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-talented Chris 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.
Yesterday I published a post where four wonderful musicians — Eddy Davis, Conal Fowkes, Jon-Erik Kellso, and Evan Arntzen — improvised on OUR MONDAY DATE in December 2019 at Cafe Bohemia in Greenwich Village, New York City. You can enjoy it here. And I hope you do.
A MONDAY DATE has a personal resonance. It’s not unique to me, but I haven’t had the pleasure of “being on a date” with a tangible person since the end of February (dinner and a festival of short animated films). For me, songs about dating are poignant and hopeful: such encounters can come again, although the February evening was more short than animated. Mirror-gazing over. Onwards.
This MONDAY DATE was performed at Jazz at Chautauqua in September 2009, although not on a Monday. These brilliant players are Tom Pletcher, cornet; Dan Barrett, trombone; Bob Reitmeier, clarinet; Jim Dapogny, piano; Frank Tate, string bass; Pete Siers, drums. I was, as I have explained elsewhere, shooting video sub rosa without Joe Boughton’s permission, which lends a subversive air to the recording, but I was thrilled it came off, then and now. It is a special pleasure to hear Jim’s piano ringing through, adding magic.
Jim Dapogny and Tom Pletcher are no longer with us: I’ve written about them here and (with a beautiful long essay by David Jellema) here. Both posts also have video-recordings of performances you won’t see or hear elsewhere.
A note about “recordings” at Jazz at Chautauqua. Joe Boughton was enthusiastically kind to me long before we met in person: he recognized that we adored the same music. When I visited Chautauqua in 2004, he greeted me warmly, and I spent the whole weekend writing about the joys I experienced there, and wrote the program biographies for more than ten years.
Joe had certain aversions, in large type. The most dramatic was his loathing for over-familiar songs: SATIN DOLL, SWEET GEORGIA BROWN, slow blues, and more. Musicians who broke this rule were asked not to return — in one case, in the middle of the weekend. Secondly, although Joe apparently recorded every note of the weekends I came to — someone operated a videocamera high above our heads — he would not tolerate anyone else recording anything, although he let an amateur jazz photographer make low-quality cassettes. I gave Joe valuable publicity in The Mississippi Rag, which he appreciated: I don’t know whether he saw me with my camera and tacitly accepted it as part of the Michael-bargain or whether he was too busy with the music to notice, but I send him deep gratitude now. I hope you do also.
Jim Dapogny, September 2, 2018, photograph by Laura Beth Wyman (Wyman Video)
He answered to various names. Jim Dapogny, James Dapogny, Professor Dapogny, “American musicologist,” as an online source calls him. I prefer to think of him as admired artist, departed friend.
Jim would have turned eighty today, September 3, 2020. He didn’t make it that far, moving somewhere undefined and inaccessible on March 6, 2019. I have not gotten used to his absence, and I am not alone. Others knew him better, longer, at closer range, but his absence is something tangible.
I promised myself I would not write a post on the metaphysics of bereavement, but rather offer evidence so those who never heard Jim in person would understand more deeply why he is so missed.
I can’t reproduce here the pleasure of having him speak knowledgeably yet without pretension about the dishes of brightly-colored ethnic food spread in front of us. Nor can I convey to you his gleaming eyes as he spoke of a favorite dog or the mysterious voicings of a Thirties Ellington record. And it is beyond my powers to summon up the way he would nearly collapse into giggles while retelling a cherished interlude of stand-up comedy — not a joke, but a presentation — by someone none of us had heard of.
Those who were there will understand the serious yet easy pleasure of his company, the way he was always himself, wise but never insisting that we bow down to his wisdom. I can only write that he was was boyish in his joys but modest about his own accomplishments, and so gracious in his eager openness to different perspectives. Those who never had the good fortune of seeing him plain — counting off a tempo by clapping his hands in mid-air, crossing one leg over the other when particularly happy at the keyboard — should know that they missed someone extraordinary.
Jim and I communicated more by email than in any other way, but I did meet him once a year at Jazz at Chautauqua, then the Allegheny Jazz Party, then the Cleveland Classic Jazz Party, from 2004 to 2016, with a year out when he couldn’t join us because of illness. I made a point of going from New York to Maryland to hear his “East Coast Chicagoans” in 2012, and visited him and dear friends in Ann Arbor a few years later. It is one of my greatest regrets, on a substantial list, that I never made it back for a return engagement.
Our remarkable friend Laura Beth Wyman caught Jim explaining something to me in the informal classroom of a parking lot at the 2014 Evergreen Jazz Festival, and I treasure this moment:
But let us move out of the parking lot before darkness falls.
Here is Jim, with Mike Karoub, cello; Rod McDonald, guitar; Kurt Krahnke, string bass, performing his own FIREFLY (blessedly captured by Wyman Video):
Jim loved the blues, and enjoyed window-shopping in their apparently austere structure, peering in at unusual angles, so what was expected — nothing more than three chords repeating over twelve bars — was all of a sudden a hand-knit tapestry, subtle but ornamented, full of dips and whorls.
I caught him “warming up the piano” at the 2014 Jazz at Chautauqua, in what I think of as full reverie, monarch of an emotional landscape where he and the blues were the only inhabitants, where he could ignore people walking by, and also ignore my camera.  This, dear readers, is the quiet triumph of thought, of feeling, of beauty:
Here he and beloved colleagues create and recreate the TIN ROOF BLUES (al fresco, in rain or post-rain, at the 2014 Evergreen Jazz Festival): Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Chris Smith, trombone; Kim Cusack, clarinet; Russ Whitman, tenor saxophone; Rod McDonald, guitar; Dean Ross, string bass; Pete Siers, drums:
Jim was thoughtful but not morose. He delighted in swing and stomp, so here’s COME EASY, GO EASY LOVE, from the same weekend:
One of his set pieces not only was a rousing jam on more austere themes but also a nod to his love of comic surprise, WASHINGTON POST MARCH:
There is much more that could be said, more that can be seen and heard.
But the important thing is this: he remains a model for me and others. Quietly and without affectation, Jim lived so deeply and generously that we will not forget him nor stop missing him.
I can’t believe how many people who love jazz are asleep on Benny Carter.
The King, a few years before 1977.
The hierarchy of stardom in jazz gets narrower with time, so it feels as if there is only room at best for a dozen boldface Names from Louis to Ornette. Can contemporary jazz audiences understand the absolute reverence that Benny Carter received from his peers during his lifetime and now? How many students in jazz education programs know him as he should be known? After 1945, Charlie Parker cast a giant shadow, but Carter, quietly indefatigable, pursued his half-dozen careers with immense grace. Perhaps his life lacked drama: he wasn’t a tragic figure; he lived a long time and was happily married (his widow, Hilma, is with us at 99!); he was a professional who made it all look easy: alto, trumpet, clarinet, trombone, compositions, arranging, bandleading, film and television scores — a genuine Renaissance man.  Ben Webster said that Benny could bake a cake as light as a feather and whip any man: what better testimonial could anyone want? But I wonder how many fans today could name more than one Benny Carter record?
Recently a Irish collector-friend, Mchael O’Donovan, has passed on to me a substantial assortment of videos, some broadcast on French television, of La Grande Parade du Jazz, in the second half of the Seventies. I’ve shared a duet between Jimmie Rowles and Sir Roland Hanna here. I think these videos are precious, even though the cinematography is unusual: multi-camera setups where no shot is longer than a few seconds, and the videos came to me arbitrarily cut into time-chunks, so one will end at twenty minutes, no matter what is happening . . . but these are small complaints when one considers the wonderful assortments of jazz stars, the good sound, the leisure to stretch out. Occasionally someone in the band rushes, but we’re all human.
And now, for some Benny Carter — with a wondrous feature for Vic Dickenson (I saw Vic play this perhaps twenty times, but watching him at close range is something I never dared to think I would see on video), delightful Mel Lewis, and some late-period but refreshing Teddy Wilson.
7-9-77 THERE IS NO GREATER LOVE Carter, Kai Winding, Ray Bryant, Slam, J.C. Heard 7-7-77 IN A SENTIMENTAL MOOD Vic, Hank Jones, Bill Pemberton, Oliver Jackson (identified by Bo Scherman, who was there!) 7-10-77 THREE LITTLE WORDS Benny, Bryant, Milt Hinton, Mel Lewis and the first few notes of the next song.
7-10-77 WAVE Carter, Ray Bryant, Milt, Mel Lewis
7-7-77 SIT RIGHT DOWN AND WRITE MYSELF A LETTER – I’VE GOT A FEELING I’M FALLING – AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ – HONEYSUCKLE ROSE // SOPHISTICATED LADY – SATIN DOLL (partial) Teddy solo.
Doc Cheatham told James Dapogny that his secret to a long life was to listen to Louis Armstrong every morning, sound medical advice. Matt Rivera begins his Monday-night Zoom sessions of the Hot Club of New York (7-10 PM, the link can be found here) with a Carter record.  Maybe that’s a perfect healing regimen: breakfast with Louis, dinner with the King. In between, you’re on your own. You can do this.
When a relative or friend returns from a trip, children sometimes burst out, free from polite inhibition, “What did you bring me?” Adults may think this, yet the more well-brought up ones say, “Did you have a good time?”
The 2015 photograph is of Laura Wyman of Ann Arbor, CEO of that enterprise, devoted to videography of jazz, dance, recitals, and more.  I first met Laura at Jazz at Chautauqua in September 2013, when we were introduced by our mutual friend Jim Dapogny: she was part of the Michigan contingent there: Jim and Gail Dapogny, Pete Siers, Sally and Mick Fee. Laura was then an expert still photographer then, but became an avid videographer less than a year later.
She’s been going through the archives of Wyman Video and has shared two early efforts with us — capturing music from the September 2014 Allegheny Jazz Party that we would never have experienced without her.
First, THE MOOCHE (originally a dance), with commentary, by Dan Levinson, clarinet / leader; Dan Block, clarinet and tenor saxophone; Scott Robinson, taragoto; Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Dan Barrett, trombone; Howard Alden, banjo; James Dapogny, piano; Jon Burr, string bass; Ricky Malichi, drums.
Dan Levinson: “First, I don’t know that this tune has ever been attempted on 2 clarinets and tarogato, but there’s one thing I do know, for sure, is that the note that Scott is about to start on does not exist on that instrument! Never been played before!
The version of “The Mooche” that we played was my own transcription from the original Ellington recording, which featured three clarinets. Scott Robinson, in typical – and admirable – Scott Robinson fashion, showed up at the event with a tárogató instead of a clarinet. The tárogató is an instrument used in Hungarian and Romanian folk music that looks kind of like a clarinet but uses a different fingering system and has a smaller range. So I gave Scott the clarinet part that would be best suited to his instrument’s range. He looked at the music, worked out some fingerings, and then he was ready. Although I announced that the first note he was going to play was out of his instrument’s range, I didn’t realize that I had inadvertently given him the wrong clarinet part, and that it was TOTALLY out of his instrument’s range. There was no moment where he seemed concerned or hesitant. In a few seconds, he merely reinvented his instrument by working out fingerings for the notes that didn’t exist on it prior to that performance. There’s only one Scott Robinson on the planet!” – Dan Levinson, May 2020
THAT is completely memorable, no argument. And a gift.
And since we need to live in a major key as well, here is Professor Dapogny’s romping chart on CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME, performed by Dan Block, clarinet; Scott Robinson, tenor saxophone; Andy Schumm, cornet; Dan Barrett, trombone; James Dapogny, piano / leader; Marty Grosz, guitar; Frank Tate, string bass; John von Ohlen, drums:
I take my title from what Bobby Hackett told Max Jones about his friend Jack Teagarden, “The Good Lord said to Jack, ‘Now you go down there and show them how to do it.” (I am paraphrasing, because the book, TALKING JAZZ, is hiding from me.)
My subject is one of Jack’s noble colleagues, the trombonist Bob Havens, born May 3, 1930, in Quincy, Illinois — thus seventy-nine in the performance I will share with you, which he created at the 2009 Jazz at Chautauqua weekend — with Arnie Kinsella, drums; Vince Giordano, string bass; James Dapogny, piano. The song Havens chose for his feature is the venerable IDA, SWEET AS APPLE CIDER, which has its jazz immortality due to the 1927 Red Nichols recording featuring Adrian Rollini and Pee Wee Russell along with Red and Miff Mole. Bob’s performance is three choruses, a continuing amazement.
Bob Havens, 2016
What strikes me immediately is the serious ease with which Bob approaches the melody, not rushing, not being in a hurry to get to the “hot” part, but playing it, slightly embellished, in his first chorus.
His tone. His huge sound — a sound on which you could build your church. His generous but intelligently applied phrase-ending vibrato. His complete command of the trombone in all registers. And, for me, that first chorus is a complete meal in itself, so beautifully offered. But to look at the video and know, as I do, that there are two more choruses that will follow leaves me nearly open-mouthed.
Please, on your second and third viewing, and there should be occasions to revisit this splendor, savor the solid drumming of Arnie Kinsella, who knew how to play simply but with great soul; the delicious supportive work of Vince Giordano, who knows not only the right notes but where they should fall and how; James Dapogny’s intuitive embrace of both the soloist and the music in every phrase.
Bob’s turning-the-corner into his second chorus is exultant: now this is serious business, his shouting announcement seems to say. I’ve laid out the melody, now let me show you what I can do with it. Only a trombonist could explicate the dazzling variety of technical acrobatics — all beautifully in service of the song — Bob creates in that chorus, ending with a bluesy flourish. And the third chorus is a magnificent extension of what has come before, with technique and taste strolling hand in hand. (Again, no one in this quartet of masters rushes.) Admire the structure, variations on variations, as simplicity gives way to complexity but the simplicity — IDA is a love song! — remains beneath. Bob’s virtuosity is amazing, super-Teagarden thirty stories up, but his pyrotechnics never obscure emotions, and his sound never thins or becomes hard.
I invite you to admire someone who astonishes, who gives us great gifts.
What glorious music. in some ways, beyond my words.
This post is in honor of my Auntie, Ida Melrose Shoufler, the young trombone whiz and friend Joe McDonough, and Nancy Hancock Griffith, who made so much beauty possible.
We know many people born on February 28th. However, we know a much smaller number born on that date in 1930. And there is only ONE Martin Oliver Grosz, who will thus turn ninety in a few days.
Marty won’t read this post, so I will spare him and all of us a lengthy explication of his particular virtues. But let me inform you about a few events related to his birthday . . . and then there will be a reward for those with high reading comprehension skills.  “Three ways,” not chili . . . but a book and two parties. And patient readers will find another reward, of a particularly freakish nature, at the end of this post.
Marty has talked about writing his autobiography for years now (I was almost a collaborator, although not in the wartime sense) — he has stories! And the book has finally happened, thanks to the Golden Alley Press, with the really splendid editorship of Joe Plowman, whom we know more as a superb musician. Great photos, and it’s a pleasure to look at as well as read.
The book is entertaining, readable, funny, and revealing — with stories about people you wouldn’t expect (Chet Baker!). It sounds like Marty, because the first half is a tidied-up version of his own story, written in longhand — with elegant calligraphy — on yellow legal paper. I’m guessing that a few of the more libelous bits have been edited out, but we know there are severe laws about such things and paper is flammable.
The second part of the book, even more vividly, is a stylishly done series of interviews with Marty — a real and sometimes startlingly candid pleasure. I’ve followed Marty musically for more than twenty-five years and have had conversations with him for two decades . . . this, as he would say, is the real breadstick, and I learned a great deal I hadn’t already known. More information here and here. The official publication date is March 4, but you can pre-order the book from several of the usual sites — as noted above.
And two musical events — Marty encompasses multitudes, so he gets two parties.
One will take place at the Hopewell Valley Bistro, tomorrow at 6 PM, where Marty will be joined by Danny Tobias, Scott Robinson, and Gary Cattley, for an evening of swing and badinage, sometimes with the two combined. Details here. And on March 4, another extravaganza — at the World Cafe Live in Philadelphia, with what used to be called “an all-star cast”: Vince Giordano, Danny Tobias, Scott Robinson, Dan Block, Randy Reinhart, Joe Plowman, Jim Lawlor, Jack Saint Clair, and I would guess some surprise guests. Details here. Even though I am getting on a plane the next morning to fly to Monterey for the Jazz Bash by the Bay, I am going to this one. You should too!
Now, the unearthed treasure . . . for all the Freaks in the house, as Louis would say, a congregation in which I happily include myself. I’ve written elsewhere of taking sub rosa videos at the 2007 and 2008 Jazz at Chautauqua weekend ecstasies, and I recently dug out this spiritual explosion. The camerawork is shaky and vague (I was shooting into bright light), but the music is life-enhancing. Even the YouTube Disliker is quietly applauding:
Let us celebrate Marty Grosz. He continues to be completely Himself, which is a fine thing. With Dispatch and Vigor, Fats, Al Casey, and Red McKenzie looking on approvingly.
JAZZ LIVES 