I can’t say, but through the kindness of a friend, I can take us all back to the Nice Jazz Festival to hear some priceless music: for instance, Kenny Davern and Bob Wilber using DIZZY ATMOSPHERE as a riff on I WANT TO BE HAPPY. Vic is in rare form (catch his ROSETTA); Davern is a trumpet-spectacular; Wilber is lyrical and hot. And how lovely to hear Wilson (brilliant on ROSETTA) and Duvivier in this context. (Who knows something about Dallas Taylor?) Davern lectures the crowd, memorably.
Everyone sounds truly happy.
Audiophiles be warned: this is a cassette-recording of an outdoor performance; it may run off speed; there is chatter. But wouldn’t it be ungracious to fuss over these things? This, more or less, is what we would have heard at Nice, and what a treasure it is.
The heroes are Teddy Wilson, piano; Bob Wilber, Kenny Davern, clarinet, soprano saxophone (Davern and Wilson make the announcements); Vic Dickenson, trombone, vocal; George Duvivier, double bass; Dallas Taylor, drums. Nice Jazz Festival, July 16, 1977. The tape is generously provided by Derek Coller. I WANT TO BE HAPPY (late start) / ON THE ALAMO / ROSETTA / [public service announcement] / I WANT A LITTLE GIRL (Vic, vocal) / RUNNIN’ WILD (rhythm) / MOTEN SWING //
The tape is a precious document. Bless Derek and people like him! But he does more than go to jazz oases with a cassette recorder. Derek is a great jazz scholar. His book on Big Joe Turner is a monument:
We owe so much to people like Derek who have made the evanescent beautifully permanent. And to these glorious musicians who give so unstintingly for decades.
This post could not encompass all the gifts Dick Hyman has given us. He has made the air around us beautiful for about seventy years. But let us attempt the barest list: peerless pianist, imaginative bandleader, scholar who put his scholarship into rewarding practice, teacher, advocate, expansive improviser, elegant spokesman for the music, mentor to younger musicians, infinitely adaptable — recording under aliases on a tack piano, and as himself on the MOOG, always thoughtful, precise, and vividly swinging.
Photograph by John Herr.
The best birthday card I ever saw had the words inside, THANK YOU FOR BEING BORN. Anyone who’s aware of Dick Hyman will echo these words. But the best way to celebrate him is through his own music. Dick led a wondrous small band that he called the Classic Jazz Band, and three sets at the 1982 Nice Jazz Festival were broadcast on French radio.
There was a time when the great women blues singers of the Twenties could be brought out of retirement for a few public gigs. The hour had passed for Clara and Bessie Smith, and Ethel Waters had moved beyond the secular, but Victoria Spivey, Alberta Hunter, Ida Cox, Eva Taylor, Edith Wilson, and Sippie Wallace (first with Jim Dapogny) came out to play: foremothers with flashing eyes and great stage presence, come back to tell us the truth.
Dick’s Classic Jazz Band featured Sippie, in fine form, with some of the finest instrumentalists ever: Doc Cheatham, trumpet; both Vic Dickenson and Trummy Young, trombone; Kenny Davern, clarinet; Major Holley, double bass; Oliver Jackson, drums. Bringing Trummy out of his well-deserved relaxation in Hawaii to play alongside his great friend Vic was a great gift to us (Dick Gibson may have managed it first) and the others were the core of many spectacular New York City sessions. But Dick is at the center, and one can listen to the half hour as a delightful totality, then go back and marvel at how he is masterfully shaping the performance in every phrase.
But first, Trummy and Vic at Nice, photograph by C.E. Castle:
Now, the music. Dick Hyman’s Classic Jazz Band at the Nice Jazz Festival, July 13, 1982: broadcast on French radio. Dick Hyman, piano and arrangements; Doc Cheatham, trumpet; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Trummy Young, trombone; Kenny Davern, clarinet; Major Holley, double bass; Oliver Jackson, drums. Sippie Wallace, vocals. KEEP OFF THE GRASS (Hyman, solo) / WON’T YOU COME OVER TO MY HOUSE?* / EVERYBODY LOVES MY BABY* / WOMEN BE WISE* / SHAKE IT TO A JELLY* / encore* / MY DADDY ROCKS ME / I FOUND A NEW BABY:
Isn’t that marvelous? Thank you, Dick, for this, and so much more. No one can take your place.
The jazz enthuasist Dick Gibson coined the name THE WORLD’S GREATEST JAZZ BAND for the floating assemblage of talent co-led by trumpeter Yank Lawson and double bassist / composer / arranger Bob Haggart. The musicians hated the name, and the good-natured hyperbole annoyed some people, so I am simply listing the brilliances who played this leisurely concert at the 1991 Bern Jazz Festival.
Yank Lawson, trumpet and co-leader; Randy Sandke, trumpet; George Masso, Roy Williams, trombone; Kenny Davern, clarinet; Christian Plattner, tenor saxophone; Brian Lemon, piano; Bucky Pizzarelli, guitar; Bob Haggart, string bass and co-leader; Jake Hanna, drums.
Sometimes they were an extension of what the Bob Crosby Bobcats must have sounded like at the Blackhawk Hotel in 1938; other times they are simply a divine multi-layered and multi-inspired Mainstream group. You can hear and see for yourself. At the end of the concert video, Yank is abducted by a genial but not terribly wise interviewer (watch Yank’s hands for an indication of his feelings) for questions about what it feels like to be eighty and playing. It’s nice to hear and see Yank but the interview is, although brief, too long. But the music!
SOMETIMES I’M HAPPY / SQUEEZE ME / ST. LOUIS BLUES / BASIN STREET BLUES (Williams, Masso) / BLUE LOU / MY INSPIRATION (Davern, Haggart) / BIG NOISE FROM WINNETKA (Haggart, Hanna) / WHAT’S NEW? (Sandke) / SOUTH RAMPART STREET PARADE / NUAGES (Bucky) / WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN / Encore: I WANT TO BE HAPPY // Interview with Yank:
The music is precious, whatever you might choose to call it. And since Yank and Bob did their final recording together around this time, it’s even more so.
Here’s a lively hour-long presentation (with interview segments) of the remarkable SUMMIT REUNION (which followed SOPRANO SUMMIT) at the Cork Opera House, during the 1993 Guinness Jazz Festival, presented by RTE. For this concert, the personnel was Kenny Davern, clarinet; Bob Wilber, clarinet, soprano saxophones; Mick Pyne, piano; Dave Cliff, guitar; Dave Green, string bass; Bobby Worth, drums.
And the selections performed were ROSETTA / interview / BLACK AND BLUE / interview / Oscar Pettiford line (?) [Cliff, Green, Worth] / PALESTEENA / station break / IF DREAMS COME TRUE / interview / TREASURE (Davern out) / interview / SUMMERTIME (Davern, Green, Worth) / ST. LOUIS BLUES //
I saw Davern and Wilber in person several times, and the heat they generated was extraordinary — as well as the subtleties when the building wasn’t in flames. And the British rhythm section is superb in the best Mainstream ways.
The Europeans certainly knew (and know) something valuable about the presentation and preservation of art.
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.
I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about the glorious music and friendship that I experienced for a few short months in 1974 at Brew’s, a place (pub? bar? restaurant?) that had divine small-group jazz under the gentle leadership of my friend, the late Mike Burgevin, a splendid drummer and occasional singer.
Mike encouraged me to record the music, and although Kenny Davern had to be persuaded that I was not the enemy, this night was one of the results: three sets by a trio of Kenny, soprano saxophone; Jimmy Andrews, piano; Mike, drums. I’d borrowed my friend Stu’s Tandberg reel-to-reel recorder, and with two Shure microphones, I recorded the whole evening in stereo (except for the first track, ON THE ALAMO). You can hear Kenny ask, early on, “Isn’t that too close?” or words to that effect, referring no doubt to where I had placed one of the microphones — near the bell of his soprano saxophone, I am sure. But he had no other objections, at least ones he voiced aloud.
Almost fifty years later, here’s the music.
DANNY BOY / WABASH BLUES / IF DREAMS COME TRUE / YOU’RE LUCKY TO ME / SEPTEMBER SONG:
I think you will hear the pleasure of the musicians — Kenny, free to go his own ways without other horns and with the benefit of a friendly empathic rhythm section — and the audience. And for me, the pleasure is doubled and tripled. I can’t go back to 1974, nor would I really want to, but the glowing soundtrack is here, undimmed.
And if you missed my previous posting, here’s the first part of the evening:
Something else needs to be said, and that is the absolute excellence of pianist Jimmy Andrews and drummer Mike Burgevin. Kenny Davern, bless him, received justified attention (call it a kind of jazz stardom) and opportunities to record: he remains unique. But Jimmy and Mike were never sought out by the record companies of the time; they weren’t well-known outside the tri-state area. They deserved better. And they remind us that good music isn’t always created by the people who will be written about in jazz histories, that we should celebrate the superb creators who don’t find international fame. Art and the machinery that publicizes it are two separate things, and only occasionally do they work in tandem.
I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about the glorious music and friendship that I experienced for a few short months in 1974 at Brew’s, a place (pub? bar? restaurant?) that had divine small-group jazz under the gentle leadership of my friend, the late Mike Burgevin, a splendid drummer and occasional singer.
Mike encouraged me to record the music, and although Kenny Davern had to be persuaded that I was not the enemy, this night was one of the results: three sets by a trio of Kenny, soprano saxophone; Jimmy Andrews, piano; Mike, drums. I’d borrowed my friend Stu’s Tandberg reel-to-reel recorder, and with two Shure microphones, I recorded the whole evening in stereo (except for the first track, ON THE ALAMO). You can hear Kenny ask, early on, “Isn’t that too close?” or words to that effect, referring no doubt to where I had placed one of the microphones — near the bell of his soprano saxophone, I am sure. But he had no other objections, at least ones he voiced aloud.
Almost fifty years later, here’s the music.
Today, I offer the first two sets; tomorrow, the final one. ON THE ALAMO (one channel only) / OUR MONDAY DATE / SLOW BOAT TO CHINA / BLACK AND TAN FANTASY / OH, BABY! / LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME / ROSETTA / INDIAN SUMMER / AFTER YOU’VE GONE:
I think you will hear the pleasure of the musicians — Kenny, free to go his own ways without other horns and with the benefit of a friendly empathic rhythm section — and the audience. And for me, the pleasure is doubled and tripled. I can’t go back to 1974, nor would I really want to, but the glowing soundtrack is here, undimmed.
Three I’s: IMPORTANT, IRREPLACEABLE, and INEXPENSIVE.
But I’ll let Dan Levinson explain it all to us.
In 1992, legendary record producer George Avakian produced an album in homage to the pioneers of 1920s Chicago Jazz, known as The Austin High Gang, who had been among his most powerful influences when his love for jazz was developing. Those pioneers included Frank Teschemacher, Eddie Condon, Jimmy McPartland, Bud Freeman, Muggsy Spanier, Joe Sullivan, Gene Krupa, and others. Avakian’s 1992 recording featured two bands: one, directed by pianist Dick Hyman, which played Hyman’s note-for-note re-creations of the original recordings; and a second band, led by clarinetist Kenny Davern, which played its own interpretations of songs associated with the Chicago Jazz style, keeping the SPIRIT of the original artists close at hand. I was in the Teschemacher role in Hyman’s band, and had never been in a recording studio before.Avakian financed the whole project, but, sadly, was never able to find a label that was wiling to reimburse his cost and put the album out. The last time I went to visit George, in June of 2017, I asked him about the album again. Then 98 years old, he was clearly disappointed that it never came out, and he asked me to continue his search for a label and to “get it issued”. I exhausted my resources at the time, and wasn’t able to make it happen before George passed away several months later. Three years later, Bryan Wright, founder of Rivermont Records, rode in to save the day. And this month – thirty years after the original recording session took place – Avakian’s dream project is finally coming out on Bryan’s label as “One Step to Chicago: The Legacy of Frank Teschemacher and The Austin High Gang”. Bryan has – literally – spared no expense in assembling a beautiful package, which is actually a CD inside a booklet rather than a booklet inside a CD. I’ve written extensive liner notes detailing every aspect of the project, and there are also written contributions from author/record producer Hank O’Neal, guitarist Marty Grosz, and drummer Hal Smith, a specialist in Chicago Jazz style. I was able to track down the original photos from the recording session, and Bryan’s booklet includes a generous selection of them. I want to gratefully acknowledge the help of archivist Matt Snyder, cover artist Joe Busam (who designed the album cover based on Avakian’s 1940 78rpm album “Decca Presents an Album of Chicago Jazz”), the family of George Avakian, Hank O’Neal, Maggie Condon, and the New York Public Library, whose help in making this happen was invaluable.The album features a truly spectacular lineup of artists, including, in various combinations: Peter Ecklund, Jon-Erik Kellso, Dick Sudhalter, Dan Barrett, Ken Peplowski, Dick Hyman, Marty Grosz, Howard Alden, Bob Haggart, Milt Hinton, Vince Giordano, Arnie Kinsella, and Tony DeNicola.
The CD and digital download are available on the Rivermont Records website here. A vinyl version – a two-record set, in fact – will be available later this month.
And here is Rivermont founder (and superb pianist) Bryan Wright’s story of ONE STEP TO CHICAGO.
The details.
“Dick Hyman and his Frank Teschemacher Celebration Band” (Ecklund, Sudhalter, Kellso, Barrett, Levinson, Peplowski, Hyman, Grosz, Haggart, Giordano, Kinsella) play / recreate classic Chicago recordings from the Golden Era of free-wheeling jazz: ONE STEP TO HEAVEN / SUGAR / I’VE FOUND A NEW BABY / CHINA BOY / LIZA (Condon, not Gershwin) / SHIM-ME-SHA-WABBLE: eighteen minutes in the most divine Hot Time Machine.
and “Kenny Davern and his Windy City Stompers” (Davern, Kellso, Barrett, Hyman, Alden, Hinton, DeNicola) going for themselves on THE DARKTOWN STRUTTERS’ BALL / WABASH BLUES / NOBODY’S SWEETHEART / THE JAZZ ME BLUES / BABY, WON’T YOU PLEASE COME HOME? / INDIANA.
and — a bonus — a nearly nine-minute excursion on FAREWELL BLUES by the combined bands.
But I can hear someone saying, “Enough with the facts. How does it SOUND, Michael?” To which I respond without hesitation, “It sounds terrific. Finest kind. It delivers the goods — sonically, emotionally, and heatedly.”
I will give pride of place to the writers / scholars whose words and reminiscences fill the eighty-page booklet (complete with wonderful photographs) Dick Hyman, Hank O’Neal, Dan Levinson, Hal Smith, and Marty Grosz, explain and elucidate, as they do beautifully, the roles of George Avakian, Eddie Condon, Bix Beiderbecke, and two dozen other saints of Hot. That booklet is both perceptive and unabashed in its love for the people and the sounds, and it is more than worth the price of admission. Unlike much jazz writing about the hallowed past, it is also delightfully free of hyperbole and something I will politely call hooey.
The CD — aside from the booklet — has two wonderful selves. The first six performances are evocations of the original, classic, recordings, with musicians who know the originals by heart working from expert transcriptions by the Master, Dick Hyman. The business of “re-creation” is difficult, and I have gotten into trouble in the past when pointing out that in some cases it feels impossible. Great art comes hot from the toaster; it is innovative, imagined for the first time in those minutes in the recording studio. So re-creation requires both deep emotional understanding of the individuals involved, the aesthetic air they breathed, and expert sleight-of-hand to make a listener believe they are hearing the ghost of Tesch rather than someone dressed up as Tesch for Halloween.
But the re-creations on this disc are as satisfying as any I’ve heard, more than simply playing the dots on the page, but dramatically assuming the characters of the heroes we revere. They are passionate rather than stiff, and wonderfully translucent: when Ken Peplowski plays a Bud Freeman chorus, we hear both Bud and Ken trotting along in delightful parallel.
I confess that the second half of this disc makes my eyes bright and my tail wag: it isn’t “hell-for-leather” or “take no prisoners,” or whatever cliches you like to characterize the appearance of reckless abandon. What it presents is a group of sublime improvisers bringing all their knowledge and heart to the classics of the past, playing their personalities in the best ways. And each selection reminds us that however “hot” the Chicagoans prided themselves on being, lyricism was at the heart of their performances. I cherish INDIANA, performed at a rhythm-ballad tempo by Kenny Davern, Howard Alden, Milt Hinton, and Tony DiNicola, and the other band selections are full of surprises, pleasing and reassuring both. The closing FAREWELL BLUES has all the joy of a Condon Town Hall concert, and that is no small accomplishment.
And I can’t leave this without noting how lovely the recorded sound is — applause for David Baker, Malcolm Addey, and Peter Karl. I’ve heard more than two-thirds of these performers live, often at very close range, and this disc captures their sounds, their subtleties so marvelously.
This disc is a treasure-box of sounds and homages, with lively music from present company. I predict it will spread joy, and my only encouragement would be for people to for once shun the download, because they won’t get the book. It’s the Library of Alexandria transported to 35th and Calumet.
And here are some sound samples so no one need feel that they are purchasing on faith, although faith in these musicians and these producers would be wholly warranted.
There is a school of thought, one I don’t subscribe to, that traces the course of hot music as a series of inevitable dilutions. I won’t name names, but this stance points to the great Originators (primarily African-American) and then their disciples (racially diverse) and the end result, watery and Caucasian, amateurs with straw boaters and striped vests, reading music. True, some of the purveyors of this particular genre of jazz have strayed from the intensity and expertise of their forbears (they are the amateurs, asking on Facebook for lead sheets for HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN TONIGHT because they can’t learn it in performance or from recordings) but it isn’t universally true that everyone born after a certain date can no longer “play that thing” with fire and individuality.
I present nearly an hour of wonderful hot jazz performed at the 1990 Bern Jazz Festival — the A+ team — in a tribute to Wild Bill Davison and his world, his approach, his repertoire, and by extension, a tribute to Eddie Condon and his world, and a whole way of approaching pop standards.
Energy and lovely singularity of sounds, in solo and ensemble, is vivid throughout. Glowing music, no tricks, no comedy, played by masters. Warren Vaché, cornet; Eddie Hubble, trombone; Bob Wilber, soprano saxophone, alto saxophone; Kenny Davern, clarinet; Ralph Sutton, piano; Dave Green, string bass; Jake Hanna, drums. NOBODY’S SWEETHEART / TIN ROOF BLUES / BLUES MY NAUGHTY SWEETIE GIVES TO ME / VIPER’S DRAG (Ralph) / BEALE STREET BLUES / BLACK AND BLUE (Bob, Kenny) / AS LONG AS I LIVE:
So hot, so swinging: although the repertoire is familiar, there’s no trace of staleness or over-familiarity. When you get through listening to the singular horn soloists, delight in that steady ferocious rhythm team, and then listen to how the great ones construct ensembles from chorus to chorus. I imagine not only Bill and Eddie, Anne and Phyllis, smiling approvingly, but also Milt Gabler and George Avakian . . . as well as legions of delighted fanciers.
In 1975, I was in graduate school, making no money, living at home through the indulgence of my parents . . . but I could also take a commuter train into New York City and end up at Jack Bradley’s New York Jazz Museum on 55th Street, a cassette recorder at my feet, capturing two hours of some of the most inventive small-band swing ever. (No one stopped me, either. Bless you for your tolerance.)
Even at the time, I knew that recordings like this were precious, so now, forty-seven years later, it pleases me to share them with you. Bob Wilber, clarinet and curved soprano saxophone; Kenny Davern, clarinet and straight soprano saxophone; Marty Grosz, guitar, vocal; Mickey Golizio, string bass; Cliff Leeman, drums.
I was in the presence of heroic figures even then; the decades have only increased their stature.
Part One: MEET ME TONIGHT IN DREAMLAND / SONG OF SONGS / CRAZY RHYTHM / HOW CAN YOU FACE ME? (MG, vocal) / OL’ STACK O’LEE BLUES / THERE’LL BE SOME CHANGES MADE / BIG BUTTER AND EGG MAN / THE MOOCHE / ONCE IN A WHILE //
Part Two: ISN’T LOVE THE STRANGEST THING? (MG) / OUR MONDAY DATE (MG) / WININ’ BOY BLUES / CHINA BOY // I LET A SONG GO OUT OF MY HEART – DON’T GET AROUND MUCH ANYMORE / SWEET LORRAINE / FIDGETY FEET / I WOULD DO MOST ANYTHING FOR YOU (MG) / INDIAN SUMMER / SOME OF THESE DAYS //
In 2022, I could wish to have been born later, to take the stairs at the pace I once did, but that would mean I’d never been able to hear and see these hot deities a few feet away from me. It wouldn’t be worth it.
I hope this music brings you all joy. (Marty Grosz’s graceful ad-lib in ISN’T LOVE THE STRANGEST THING, “You never know . . . what the lyrics will bring,” still makes me laugh.)
This astonishing band was assembled for the 1989 Bern Jazz Festival. Even more astonishing — across the distance of years — is that a concert was televised, the evidence remains, and you can see it here and now. We have Clark Terry, m.c., trumpet, flugelhorn, mouthpiece, vocal; George Masso, trombone; Kenny Davern, clarinet; Danny Moss, tenor saxophone; Howard Alden, guitar; Ralph Sutton, piano; Milt Hinton, string bass; Gus Johnson, drums; Johnny Letman, trumpet.
Couldn’t be better.
Howard Alden, a few years later.
Here’s the bill of fare: SWINGIN’ THE BLUES / MY BLUE HEAVEN / IT HAD TO BE YOU (Moss, Masso) / IN A MELLOTONE / THANKS A MILLION (Johnny Letman) / MOTEN SWING / TRAV’LIN ALL ALONE (Davern, Alden, Milt, Gus) / IN THE DARK (Sutton) / PULL ‘EM OFF (Milt, Clark, Alden, Gus) / GOD BLESS THE CHILD (Clark) / UNDECIDED / Encore: THINGS AIN’T WHAT THEY USED TO BE //
Some of these festival assemblages — you know them in the first ten minutes — have a “Do we have to go through this again?” weary air, with the opening ensemble number, a string of features, and a breakneck finish. Not this one: it is a gathering of wonderfully swinging friends, smiling at each other in person and in sound. And the familiar repertoire gleams.
I could have offered a portrait of any of the Eminences on the stand, but I choose Howard Alden for a few reasons aside from his natural sustained brilliance. In 1989, he was already a young veteran who’d recorded with everyone from Dizzy to Ruth Warrick to Joe Bushkin, Benny Carter, and Mel Powell . . . but there in the Swiss spring he was the Official Youngblood, and now he is the Eminence standing squarely on his own. I also salute him because when I asked him for permission to post this video, his response was (typically) gracious and swift: he remembers “a wonderful trip.”
A triumph of the Common Language of Jazz and the buoyancy of joy.
Masters of the soprano saxophone Kenny Davern (straight soprano) and Bob Wilber (curved soprano) plus Claude Luter, clarinet, who played alongside Sidney Bechet on dozens of recordings and live performances, pay homage to the Master, with Marty Grosz, guitar; George Duvivier, string bass; Bobby Rosengarden, drums, at the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, France, on July 20, 1975.
SOME OF THESE DAYS / Wilber talks / THE FISH VENDOR / Wilber introduces Claude Luter / PETITE FLEUR (Wilber and Davern out) / ST. LOUIS BLUES (Wilber and Davern return) / DEAR OLD SOUTHLAND (Luter) /CHINA BOY (Wilber and Davern return):
Passion, control, romanticism, swing. You can hear it all.
There was sufficient enthusiasm among the attentive faithful for more from BREW’S (I posted a set of Kenny Davern, soprano saxophone; Dill Jones, piano; Mike Burgevin, drums, yesterday) so I offer some more, without too many words to explain the deep effects of this music.
First, a set taken from the July 4, 1974 tribute to Louis Armstrong (a night where Ruby Braff, Sam Margolis, Vic Dickenson, Herb Hall, Nancy Nelson, and others performed) with Jack Fine, trumpet; Sam Margolis, clarinet and tenor saxophone; Jimmy Andrews, piano; Mike Burgevin, drums.
Even when it wasn’t a Louis tribute, it was clear where Jack’s allegiance lay — forceful and expressive — and next to him, Sam Margolis floats in his own wonderful Bud Freeman – Lester Young way. That little Louis-Condon (hence the ballad medley) evocation is followed by two trio performances from July 10:
Living in suburbia now hasn’t all that much to recommend it, but in 1974, I could park my car at the commuter train station and in less than an hour be walking eagerly to a little hamburger-and-beer restaurant on the East Side, Brew’s (named for owner Richie Brew) that also, for a time, featured the best small jazz groups I’d ever heard. Here’s a compact sample of what was then so easy to find — a set by Kenny Davern, soprano saxophone; Dill Jones, piano; Mike Burgevin, drums: GEE, BABY, AIN’T I GOOD TO YOU? / PLEASE DON’T TALK ABOUT ME WHEN I’M GONE / SWEET LORRAINE / ALL BY MYSELF.
Over my shoulder, I had a plastic airline bag (thanks to my father) with a cassette recorder and a better microphone, perhaps extra batteries and a yellow legal pad, which is why you can hear this evidence. It’s also thanks to the immense kindness of Mike Burgevin, who explained to friendly Dill Jones and intimidating Mister Davern that I was a friend, that I was allowed to preserve their creations.
Holy relics thanks to Patty Doyle, who was married to Mike.
I recorded a whole evening — perhaps four sets? — of this trio, which I would share with JAZZ LIVES’ audience if there is sufficient enthusiasm.
I don’t want to go back to my 1974 self, but I wish I could get on the train and spend a night at Brew’s: it was my Reno Club, where my heroes dropped in and played. That I have the sounds of an “ordinary” Wednesday night there now seems miraculous. I hope you feel some of that as well.
Where were you on July 15, 1977? I don’t remember, and I think I’m not alone. I hope that many of my readers were fortunate enough to be at the Grande Parade du Jazz, watching yet another clarinet spectacular featuring Barney, Kenny, Bob, Eddie, and Tony, supported by Dick Hyman, piano; Jack Sewing, string bass; J.C. Heard, drums. Now you can be there, for BYE BYE BLUES / MOONGLOW / TAKE THE “A” TRAIN — classic repertoire enabling all the players to display their most vivid individualities:
How marvelous that such a thing happened, and that it was captured so that we can savor it, nearly half a century later.
“Those things are dangerous. I knew someone who lost a finger,” we hear before and after the Fourth of July. However, there are other kinds of fireworks — lighting up even the afternoon sky with no danger to life or limb — that our beloved incendiary musicians create.
When swing meets the desire to spread happiness, Roman candles go off all over the place. The evidence follows.
This was the closing selection from the EarRegulars’ session of June 27 at The Ear Out, located outside 326 Spring Street in Soho, New York City.
The EarRegulars were Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Ricky Alexander, clarinet and tenor saxophone; Matt Munisteri, guitar; Jay Rattman, bass sax, and Official Friend and Sometimes Leader of the EarRegulars, Danny Tobias, trumpet. And they sounded Vincent Youmans’ clarion call, I WANT TO BE HAPPY. (I can never write that title without hearing either Wild Bill Davison or Kenny Davern in my mind’s ear, a la W. C. Fields, “Don’t we all!”)
No dangerous explosions, just sustained joys.
AND . . . on Sunday, July 4th, Jon-Erik will be joined by Grant Stewart, tenor saxophone; Joe Cohn, guitar; Pat O’Leary, string bass . . . . rockets in the sky, to be sure.
Here’s almost an hour of late-period Condonia, presented by Johnson “Fat Cat” McRee as a simulation of one of Eddie’s Town Hall / Ritz Theatre / Carnegie Hall concerts or broadcasts, circa 1944-5. By 1989, few people who had actually played with Eddie were still doing it, but the people on this stand knew their roles well and they offered heartfelt hot music. They are or were John Jensen, Art Poncheri, tbn, Brooks Tegler, Johnny Blowers, d; Marty Grosz, Steve Jordan, g; Kenny Davern, Tommy Gwaltney, Bobby Gordon, cl; Connie Jones, Tommy Saunders, cnt; Clyde Hunt, tp; Betty Comora, voc; Al Stevens, p; Johnny Williams, b.
CHINA BOY Stevens, Davern, Saunders, Poncheri, Hunt, Johnny Williams, Jordan, Brooks / SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES Poncheri, Stevens, Williams / UNDECIDED Jensen-Poncheri, Stevens, Jordan, Williams, Brooks / [RIALTO RIPPLES Stevens] / AT SUNDOWN Saunders, Hunt, Davern, Gordon, Gwaltney, Jensen, Poncheri, rhythm / Blowers in for Brooks, add Connie NEW ORLEANS / Betty DON’T BLAME ME / add Marty Grosz et al. SHEIK – OLE MISS [McRee, kazoo] //
Here’s the flyer for the series, thanks to JAZZ LIVES’ friend, Mr. McGown: obviously printed well in advance, because not everyone announced was able to make the concerts — but those who could brought their best selves:
Beautiful music, embracing the past but wholly alive in 1989.
Your love belongs to me. Or, I hope, to the music.
Even if Valentino is no longer with us, this 1920 song has a sweet energized durability — as shown here at the Grande Parade du Jazz, by four wonderfully distinctive clarinetists. I’ve retained Kenny Davern’s exasperated address to the audience because it’s as good as a four-bar break. Here are Barney Bigard, Kenny Davern, Bob Wilber, and Eddie Daniels (the idiosyncratic explorer), supported by Dick Hyman, piano; Jack Sewing, string bass; J.C. Heard, drums:
Please feel free to supply the appropriate lyrics: teach the children.
Edward Meyer has written the definitive biography of Dick Wellstood, GIANT STRIDES: THELEGACY OF DICK WELLSTOOD (1999), and an even more extensive book on Kenny, JUST FOUR BARS: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF KENNY DAVERN (2010), both published by Scarecrow Press.
When it came to his friends, Kenny Davern was a generous man who loved to share the things that gave him pleasure. One Sunday afternoon, I had driven down to Manasquan to talk with Kenny about the Wellstood book. Elsa was away and he wasn’t working that evening, so he wasn’t pressed for time. After we finished talking about Dick, we went out for pizza, after which we went back to his house.
He was in a talkative mood that night and we schmoozed about a number of things and people – not many of whom were connected with jazz. Several hours passed. I had to get up and go to work the next day and was facing a 60+ mile drive back to my apartment in Manhattan in Sunday night traffic. But, just when I was ready to leave. the conversation turned to Wilhelm Furtwängler, the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Kenny passionately believed that Furtwangler had never gotten the recognition due him and that he was far better at getting the best out of the musicians in his orchestra than Arturo Toscanini. who led the NBC Symphony. I had no views on the subject – mainly because I knew little about classical music and even less about the skills of either man – but that only spurred Kenny into his role as teacher.
He left the room and came back with two recordings of the same piece – one by Furtwangler and the other by Toscanini. “Listen to this,” he said, and played about five minutes of the Furtwangler recording. “Do you hear how Furtwangler brings out the individual sound of each horn? Now listen to this.” And he played about five minutes of the Toscanini recording. “Do you hear the difference?” Fool that I was, I said that I couldn’t really tell.
That was clearly the wrong answer because we went through the exercise again. By this time, it was about 10:00 p.m., and although I was no better informed at the end of the second round of recordings than I had been before, when Kenny asked if I could tell the difference, I nodded my head vigorously. And, before the demonstration could progress any further, I stood up and said that it was time for me to go home. And I left.
I saw him about a week later and as soon as he had a free moment he came over and gave me a short handwritten list on which he had jotted down the titles and numbers of a few Furtwangler CDs. He thought that I might like them.
Years later, I learned that my experience was not unique. If one of his friends liked something that Kenny had, Kenny would make, or buy, a copy of for him, or lend it to him, or tell him where and how to get one for himself. This didn’t jibe with Kenny’s public image: but then, very little did.
The musical portion of this remembrance was created at the Grande Parade du Jazz, June 10, 1978, in a program called “JAZZ CLASSIQUE,” featuring Wallace Davenport, trumpet; Freddy Lonzo, trombone; Orange Kellin, clarinet; Olivia Cook, piano; Frank Fields, string bass; Freddie Kohlman, drums — with Kenny joining them for the last two songs, BLUES and CHINATOWN, MY CHINATOWN.
I asked Orange if I could post this video and he graciously wrote, The memories came flooding back. I played a lot with Wallace’s bands in those years and we were on the George Wein festival circuit frequently. We got to play with all sorts of guest stars and Kenny was one of those. This was our first time meeting. I don’t think he knew of me, but I was very well aware of him and very impressed by his playing. I was nobody and apprehensive, to say the least, to play with the clarinet star. Kenny sounded fantastic.
He always did. Kenny performed and recorded for more than fifty years. It doesn’t seem enough. We miss him.
Writing about Kenny Davern and sharing people’s memories of him have left me wanting to share more, so I thought I might share this wonderful on-the-spot piece of musical architecture with you. The participants are Barney Bigard, Kenny, Bob Wilber, and the rather idiosyncratic Eddie Daniels, clarinet; Dick Hyman, Jack Sewing, string bass, and J.C. Heard, drums. It was performed at the Grande Parade du Jazz — known to its friends as the Nice Jazz Festival — on July 15, 1977.
CREOLE LOVE CALL is thematically as plain as you could want, but the simplicity becomes a beautiful freeing place from which to soar, to sing individual songs, to moan dark feelings and reach for the stars in the space of a chorus. This performance, for me, is intense and intensely melodic: a triumph of understanding, leaving Mr. Daniels aside for the moment.
The video also catches Kenny amusing himself and attempting to amuse the crowd — for once, without success. I know that the audience might not have had a preponderance of English-proficient people, but their absolute silence after Kenny’s patented jape is a little unnerving (surely they’d heard those names before?) and his annoyance is palpable . . . but I am glad this exchange is captured for posterity, for it summons up the whole of the much-missed Mr. Davern. But, the music. The music!
HOWARD KADISON: Sunday nights, I’d sometimes go with Davern to Ratner’s Dairy Restaurant on Second Avenue. The waiters were noted for their abrasiveness and truculence. Kenny would bait them: “How are the blintzes?” “They’re always good.” “I didn’t ask about always, I asked about NOW!” And so it would go, ending in a generous tip.
DAN BLOCK: Kenny had a mind like an encyclopedia. His knowledge not only of jazz, but archival classical recordings was amazing. My last memory was hanging out with him in New Orleans after he played in a bookstore with Bob Wilber. He held court with three or four of us for about an hour and a half. It was unforgettable.
KEVIN DORN: Something he said to me, sitting at the bar of the Cornerstone: “It’s one thing to come up with your own sound in a style that’s brand new. But to come up with your own sound in a style that’s older, that was there already, is a different and difficult challenge.” I always thought that was a deep observation and something he certainly achieved.
JAMES CHIRILLO: Every note he played had a sound as big as a house, no matter the register, and every note had an intensity that said: “This is how it’s supposed to go.” I still miss him.
MIKE KAROUB: I was playing bass in Jim Dapogny’s Chicago Jazz Band and we played opposite Davern at a show at the University of Chicago, some time between 1990-92. He might have been there with Butch Thompson or his own group. (Butch had Franz Jackson also.)
I checked into the Blackstone Hotel. Never having met Davern, I saw him outside. I walked up to him in my trench coat – Kenny looking tough in a leather coat — and said, “Uncle Ken, I need a Lucky Strike.” (Or I may have said, “Kenny, give me a Lucky Strike,” but you get the idea.) He said, “OK, man,” and handed me one. He instinctively knew I wasn’t a real hood. We chatted for a second, then later, probably at the intermission. Strangely, I don’t recall if there was a closing number with massed bands, “all hands on deck,” so I have no recollection of playing with him!
I know that when we were teenagers, I told my dear friend Jon-Erik Kellso, “If I ever meet Davern, I’m going to wear a trench coat like the Detroit mafia and demand a Lucky Strike.” I think he was bemused by our. 25 year old impetuous behavior.
Ten years later, at the Atlanta Jazz Party, after my set with Banu Gibson, I went to catch Kenny’s set and sat in front. He waved, and after the show he came down to me. I said, “Uncle Ken, I brought us some Luckies.” He had exhausted his supply (he was very dedicated) so I was in like Flynn.
“Michael, my nephew, I am so glad you could make it.” He sat down, ordered us coffee, and told stories about being on the road with Jack Teagarden.
I have no idea how he knew who I was unless Jon-Erik tipped him off (although I barely saw Jon, who was a floating “all star”) or saw the program or remembered me from Chicago. I believe he smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes (unfiltered Camels his second choice). In any case, he acted like it was the biggest deal that I came to his show. And I was really some long lost relative. I was kept too busy for the rest of the festival to see Uncle Ken. Again or ever again, as it turned out. Ordinarily, I’m not that forward but. something told me this was a once in lifetime deal and to seize the day.
MICHAEL STEINMAN: I saw him a few times when I was still in college and shy (complicated by my attempts to record every note on some variety of tape). One Sunday, I’d seen him in the late afternoon at a Your Father’s Mustache Balaban and Cats session, and then my friend and I went down to the Half Note to hear Ruby Braff. Kenny walked in, I saw him, and exuberantly said, “Kenny!” and seeing his amused expression — part “Who the hell are you?” and part suppressed hilarity, I remembered my place in the cosmos and said, “Mister Davern . . . ” and he looked at me and said, in mock-hauteur, “Oh, pardonnez-moi,” gave me a satiric look and walked away. When I saw him for the last time, in Denver, October 2006, I thought it prudent to leave that incident in the past.
And now for some delightful rare music.
The tape that follows (audio only) isn’t from my collection, but the dropouts vanish after three minutes. Recorded by Dave Frishberg, It’s the only evidence I know of Kenny Davern’s Washington Squares, a band he loved, performing at Nick’s in 1961. The repertoire is ancient; the inventiveness and energy are startling. It’s Kenny, clarinet; Johnny Windhurst, cornet; Cutty Cutshall, trombone; Dave, piano; Jack Six, string bass; Cliff Leeman, drums. I read in Edward N. Meyer’s biography of Kenny, JUST FOUR BARS, that Buzzy Drootin was the chosen drummer (imagine a world where your sub on the job is Cliff?), that Buzzy recommended Frishberg, and that Frishberg brought along Jack Six. Unusual and uplifting partners for such a band, but everyone is in exceptional form.
Over the past few months, I’ve been attempting to assemble a portrait, words and music, of Kenny Davern. He’s been the subject of an extensive biography, JUST FOUR BARS, by Edward Meyer, but I wanted to talk to musicians who had known and played with him while everyone, including me, is still around. This first part is a wonderful reminiscence of Kenny by his friend and ours, trumpeter Danny Tobias, who looks and sees, hears and remembers. At the end there’s music that will be new to you. And Part Two is on the way.
DANNY TOBIAS:
He had a reputation of being crabby, and he was all that, but he liked me, and he liked the way I played — most of the time — if he didn’t like it, he let me know . . . there was no bullshit. If I did something dumb, he would say it right there. If I screwed up an ending, he would say, “Why did you do that?” and I would explain, and he would say, “Don’t do that.” So I learned a lot from him. He didn’t pull any punches, but he genuinely liked the way I played. Once he told me I was a natural blues player, and that meant the world to me. I had a feel for it. When he said something nice, it meant a lot to me.
He introduced me to the music of Pee Wee Russell. He knew who was on every record. He’d say, “Did you ever hear those Red Allen records or the Mound City Blue Blowers from —– ?” and I’d say no, and he’d come in the next week with a cassette. Then, after the gig, we’d go out to the car, and he would smoke his Camels, and we would listen to a whole side of a tape! He was also very much into Beethoven, into classical music, in particular the conductor Furtwangler. He’d say, “Check this out,” and I’d get in his car and he’d play a whole movement from one of the symphonies. And then I started collecting recordings, mostly so I could talk to him about it. And if I heard anything, I could call him and say, “Do you know this record?” and “What do you think of this?” When he died, that was what I missed most — being able to call and ask him about this record or that record.
I’m still picking up recordings of Kenny I never heard before. Dick Sudhalter put together a concert of Kenny and Dick Wellstood at the Vineyard Theatre. It was terrific. I still get thrilled by these recordings.
I got to play with him, for about ten years, at a hotel in Princeton called Scanticon, If he wasn’t on the road, he could have that gig if he wanted it. He was there a lot — maybe half the Saturday nights. Here’s what I don’t regret. Some people say, ‘I wish I’d appreciated the time I spent with _____,” but I appreciated every night I spent with Kenny. I was in seventh heaven playing next to him.
The things I take away from him that I try to incorporate . . . He could build a solo. If he was playing three or four choruses, there was a growth. It was going somewhere. Everything would build. The tune would build. If you were in an ensemble with him, it was going forward. When I play now, he’s not here, but I try to keep that thought: build, build, build.
The other thing about him, and it’s a treasure — these aren’t my words, but somebody said he could play the melody of a song with real conviction. It would be unmistakably him. No hesitation. If he played a wrong note, it wouldn’t matter. He played with total conviction. And that’s kind of rare. I can hear other people getting distracted — it didn’t happen to him much, because he played with that sureness.
And he had more dynamic range than any clarinet player I’ve ever heard. He could play in the lower register, and I’d hear Jimmie Noone — he did that so well — in the middle register I could hear Fazola in his sound, and a thing he could do that I don’t hear anyone else do, he could soar. In an outchorus, he could play a gliss, it was the biggest sound you’d ever heard. And not just loud, but a big wide sound. Not a shrill high sound. It’s a thing I haven’t heard anyone else do. Irving Fazola had that same kind of fat sound. Who knows where that comes from? It’s a richness, I guess. Not loud, but big, Round.
He taught me how to play in ensembles. He said, “In an ensemble, don’t just leave space, but musically — ask a question and wait for the answer.” Play something that will elicit a response. And there’s nothing in the world more fun than that. You have a real dialogue going on. He’s the first person who explained that to me. People are afraid to talk to each other on the bandstand, we don’t want to hurt each other’s feelings, but he’s the first person who said, “Do that,” and it made playing in ensembles so much more fun. I can get responses from other players by setting something up. Being the lead horn player, you have to set that up. It doesn’t just happen.
He had such varied interests. He would read all kinds of books. I don’t know where he got the time. I don’t think he slept. Not just music. He would read novels. A lot of it was over my head. He was all self-taught. He could speak really good German. He could communicate really well in several languages. I always wanted to be like him, to get a touring schedule and go here and there, because it seemed very exotic to me, in my thirties, and I’m sure it wasn’t as exotic as I pictured it. He complained about everything, but I think he loved it.
On a gig, Kenny would talk to the audience . . . he would just tell stories — how he just got back from Scotland and how everything was awful, the conditions were awful, how he had to spend a night in a hotel and couldn’t use the bar. He would go on diatribes — funny, acerbic. I remember one time he was playing at Trenton State, where I went to college. I went to hear him, and he was playing in the student center, talking about the architecture and how bad it was. The audience was laughing but the administrators were a little uncomfortable. He would talk as if he were in a conversation rather than just announcing songs . . . as if he was letting you in on the inside dirt.
He really loved the final group he had, with Greg Cohen, and Tony Di Nicola, and James Chirillo. He’d been to all the jazz parties and festivals, and so on, but he got to the point where that was he wanted to do. If you hired him, he wanted to be there with his band. He was happier being the only horn. And he loved guitar — you know, after Wellstood . . . I mean he loved playing with Art Hodes and with John Bunch, but in that group he liked guitar. In that group, it was freer for him. The piano can pin you in to certain harmony rules; it can be too busy. With the guitar, he got real freedom: he could play whatever he wanted. If he wasn’t with a great piano player, he would cut them out when it was his turn to play. He didn’t like extraneous stuff. I felt bad for them sometimes, but Kenny could just play with the bass and the drums. And sound great, of course.
He had a reputation for making fun of things, but he was so good to me. He went out of his way to introduce me to records he thought I should listen to, he put me on bands where I was in over my head a little bit, and he got me playing with great guys. He couldn’t have been nicer to me.
The music: Davern, clarinet; Dick Wellstood, piano; Butch Hall, guitar; Van Perry, string bass; Eddie Phyfe, drums; Tommy Saunders, cornet; Bill Allred, trombone; Mason Country Thomas, tenor saxophone. I WANT TO BE HAPPY / WABASH BLUES / SWING THAT MUSIC. Thumbscrews, no extra charge.
JAZZ LIVES 