, but also Bix, Red, Cootie, and others, and no mere copyist, but a great understander and emulator, always himself while letting the light of his heroes shine through him. A great scholar as well, although that might be too obvious to write.
Finally the circumstances of my life changed so that I could fly — literally and figuratively — and in 2009 I made my way to the Whitley Bay Jazz Party, which I attended every year until 2016, video camera at the ready, approaching my heroes, shyly beaming love and gratitude at them. Bent knew me slightly from our correspondence, but I recall coming up to him, introducing myself, hugging him, and saying that he had been a hero of mine for decades. He took it all with good grace.
I created more than a hundred videos of Bent in that series of delightful parties, and I will share only four: you can find the rest on YouTube with a little earnest searching.
CLEMENTINE with Norman Field, Spats Langham, Frans Sjostrom (2009):
DUSK with Frans and Jacob Ullberger (2009):
LOOKIN’ GOOD BUT FEELIN’ BAD with the Red Hot Reedwarmers (2009):
and for an incendiary closer, DING DONG DADDY with Enrico Tomasso, Spats Langham, Kristoffer Kompen, and other luminaries (2015):
Please don’t let the apparent historical nature of these videos fool you into thinking that Bent has hung up his horns and dumped his valve oil into the trash.
He is still performing, and there were gigs with BENTS JAZZ COCKTAIL as recently as mid-August (what a well-dressed crew!) Visit Bent’s Facebook page for the most current news of his schedule.
This is the most fragmentary celebration of Bent, a man devoted to his art but also a first-rate human being who beams when he talks about the family he adores. If he is new to you, I hope you have been as uplifted and electrified by his music presented here as I have been for almost fifty years. If he is a shining light to you, here is another occasion to thank him for being and sustaining the glories of jazz.
It is, although across too many miles, another hug, so well-deserved.
The clarinetist / saxophonist / arranger Frank Teschemacher, a brilliant individualistic voice in Chicago jazz of the late Twenties, didn’t live to see his twenty-sixth birthday. Everyone who played alongside him spoke of him with awe. Even though the recorded evidence of his idiosyncratic personality amounts to less than ninety minutes, he shines and blazes through any ensemble.
In celebration of what would have been Tesch’s centenary, Marty Grosz put together a tribute at the September 2006 Jazz at Chautauqua weekend. It wasn’t a series of note-for-note copies of his recordings (this would have horrified the Austin High Gang) but a sincere hot effort to capture Tesch’s musical world — with great success. I was there with a moderately-concealed digital recorder, and couldn’t bear that this set would only be a memory, so what follows is my audio recording.
Marty Grosz, guitar, vocal, commentary; Duke Heitger, trumpet; Dan Barrett, trombone; Dan Block, Scott Robinson, reeds; James Dapogny, piano; Vince Giordano, string bass, tuba, bass saxophone; Pete Siers, drums. (The voice you’ll hear discoursing with Marty is that of the late Joe Boughton, creator of this and many other festivals.)
PRINCE OF WAILS (Dapogny transcription / arrangement) / BULL FROG BLUES (JD arr) / WAILING BLUES (JD arr) / I MUST HAVE THAT MAN (possibly Marty’s arrangement) / TRYING TO STOP MY CRYING (possibly Marty arrangement, his vocal, glee club) / SUGAR (possibly Marty arrangement, his vocal) / COPENHAGEN (with Marty’s Indiana etymology / story of Boyce Brown getting fired for talking about reincarnation). Thanks to Chris Smith for his assistance.
This post is in honor of Missy Kyzer, who was fascinated by Tesch and his world a long time ago. See her work here and here.
Here’s a location in space and time where the past and present embrace, each retaining all their distinguishing features. That is, Marty Grosz, guitar, vocal, and erudition, leading an ensemble at the 2014 Cleveland Classic Jazz Party in the song first introduced by Ethel Waters, SUGAR, that was then taken up by the Austin High Gang for their 1927 record date as “McKenzie and Condon’s Chicagoans.”
The noble creators are Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Dan Barrett, trombone; Dan Levinson, tenor saxophone; Scott Robinson, taragoto; James Dapogny, piano; Jon Burr, string bass; Pete Siers, drums.
It’s clearly impromptu (but all the great performances were in some part) from Marty’s heartfelt rubato solo chorus to the split-chorus solos with special reverence for James Dapogny’s piano in glittering solo and supportive ensemble. It’s confectionary. And memorable.
Incidentally, if, after enjoying Marty and his pals, you need more sugar in your bowl, try Ethel’s version, Louis’, and the Lee Wiley – Muggsy Spanier – Jess Stacy one. And of course the McKenzie-Condon version, which is playing in my mental jukebox as I type. Then follow your own impulses to heated sweetness.
I could write a long introduction about the music and scene that follows, but I will say only that it was thrilling in the moment and it is even more thrilling now. This was a Saturday afternoon session at the Athenaeum Hotel in Chautauqua, New York, during the Jazz at Chautauqua weekend created by Joe Boughton for his own pleasure and ours.
It seems a blessing to have been there and even more of one to have been allowed to video-record the music, especially since in June 2022, some of the participants have moved to other neighborhoods and others seem to have chosen more relaxing ways of passing the time. I will only say that a few nights ago I was speaking to a person I’d not met before — she and her husband live in Ann Arbor — of how much I miss Jim Dapogny and I had to turn away to control myself.
The heroes are Marty Grosz, guitar and vocal; James Dapogny, piano; Duke Heitger, trumpet; Bob Havens, trombone; Bob Reitmeier, clarinet; Vince Giordano, tuba, string bass; Arnie Kinsella, drums, and the song is the venerable BEALE STREET BLUES, with Marty’s three vocal choruses deeply rooted in Jack Teagarden, which is a lovely thing.
Chris Smith calls this “a joyous and soulful happy blues.” I hope you delight in it as I do:
Yes, these moments of collective ecstasy — and I don’t exaggerate — happen now. I’ve been there and witnessed them. But this assemblage of dear intent artists is not coming our way again, so these minutes are precious. And I would think so even if someone else had held the camera. Bless these fellows all.
Playful heroic figures: Jim Dapogny, Jon-Erik Kellso, Dan Block, Nicki Parrott
There’s a brief story behind this post, but you can skip forward to the wonderful music, performed at the 2015 Cleveland Classic Jazz Party by Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Dan Block, tenor saxophone and clarinet; James Dapogny, piano; Nicki Parrott, string bass. My friend and videographer Laura Wyman (of WYMAN VIDEO) were both at this party, with cameras, tripods, batteries, all the detritus of the profession, and we both eagerly recorded this session: four of our heroes stretching out in the nicest ways. I had the videos in my archives, unseen, and thought to release them to the eager public, and got permission to do so, and then saw that I had publicized Laura’s versions on this blog in 2015 here . . . but saw that those videos had not been seen by the thousands of viewers they deserved. So here is my exercise in — archaeology? — comparative cinematography? — or simply spreading joy. You pick. And here, as if we needed them, are three more reasons to miss Jim Dapogny terribly.
The first is Irving Berlin’s RUSSIAN LULLABY (and, even given the political climate of March 2022, please don’t boycott this performance):
ISHAM JONES’ pretty ON THE ALAMO:
Finally, revenge and remorse, thanks to Harry Ruby and Gus Kahn, WHO’S SORRY NOW?:
Gratitude and blessings to Laura, the four inventive marvels on the stand, and to Nancy Hancock Griffith and her mother for making all of this happen in Cleveland, not that many years ago.
Do consider. What could be better than an unpublished Fats Waller composition arranged twice for all-star hot jazz band — the arrangers being Marty Grosz and James Dapogny — with the arrangements (different moods, tempi, and keys) played in sequence? I know my question is rhetorical, but you will have the evidence to delight in: a jewel of an extended performance from 2007.
James Dapogny at Jazz at Chautauqua, 2014, by Michael Steinman.
CAUGHT is an almost-unknown Fats Waller composition (first recorded by James Dapogny) presented in two versions, one after the other, at the 2007 Jazz at Chautauqua, first Marty Grosz’s ominous music-for-strippers, then Dapogny’s romp. One can imagine the many possible circumstances that might have led to this title . . . perhaps unpaid alimony, or other mischief?
Marty, 2009, by Michael Steinman.
The alchemists here are James Dapogny, piano; Marty Grosz, banjo and explanations; Duke Heitger, trumpet; Bob Havens, trombone; Dan Block, alto saxophone, clarinet; Scott Robinson, soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone; Vince Giordano, tuba, string bass, bass saxophone; Arnie Kinsella, drums.
Note to meticulous consumers of sounds: this track begins with immense extraneous noise, and Arnie’s accents explode in the listeners’ ears. The perils of criminality: I had a digital recorder in my jacket pocket, so if and when I moved, the sound of clothing is intrusive. I apologize for imperfections, but I am proud of my wickedness; otherwise you wouldn’t have this to complain about:
I have been captivated by this performance for years — the simple line, so developed and lifted to the skies by the performers, the arrangements: the generous music given unstintingly to us. You might say I’ve been CAUGHT.
From 2004 until its end in 2017, under a new name, the Jazz at Chautauqua weekend jazz party provided some of the best happy musical moments of my life. I didn’t always have a video camera, nor was I always allowed or encouraged to record the musical proceedings. (Joe Boughton was always kind to me, but stories of his fierce response to disobedience had preceded him.) But I did have a pocket, and in it I hid a Sony digital recorder, which captured some uplifting moments. If you shut your eyes and imagine being there, transcendent hot sounds will transform the next twenty minutes, recorded during the informal Thursday-night session. You’ll hear some rustling (the penalty of sub rosa recording) and the splendid drum accents explode, but shouldn’t they?
The joys are created by Bob Barnard, cornet; Duke Heitger, trumpet; Bob Havens, trombone; Bobby Gordon, clarinet; Jim Dapogny, piano; Vince Giordano, string bass; Marty Grosz, guitar; Kevin Dorn, drums: OH, SISTER, AIN’T THAT HOT? / DIPPERMOUTH BLUES / SLEEPY TIME DOWN SOUTH:
I do hope Carl saved a piece of cake for Marty. These three performances are like a whole bakery to me, and they haven’t become stale after fifteen years.
What follows is nearly an hour of searing hot music by remarkable players, drawing on the rarely-played repertoire of Clarence Williams, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, James P. Johnson.
The band is a Swedish-American hybrid, generating incredible heat. Bent Persson, cornet, trumpet; Tomas Ornberg, clarinet and soprano saxophone; Tommy Gertoft, banjo; Ed McKee, tuba. Recorded between November 25-28, 1988, at the Manassas Jazz Festival (the date posted on the video is incorrect).
INTRODUCTION by Johnson “Fat Cat” McRee / MEAN BLUES / HOW COME YOU DO ME LIKE YOU DO? / WHAT MAKES ME LOVE YOU SO? (continued on 2):
WHAT MAKES ME LOVE YOU SO? (continued from 1, with an incredible solo from Bent) / WILD MAN BLUES / MANDY LEE BLUES / OLD FASHIONED LOVE (continued on 3):
OLD FASHIONED LOVE (continued from 2) / WHIP ME WITH PLENTY OF LOVE (with a dazzling four-chorus solo by Bent, followed by rollicking Dapogny):
Such a glorious combination. Never before, never again. Thanks to two gracious gentlemen: Joe Shepherd for these holy relics, Sonny McGown for accuracies.
I didn’t create this video, but I bless Bob and Ruth Byler for doing just that: James Dapogny, piano, and Bent Persson, cornet, playing CHICAGO BREAKDOWN / BLACK BOTTOM STOMP at the Manassas Jazz Festival, November 29, 1985. It’s been hidden in plain sight [think of that Poe mystery] in the middle of a much longer video, but it was worth the price of the software needed to dig it out. For me, and of course for you.
Even though the composer credits for WILD MAN BLUES read Armstrong-Morton or the reverse, we know that such a collaboration, on manuscript paper or public performance, didn’t happen. But this episode gives us a chance to imagine the two of them in duet, north of TOM CAT, west of WEATHER BIRD:
What swing, what intensity, what ease — breathing the idiom and making it live. I will have more of Jim and Bent to share with you (when the Swedish Jazz Kings came to Manassas) shortly: for now, bask in these fine hot sounds.
The multi-talentedChris Smith has a YouTube channel, as I may have mentioned, that will reward your attention — he’s been uploading out-of-print music by Jim Dapogny, all wonderful, and other treasures. This morning, a “supermarket record,” an lp sold near the cash register in A&P or Bohack’s, perhaps for 69¢. The labels were often not terribly honest: Spin-o-Rama, Craftsman, Tops — but you could find RCA Camden there, and there were sessions created specifically for this market, wordplay intentional:
This recording is called DIXIELAND (a musical product as clearly labeled as Ajax or Comet) by “Matty Matlock and his Dixie-Men,” for those who didn’t know of Matty — clarinetist and arranger for twenty years and more before 1957. I know some readers will bristle my open use of the D-word, but the shoppers in Waldbaum’s fifty years ago weren’t as enlightened. Forgive them, Brother Matthew, for they knew not what they did: they just wanted some good music.
Speaking of good music, how’s this?
Although TISHOMINGO BLUES is First World War vintage, the band has an easy sophisticated glide. These were musicians who took an afternoon off from studio work — reading Matty’s minimal, shapely charts on familiar songs. But there’s no cliche, no fake-Roaring Twenties clatter: the band is more Forties-Basie (whisper it!) than Bailey’s Lucky Seven. Dick Cathcart, trumpet; Abe Lincoln, trombone; Matty Matlock, clarinet; Eddie Miller, tenor saxophone; Stan Wrightsman, piano; Al Hendrickson, guitar; Phil Stephens, string bass; Nick Fatool, drums. No striped vests, plastic boaters, club-date amateurishness.
Here’s the whole playlist — a wonderful aubade for those so inclined:
Let’s go shopping to this elegantly rousing soundtrack. Piggly Wiggly has chuck roast at 59¢ / lb. Don’t be late: we’ll have to ask the manager, Carmine, for a raincheck, and a raincheck won’t feed the four of us.
Simple math: seven memorable songs, two deeply intuitive improvisers, one jazz criminal with a hidden recorder = lasting magic.
I’d like to explain how this all came to pass, but if you’d like to skip down to the music and (perhaps) read this later, I won’t blame you. That music is slightly under a half-hour of quiet splendor, casual mastery, great mutual warmth. And it’s just what the title says: an audio recording of two of my heroes, Rebecca Kilgore and James Dapogny, in duet, performing Irving Berlin songs at the 2006 Jazz at Chautauqua. I emphasize audio recording, although there is a still photograph of the Professor to please the eye, but this was before I had the courage to bring a camera to as many gigs as the law allowed.
James Dapogny at Jazz at Chautauqua, Sept. 2014. Photograph by Michael Steinman.
Like Paul Muni, I confess to criminal acts. But you are being rewarded, I hope, by my illicit behavior.
I first came to Jazz at Chautauqua in September 2004, my gift to myself for no longer being legally connected to a woman who disliked jazz (yes, I ask myself that same question now). The party’s founder, Joe Boughton, had been friendly to me for a number of years and had been eager for me to come, to write about and publicize his weekend.
Ordinarily, I would have brought a recorder, but I knew that Joe was possessive about “his” music and very fierce about transgressions. However, by 2006, I’d gotten bolder, and was pained by all the music vanishing into the air, so I took my new Sony digital recorder, slightly longer than a pack of cigarettes, with me.
Chautauqua is a ninety-minute car ride from the Buffalo airport, and a seven-hour drive from where I live (at least) so I did not want to make it evident that it was recording what was, in some ways, Joe’s private party to which we were invited. I concealed the recorder in an outer pocket of my sportscoat, which will account for noise you hear as I moved slightly. Those offended by the noise can say to themselves, “Sit still, Michael!” if it is any consolation. There is crowd noise; someone says “Excuse me, Michael,” while stepping over me.
And then some of the most beautiful music I know begins. I was seated closer to the piano than to Becky, so initially you might hear an imbalance of volume, but your ears adapt quickly — and Jim is playing so marvelously.
The songs are ALEXANDER’S RAGTIME BAND / SHAKING THE BLUES AWAY / REACHING FOR THE MOON / ISN’T THIS A LOVELY DAY? / CHEEK TO CHEEK / COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS / IT’S A LOVELY DAY TODAY. They cover an astonishing range of emotions, from sorrow to elation to hymnlike serenity. And in case anyone has forgotten, every note and word is Berlin’s.
Please, enjoy this offering — blessings from Becky, Jim, and Irving:
Incidentally, this would have remained on a homemade compact disc if my Texas collector-friend Elbie, whom I told about this, hadn’t said, “Can’t you transfer audio to video?” and I found, to my surprise, that I could. There will be many more “audio only” delights and surprises.
I didn’t sing or play a note. But I am proud of my part in making this music permanent and accessible. I hope you will allow me that.
James Dapogny at Jazz at Chautauqua, September 2014. Photograph by Michael Steinman.
I am never sure how closely the audience at a live performance is paying attention to the details of the music being created in front of them. Because I have spent a long time considering the subtleties of this holy art, I believe I hear and see more near-collisions than those who (happily) absorb only the outlines of the music.
I’m not boasting: my over-attentiveness is like being the person at the movies who can notice that a character went out the door in one scene with a green scarf and when we see her in the next shot — no scarf. . . not exactly like having perfect pitch, but the analogy might work.
Today, I am going to show-and-tell an experience that I happened to capture for posterity (or, perhaps, “for posterior”). I present it not to embarrass the musicians I revere, but to praise their collective resilience, ingenuity, and perseverance. In this case, that redemption in 4/4 is because of my hero, Professor James Dapogny, who might have cocked a skeptical eyebrow at what I am doing and said, “Michael, do you really need to do this?” and I would have explained why.
For those who already feel slightly impatient with the word-offering, I apologize. Please come back tomorrow. I’ll still be at it, and you will be welcome.
An uncharitable observer might consider the incident I am about to present and say, “Well, it’s all Marty Grosz’s fault.” I would rather salute Marty: without a near-disaster, how could we have a triumphant transformation? Or, unless Kitty escapes from her basket and climbs the tree, how can she be rescued by the firemen? Precariousness becomes a virtue: ask any acrobat.
But this is about a performance of I WISHED ON THE MOON that Marty and Company attempted at Jazz at Chautauqua on a late morning or early afternoon session in September 2008, along with Duke Heitger, trumpet; Dan Block, clarinet and tenor saxophone; Chuck Wilson, alto saxophone; Dan Barrett, trombone; Professor Dapogny, piano; Marty, guitar and vocal; Vince Giordano, string bass; Pete Siers, drums. The amateurish camera work in bright sunshine is evidence that it was one of my sub rosa escapades: I was using a Flip camera and trying to not get caught by the authorities.
We know Marty as a peerless work of nature: guitarist, singer, wit, artist, vaudevillian. But many might not be aware that one of his great talents is arranging. Yes, he can uplift an impromptu session on BACK IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD, but he loves the effects that can be created by any ensemble with directions sketched out on manuscript paper and then hastily explained on the spot: “No repeats!” “jump to letter D,” “trumpet break at the start of the last chorus,” and so on. Marty works hard on these things, and his earliest recordings — although he dismisses them as “‘prentice work” — show him in pursuit of the ideal: swinging, varied, surprising, effective.
But he is happier with pen and pencil than with the computer, so a Marty score is handwritten, in calligraphy that is italic, precise, lovely, but not as easy to read (especially in dim stage light, seen for the first time, without rehearsal) as the printed scores many musicians are used to in this century.
Thus, the possibility of chaos. Thus, the possibility of triumph.
In the recording studio, when things start to go awry, musicians used to look at each other and break into a sort of Twenties near-hokey jamming, away from the score, and the “take” would end in laughter. A “breakdown,” the recording engineer would call it. Or the engineer would give a piercing whistle, to say, “Let’s start over.” You can hear this on “rejected takes” by Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, and many other jazz heroes, that have been saved over the decades. They are reassuring proof that our jazz-deities are human, that people get off on the wrong foot, that someone missed a cue or made a mistake.
In performance, though, in front of an audience, musicians do not want to stop and say, “We loused this up. Let’s start over,” although I have seen it happen: it is the equivalent of Groucho speaking directly to the audience in a film, “breaking through the fourth wall,” and it is always surprising.
But back to our musical and heroic interlude. I WISHED ON THE MOON is made famous by Billie Holiday, but it is not by any means a classic, a standard, part of “the repertoire” so often played that musicians perform it with full confidence (take AS LONG AS I LIVE as an example of the second kind). MOON has its own twists and traps for the unwary. The very expert musicians in this band, however, had at most been given a minute or two before the set to know the tune list and to glance at the manuscripts Marty had given them — roadmaps through the treacherous landscape. But since everyone on this bandstand is a complete professional, with years of sight-reading and experience, it would not have been expected that they needed rehearsal to play a song like MOON.
That Marty gives directions to this crew before they start suggests to me that they hadn’t seen his score before, nor would they stand in front of the audience studying it and discussing it. Professionals don’t want to give the impression that they are puzzled by any aspect of their craft while the people who have paid to see and hear them are waiting for the next aural delicacy to be served.
Thus, Professor Dapogny, who “knew the score,” plays his four-bar introduction with verve and assurance. He knows where he is. But the front line is faced with a score that calls for Dan Barrett, master melodist, to play the theme while the reeds back him up, and Dan Block, another sure-footed spellbinder, plays the bridge neatly. Marty has his eyeglasses on — to read his own chart — and he essays a vocal, trusting to memory to guide him through the mostly-remembered lyrics, turning his lapses into comedy, more Fats than Billie. While this is unrolling, the Professor’s rollicking supportive accompaniment is enthralling, although one has to make an effort to not be distracted by Marty’s vocalizing.
I feel his relief at “having gotten through that,” and lovely choruses by Duke Heitger and Dan Block, now on tenor saxophone, follow. However, the performance has a somewhat homemade flavor to it — that is, unless we have been paying attention to the Professor’s marking the chords and transitions in a splendidly rhythmic way: on this rock, he shows us, we can build our jazz church. He has, in the nicest and most necessary way, taken charge of the band.
At this point, my next-seat neighbor (there by chance, not connection) decides she needs more lemon or a napkin; her entrance and sudden arising are visually distracting, even now.
But, at around 3:55, the Professor says — with notes, not words — that he himself is going to climb the ladder and rescue Kitty; he is going to turn a possibly competent-but-flawed performance into SOMETHING.
And does he ever! — with a ringing phrase that causes both Marty and Dan Block to turn their heads, as if to say, “Wow, that’s the genuine article,” and the performance stands up, straightens its tie, brushes the crumbs off its lap, and rocks. Please go back and observe a thrilling instant: a great artist completely in the moment, using everything he knows to focus a group of adult creators towards a desired result that is miles above what would have resulted if he had blandly played an ordinary accompaniment.
And you thought only Monk danced during his performances? Watch Marty, joyously and goofily, respond to what his friend Jim has made happen. After that, the band must decipher Marty’s swing hieroglyphics, his on-the-spot directions, “Play a fill!” and someone — to cover up a blank spot — whistles a phrase, and the performance half-swings, half-wanders to its conclusion. Relief sweeps the bandstand.
These five minutes are highly imperfect, but also heroic: great improvisers making their courageous way through territory where their maps are ripped, unreadable, and incomplete — refusing to give up the quest.
If you need to understand why I have written so much about Professor Dapogny, why his absence is a huge void in my universe and that of others who knew and love him, watch this performance again for his masterful individualistic guidance: Toscanini in a safari jacket. Completely irreplaceable, modeling joy and courage all at once.
News flash: Laura Beth Wyman, the CEO of Wyman Video and a fellow videographer, has pointed out that in September 2014, Jazz at Chautauqua had morphed into the Allegheny Jazz Party and moved west to Cleveland. Since a lesson of later life is that I have to live with my errors, I do so here: some of the prose details that follow are now in the wrong state, but the music still gleams.
Making the annual trip to the Athenaeum Hotel for the Jazz at Chautauqua weekend was never that easy, so once there I felt relief as well as excitement. But it was heavenly once I could see the people I love whom I saw so rarely, and even more blissful once the music began. Now, through the lens of 2020, Jazz at Chautauqua seems poignant as well as heavenly.
So it’s with those emotions — joy, nostalgia, wistfulness — that I offer you eight minutes of an elixir for the ears and heart: ‘WAY DOWN YONDER IN NEW ORLEANS, which used to be a medium-tempo saunter. I present the first recording of this 1922 Creamer and Layton song, with its “Spanish tinge” verse. And note that the Crescent City angels are wearing blue jeans, a garment that goes back to the end of the nineteenth century: see here:
But we can talk about clothing another time. Now, a mighty crew of hot players take this jazz standard for a gentle yet propulsive ride: Marty Grosz, guitar; Andy Schumm, cornet; James Dapogny, our Prof., piano; Bob Havens, trombone; Dan Block, clarinet; Scott Robinson, tenor saxophone; Jon Burr, string bass; Pete Siers, drums. I offer a special bow of gratitude to Nancy Hancock Griffith, who we see briefly at the start: she never sat in on an instrument, but she and her mother, Kathy Hancock, made it all happen.
Such a weekend will probably never come again, but I bless the players and the organizers . . . and I’m grateful for my little camera, that made audio-visual souvenirs like this possible.
I’ve been leading a metaphysical tour group on a psychic pilgrimage to The Ear Inn for twenty Sunday evenings so far, and won’t stop until the world opens up in more welcoming ways. Incidentally, here is the record of last week’s jaunt.
I have been slowly proceeding through my video trove in reverse chronological order. But today I break that pattern because of a delightful event.
Since gigs that I would feel comfortable bringing my camera to are not yet a definite thing, I diligently decided to start investigating my video archives, beginning with the earliest ones, around 2006, and moving towards the present. The task, however, loomed large. For this, I knew I needed an expert crew, so I hired these skilled archaeologists who came to my apartment with their tools and expertise (many of them had worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, finding antiquities):
The photo comes from their previous dig: my apartment is not built on sand.
And this is what they uncovered, three previously unseen video-performances from The Ear Inn, April 28, 2013, featuring Danny Tobias, cornet; Scott Robinson, tenor saxophone and taragoto, Dan Barrett, trombone; Joe Cohn, guitar; Pat O’Leary, string bass. It was a band humble to the core, so they played I MAY BE WRONG:
To quote Professor James Dapogny, “When in doubt, play the blues.” And ST. LOUIS BLUES, once overplayed, has turned the corner so that it’s a pleasing surprise when the band heads that-a-way:
and finally (these three videos are all that the team uncovered: I may have had to go to work Monday morning for an 8 AM class) — SOME OF THESE DAYS I was still teaching the eager young men and women of suburbia:
Let us hold hands (even if we are only grasping our left in our right or vice versa) for a prodigiously benevolent future, however you might define it. My definition includes Sunday nights at The Ear Inn, where the deer, the antelope, and the EarRegulars play.
JAZZ LIVES 