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.
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.
Sometimes a JAZZ LIVES post is the result of a record I’ve heard, a musician I’ve been thinking about, or a particular idea. Other times, it takes a village, which I define as members of my emotional jazz-family to make something coalesce into print. In this case, I am grateful to adopted-brothers Bernard Flegar and Mark Cantor, who may never have met in person — that’s the way my extended family works. (I also have Brothers Hal Smith and Mike Karoub: someday we can all have Thanksgiving together!) Others, less beloved, who acted as stimuli, are the late Andre Hodeir and a sour YouTube armchair critic who will not be named.
About a week ago, to celebrate George Wein’s 95th birthday, I posted an eighteen-minute video featuring Barney Bigard and friends playing at Nice, and you can see the video here. Barney was 71. He sounded beautiful.
But the first YouTube comment was a dismaying “Not Barneys finest hour ?” I gently replied that Barney couldn’t be expected to play as he had in 1940, and did take a swipe at the commenter — without correcting his punctuation, “Your comment says more about you than about him.” His vinegary response came right back: “I’m 83 and an avid jazz fan ; there’s a time to leave your instrument in its case if you can’t keep up ! Just like boxers who hang on too long ; singers who hung on to long ( Frank was a classic example) Barney would have agreed . Unrepentant !” Someone else chimed in to echo the unrepentant avid fellow.
I sighed and didn’t write any of the things I could have about the irony of people of 83 being ageist. “Don’t insult my musicians!” is my credo, and I would rather hear Lester Young in Paris in 1959 than not at all.
Then, the splendid film scholar Mark Cantor and I conversed online about the French jazz critic Andre Hodeir. I was delighted to find that I had written about Hodeir in 2011 here. In his first book, Hodeir had rhapsodized over the “romantic imagination” of Dicky Wells as displayed in his memorable 1937 recordings. Dicky then came to France in 1952, but he was no longer the player he had been. Hodeir attacked him in an essay, “Why Do They Age So Badly?” stating that Wells had no reason to keep on playing, that his work no longer met Hodeir’s standards. I saw Dicky playing splendidly in the early Seventies, but Hodeir’s criticism stung not only him but readers like myself.
Yesterday morning, the wise drummer-scholar Bernard Flegar (whose eyes are open to the good stuff) led me to something that, in the fashion of Edgar Allan Poe, had been hiding in plain sight: a video shot by Bob Byler at the 1988 Elkhart Jazz Festival, a tribute to our mutual deity Eddie Condon, two sets featuring Wild Bill Davison, Tommy Saunders, Chuck Hedges, George Masso, Marty Grosz, Dave McKenna, and (set one) Milt Hinton, Rusty Jones; (set two) John Bany, Wayne Jones — nearly two hours of extraordinary music.
Wild Bill could sometimes coast, but not here. And he was 82 and a half. Please consider that number for a moment. By the standards of Hodeir and YouTube critics, he should have stopped long before. But he’s so charged; the rest of the band, including younguns Hedges and Grosz, is also. A viewer who looks for double chins and thinning hair will find them. But the music — inventive, surprising, and fun — is anything but geriatric.
Bob Byler (with his devoted wife Ruth) shot many videos — some of them are cinematically flawed, but this one is fine.
Here’s the roadmap.
The first set [afternoon turning into evening, outdoors] offers leisurely swinging improvisations on LADY BE GOOD, SOMEDAY YOU’LL BE SORRY (Saunders, vocal), ‘S’WONDERFUL (Bill tells a joke) I’M CRAZY ‘BOUT MY BABY (Marty Grosz), IF I HAD YOU (Masso and Hedges out), INDIANA (Milt, at a beautiful tempo), NOBODY ELSE BUT ME (Masso) SKYLARK (Hedges), AM I BLUE, I NEVER KNEW.
The second set [evening, indoors}: I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT YOU’RE IN LOVE WITH ME, SEPTEMBER IN THE RAIN (at a sweet tempo), AS LONG AS I LIVE, KEEPIN’ OUT OF MISCHIEF (Masso and Hedges out), TEA FOR TWO (Masso), RUNNIN’ WILD (ending with a spectacular solo from Wayne Jones).
We listen with our ears and our hearts, not our actuarial tables, I hope.
And if anyone wants to tell me I am too old to be blogging (I started in February 2008) tell me to my face and I’ll throw my pill bottles at them. That’ll do it.
Many thanks to the true heroes, here and elsewhere: Bill, Tommy, George, Chuck, Dave, Marty, Milt, John, Rusty, Wayne, Bernard and Mark, Hal and Mike. Their life-force cheers me and gives me strength.
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.
Jazz history as presented by people who should know better is compressed into telephone poles glimpsed through the window of a speeding train: “All aboard! MAPLE LEAF RAG . . . .WEST END BLUES . . . . LADY BE GOOD . . . . COTTON TAIL . . . . KO KO . . . . KIND OF BLUE . . . . A LOVE SUPREME. Last stop, ladies and gentlemen!”
At best, an inexplicable series of distortions, omissions.
One small example of this odd perspective on the music I’ve spent my life immersed in is the discussion of the “jazz ballad.” I take it to be players or singers improvising over a composition in slower tempo, its mood romantic or melancholy or both. Of course people wanted slower tempos to dance to: THE STAMPEDE was a marvel, but you couldn’t hold your darling close to you on the dance floor at that tempo. One of the “authorities” states that the first jazz ballad performance is the Trumbauer-Beiderbecke I’M COMIN’ VIRGINIA, followed by the Mound City Blue Blowers’ ONE HOUR, 1927 and 1929, respectively. But that leaves out, for one example, Jimmie Noone’s SWEET LORRAINE and many other recordings. And, of course, recordings are only a tiny sliver of what was being performed and appreciated.
But as far as jazz ballads are concerned, I think performances of songs titled I NEED YOU and NOW THAT I’VE FOUND YOU are certainly relevant. And they have not been considered worthy of notice by those who reduce an art form to easy-to-swallow historical capsules, useful for those who need to pass final examinations.
Also what runs parallel to this “ballad hypothesis,” a statement I’ve heard recently, is the contention that Caucasian audiences liked sweet music; Afro-Americans liked hot music. We’re told that recording supervisors embraced this hypothesis as well. The exceptions proliferate: tell that to Charles Linton, Pha Terrell, Harlan Lattimore, Eva Taylor, and more. But that’s another posting.
Enough grumbling about those who theorize from a very narrow awareness. Here are two very seductive examples of category-exploding that also fall sweetly on the ear. Neither performance has lyrics, but they would be easy to invent: to me they are very satisfying unacknowledged jazz ballads.
The first is Clarence Williams’ I NEED YOU, composers credited on the label as Jackson and Williams, from May 29, 1928, performed by Clarence Williams’ Jazz Kings : Ed Allen, King Oliver, cornet’ probably Ed Cuffee, trombone; probably Albert Socarras, clarinet, alto saxophone; Clarence Williams, piano; Cyrus St. Clair, tuba:
Then, a beautiful song by Tiny Parham from the last recording session he made for Victor, November 11, 1930, NOW THAT I’VE FOUND YOU:
That lovely record contains what is, to me, a delectable unsolved mystery. The listed personnel of Tiny Parham And His Musicians is: Roy Hobson, cornet; Ike Covington, trombone; Dalbert Bright, clarinet, alto and tenor saxophone; Charlie Johnson, clarinet, alto; Tiny Parham, piano, leader; Big Mike McKendrick, banjo, guitar; Milt Hinton, brass bass; Jimmy McEndre, drums. The Victor label clearly indicates “Whistling chorus by Maurice Hendricks.” And a gorgeous twenty-four bars it is, in high style: the Red McKenzie of whistlers. A small sidelight: “Hendricks” whistles the first sixteen bars elegantly, and I find myself missing him through the bridge and elated when he returns for the final eight bars.
But who is or was Maurice Hendricks? If he is a real musician, why doesn’t his name appear in any discography? The theory that it might be young Milt Hinton (the initials are the only hint) is implausible because Milt is audibly playing brass bass — tuba, or sousaphone, what you will — throughout the record, not putting the horn down while the Whistler is so prettily doing his thing. Brian Rust and “Atticus Jazz” say that “Maurice Hendricks” is Big Mike McKendrick, and I would grant a certain aural similarity between the name and the pseudonym, but a) why would a pseudonym be needed on the label, and b) why are there apparently no other recorded examples of Big Mike whistling? Was “Maurice” a friend of the Parham band, welcomed into the studio to amaze us now, ninety years later?
My best answers for the moment are of course whimsical: “Maurice Hendricks” is really Lew Le Mar, who made the hyena and billy goat sounds for the 1927 Red Hot Peppers session, or, if you don’t think that Lew hung around Chicago for three years just to get back in the Victor studios, I propose that the Whistler is Cassino Simpson, who was capable of more than we can imagine, but that’s only because Jack Purvis was busy making many recordings in New York in November 1930.
Theorize as you will, though, the music rises above whatever we can say about it. Listen again. Thanks to Mike Karoub for his ears, to Matthew Rivera of the Hot Club of New York and especially to Charles Iselin for bringing the second recording to my attention.
James Dapogny, 2016, photograph by Laura Wyman. The show went on even with Prof’s injured hand.
I have a theory about death that even people who love me cock an eyebrow at its “sentimentality.” I believe that the spirit continues . . . not a radical idea, but I envision it as those who “die” simply move to another cosmic neighborhood, where they can visit us when they choose to. It’s a fiction, of course, but it comforts me as much as any fiction can.
The thought that I won’t see the people I love again is too painful otherwise. That I can’t email James Dapogny, make plans for an ethnic meal with him, discuss piano and music and recordings and gigs with him — or even get corrected for some grammatical error — makes me catch my breath. In two days, I will be on my way to the Evergreen Jazz Festival, where Jim and his Chicago Jazz Band played so gloriously in July 2014. The joy of being there and the sadness that he won’t be are simultaneous in my mind.
But he lives . . . not even “lives on” in music, and in our dear thoughts of him and his absence in the temporal realm.
I am proud that I stood next to Jim on more than one occasion. Here, August 2016, captured by that same Laura Wyman.
Some of his finest music of his later years was captured by my and Jim’s dear friend Laura Wyman, sole proprietor of Wyman Video — pictured here at a Dawn Giblin Trio gig — Laura sitting in on flute with Jim and Mike Karoub.
Photograph by Jeff Dunn
And here’s some particularly inspired music from Jim, Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Kurt Krahnke, string bass; Pete Siers, drums., at what was his last great concert.
HINDUSTAN, changing keys as the spirit moves everyone:
WHEN IN DOUBT, PLAY THE BLUES — a Dapogny rumination on deep things:
Some precious Thirties Ellingtonia, KISSIN’ MY BABY GOODNIGHT:
I’M SORRY I MADE YOU CRY:
Except for rare instances, Jim half-hid his sentimentality behind a mask of comedy, but I felt it come through several unforgettable times. And it might be presumptuous to think of someone who’s departed reading this blogpost, but I believe that Jim knows how deeply we miss him. . . . which makes my customary closing line seem inappropriate.
James Dapogny died yesterday. He was 78 and had been keeping cancer at bay for nine years until he could do it no longer.
Because the absence of people I love is deeply painful, I have embraced the notion that the dead don’t go away, that their temporal selves leave us but they merely move into other neighborhoods. With Jim’s death, I cannot keep that illusion afloat. There is a void much larger than his human form that will never be filled. No parade of clicked-on Facebook sad emojis can express this. And this sorrow isn’t unique to me: ask anyone who knew him, who learned from him, who savored his creativity and his company.
Prof. and still-active cellist Mike Karoub to Prof’s left. Photograph by Laura Beth Wyman, 2014.
An expansive, restlessly diligent and curious person, he had several names. When I first met him (at Jazz at Chautauqua, 2004) I timidly called him “Mr. Dapogny,” and because I was shy, my voice was low and he referred to me — just once — as “soft-voiced Professor Steinman” while we were both leafing through Thirties sheet music. Later, I bought all his records and CDs, where he was “James,” but I summoned up the courage to call him “Jim” to his face and — referring to him in the third person, I took on the affectionate coinage that Laura Beth Wyman, whom he called “my best student in thirty years,” and his dear friend, had created: “Prof.”
I will hand off to Prof.’s friend Kim Cusack for his memories:
Jim was puckish, never morose, so my first musical example is a jam-session rouser. Keep your ears on the pianist, who explodes into a solo at 4:14:
Although he was characterized as a stride pianist and he loved the music of Fats Waller and Alex Hill, he dismissed that categorization, and told me that his mentors were Stacy, Sullivan, and Morton. In the fashion of those three great individualists, his playing was full of spiky surprises — arresting commentaries that could woo and distract in the ensemble or when he accompanied a soloist. I think he found stride conventions constricting, possibly monotonous, so I hear him as a Pee Wee Russell of the piano: going his own completely recognizable ways while uplifting all around him, creating bright-sounding treble lines but also providing solidly original harmonic support and rhythmic propulsion. He was never predictable but always heroically satisfying.
But LADY BE GOOD, because it was impromptu (rain and wind made reading charts impossible) was not what Prof. liked best. He delighted in “paper,” that is, arrangements — but they were charts with plenty of breathing room for the splendid soloists he hired and nurtured. Here’s his powerfully blue version of the Ellington-Stewart MOBILE BAY, also from Evergreen 2014:
and another 2014 romper — this time, because the weather was better, the band could use Prof.’s charts:
Here is Prof. and a band in 2012 — note his dry whimsical introduction:
and a piano solo on one of the most familiar jazz ballads, uniquely Dapogny:
Jim (I have shifted to the non-academic because it feels warmer) was also terribly funny, in person and in print. David Sager says he had “a sly and delicious wit,” which all of us experienced. He was a wordsmith, a jester, a stand-up comedian, a sharp-edged deflater, a Michigan S.J. Perelman. A deadpan improvising comedian, he didn’t mug and pander on the stand, preferring to let the heartfelt music speak.
He and I exchanged emails from 2011 to October 2018: a coda from one of his:
P.S. I don’t know if you ever read the columns of humorist Dave Barry, but I did because Wayne Jones used to send me bundles of them. The ones I liked best were those entitled “Ask Mr. Language Person,” in which Barry answered usage questions ostensibly sent in by readers. One asked about rules for the use of quotation marks in small-business signs. Barry answered that quotation marks were to be used on words chosen at random. Then he gave three examples. Try Our “Pies” Try “Our” Pies “Try” Our Pies To me this is absolutely hilarious. It still makes me laugh.
My relationship with Jim grew and deepened. When I first met him, I was intimidated by his comic rapier, and when I got to know him a little better, I asked him to put it down, which he did without fuss. The more I encountered him, the more I admired him. And finally I — like everyone else who knew him — loved him.
I took him on as one of my not-so-secret spiritual fathers, even though he was only a dozen years my senior. The blend of humor and toughness (he could have shown up in a 1935 Warner Brothers picture, although not as the gangster lead) reminded me of my own father, so he was dear to me. I originally wrote, “I hope I didn’t embarrass him too much with my direct affection,” but on second thought I hope I did embarrass him: that way I would know he had received the message I was sending.
He was extremely kind, superbly generous. I had asked him to write a letter for me in support of a sabbatical I was hoping for, and I dare not read that letter now because I would not be able to write through tears. And every so often he would praise something I’d written, which would make me feel like a peculiarly graceful colossus of words and insights. (Of course, now and again, he corrected my wayward grammar, which made me wince and then rush to fix the lapse.)
Although he knew his own worth, he was infuriatingly modest. I, and then Laura, shot videos of him in performance at Jazz at Chautauqua, the Evergreen Jazz Festival, and the Cleveland Classic Jazz Party. The last email response I got from Jim — late October 2018 — concerned a trio video I had sent him to see if he would agree to my posting it. (Sometimes when I sent him videos, the answer was silence, which I could never tell whether it was “God, no!” or “I am too busy doing other things more important than considering my own performances.) His response, the names redacted in true CIA fashion, was, “OK with me, but this doesn’t scream out for preservation except by being documentation that I once weaseled my way into the company of H- and R-.”
He was always busy transcribing charts for PORK, researching new old music, and more. But I think his secret passion was in what we call, for want of a more gracious term, mentoring. Ask any musician who played or sang with him: Jon-Erik Kellso to Dawn Giblin to Mike Karoub to Erin Morris to the members of his bands. Like Ellington, he saw very clearly what strengths we had, and worked tirelessly to bolster us — offering the most gentle helping hand to make people more glorious versions of their natural selves.
One of my great pleasures, was my being able to visit him and Laura and Erin for a few days in 2016. Yes, Jim was a scholar of all things musical — not just Jelly Roll Morton and James P. Johnson’s operas — and his range was broad. When I visited Ann Arbor, the plan was that I would stay in a quietly nondescript motel, and work on my blog over breakfast (instant oatmeal from paper envelopes, and coffee) and then Jim and I, sometimes Laura along as well, would eat deliriously good ethnic food in some restaurant that only Jim knew — Indian, Korean, Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese — and the conversation would become expertly culinary as well, because he could cook, away from the piano. He was truly insightful but ready to applaud others’ insights.
I dreamed of visiting him again, but missed my chance, just as I missed the opportunity to help bring Jim’s band once again to the Evergreen Jazz Festival in Colorado.
It would please me immensely if others who knew Prof., or James, or Jim, would add their voices to this post. I will close with one of the great beautiful moments captured by video. I am particularly proud of this 2015 performance because of the lovely music and that it was recorded by my friend Laura Beth Wyman. Jim’s own FIREFLY:
The moral that James Dapogny’s life and art and generous friendship offers us is very simple. We are fireflies. At our best, we are brilliant: we trace paths along the summer night sky. But we are fragile. What can we do but live our lives so that when we depart, we are irrevocably missed? As he is.
I will eschew my usual closing — consider it here but unsaid — to send love and sorrow to Jim’s wife, Gail, to his family, to his friends, to all the people he touched.
The song IF I WERE YOU, by Buddy Bernier and Robert Emmerich, might have vanished entirely if not for memorable recordings. I feel it comes from that postage-stamp of inspiration where songwriters seized on a commonplace conversational phrase for a title and made a song out of it. I’ve not been able to find out much about it, nor has sheet music surfaced online. But it has a wonderful auditory lineage: it was recorded in quick succession — between April 29 and July 1, 1938 — by Nan Wynn with Teddy Wilson (featuring Johnny Hodges and Bobby Hackett), Billie Holiday, Fats Waller, and by Hot Lips Page’s band, although he left the vocal to one Dolores Payne.
In our time, it’s also been recorded by Dawn Lambeth and Rebecca Kilgore. Beautifully.
Now we can add warm-voiced Dawn Giblin to that list, as of August 20 of this year, where she and eminent friends performed the song at the Zal Gaz Grotto in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dawn is accompanied by Mike Karoub, cello; James Dapogny, piano; Rod McDonald, guitar; Gwen MacPhee, string bass. And, fortunately for us, this and another performance was filmed by Laura Wyman for Wyman Video.
Here’s a swing instrumental, with neatly gliding dancers Robin and Lois, Grotto regulars who obviously love to dance and love music by Dapogny and friends:
The new Person in the band (to me, at least) is the admirable string bassist Gwen MacPhee, of whom Dawn says, “I met Gwen at Wayne State University. She was in my ear training class and took me under her wing. She was the first friend I made there.” And now she’s a friend of ours.
I’m happy in New York, but I wish Ann Arbor were closer. However, it’s delightful to have Wyman Video on the scene for all of us. Laura, modestly, says she doesn’t deserve to be in the credit line with the musicians, but as a fellow videographer, I politely disagree. We may not bake the cookies, but we make it possible for you to have a taste.
The late Leroy “Sam” Parkins used to say of very special music that it got him “right in the gizzard.” Since I am not a chicken, I have serious doubts that I have a gizzard or where it might be located, but I know when music “gets” me, because I want to hear and see it over and over.
Here are three wonderful performances by the singer Dawn Giblin, pianist James Dapogny, and cellist Mike Karoub — recorded splendidly by JAZZ LIVES’ Michigan bureau chief Laura Wyman of Wyman Video on May 7, 2017. I don’t have the requisite adjectives — all exuberant — to describe the sounds of the Dawn Giblin Trio at Cliff Bell’s . . . but this is a gorgeously intuitive and swinging chamber trio that gets to the heart of the music from the first note. Professor Dapogny and Maestro Karoub are masters of swing and feeling: warmth and swing invented on the spot, and Dawn both reassures and surprises with each phrase.
Experience these wonders for yourself. Your gizzard will thank you.
First, the Harry Ruby – Rube Bloom GIVE ME THE SIMPLE LIFE, a song that many people have taken to heart, and rightly so. But if one listens closely, the bare bones of the melody are one simple rhythmic phrase, moved around for 24 of the song’s 32 bars. . . . so it needs a very subtle singer to vary the emphasis on that phrase so the song doesn’t seem mechanical. I encourage you, on your second or third listening, to pay close admiring attention to how Dawn shades and varies her phrasing so that her delivery is both conversationally familiar and full of small delightful shocks. Hear the climbing way she approaches the final bridge! (More about the song’s provenance below.)
And here’s the cheerful song — but not too fast:
The shifting densities of Dawn’s voice — emphasis without overkill, hints of gospel, blues, and folk — are delicious.
Here’s a song that makes everyone who sings or plays it comfortable: I think of Ella Fitzgerald in her girlhood, Marty Grosz, Fats Waller, Helen Ward, Rebecca Kilgore, Taft Jordan with Willie Bryant and many others. . . . Sam Stept and Sidney Mitchell’s ALL MY LIFE:
A beautiful tempo and small homages to Teddy Wilson from Professor Dapogny and that most beautiful sound, Maestro Karoub’s singing cello.
Finally, the Romberg – Hammerstein classic LOVER, COME BACK TO ME — a performance that would make indoor plants shoot up in rhythmic joy.
and now the question of provenance, although it’s not something to cause nation-wide insomnia. Consider these two pieces of evidence:
and
While you’re musing over this, consider how we can have many CDs by the Dawn Giblin Trio in exactly this formulation. It’s a dream of mine. And gratitude a-plenty not only to the musicians, but to Laura Wyman for her very fine video work.
How beautiful: a quietly impassioned reading of IF I HAD YOU by Dawn Giblin, voice; James Dapogny, pianoforte; Mike Karoub, violincello. Recorded for us by Laura Beth Wyman of Wyman Video on January 30, 2017. The sharp-eared will catch admiring echoes of WILLOW TREE and IF THE MOON TURNS GREEN, but these evocations are created with the most subtle art.
Beautifully in balance, in sound and emotion — this is one of those rare deeply egalitarian ensembles where the three players are supportive, emotive, and generous — no star turns here but sweet feeling shared and intensified. You’ve already heard a good deal (although not enough) from Professors Dapogny and Karoub on this blog, but I predict you will hear more, and admire more, of the lovely singing of Ms. Giblin.
And serious gratitude to Laura Wyman of Wyman Video, videographer to the Stars. Without her, this would have been a moving interlude, remembered only by the people performing and watching. Now we have it to enjoy more than once.
Here is a concert performance, nearly an hour, of one of my favorite chamber-jazz groups ever, the Royal Garden Trio, in a slightly amended state: Mike Karoub on cello, Brian Delaney on guitar, and sitting in for Tom Bogardus on tenor guitar and clarinet, the eminent James Dapogny on piano and trumpet. This rare delight took place at the Franke Center for the Arts, Marshall, Michigan, on Saturday, January 16, 2016.
Here are the major landmarks on this delightful musical interlude. The Royal Garden Trio lovingly presents these songs in the most affectionately complete fashion — with their verses, an almost forgotten part of the musical / theatrical presentation, even when you don’t hear the lyrics.
LINGER AWHILE [Vincent Rose]
DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF ME [ Fabian Andre, Wilbur Schwandt, Gus Kahn]
BODY AND SOUL [Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Frank Eyton, Johnny Green]
I NEVER KNEW [Gus Kahn, Ted Fio Rito]
LET’S GET AWAY FROM IT ALL [Matt Dennis, Tom Adair]
BLUE ROOM [Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart]
OL’ MAN RIVER [Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II] (beginning with stealthy grace)
CLOSE YOUR EYES [Bernice Petkere, Joe Young], as if under the lady’s window in Verona, Madrid, or perhaps Ypsilanti
SWEET SUE, JUST YOU [Victor Young, Will J. Harris] (with Joel Mabus, vocal / guitar, and hot trumpet interludes from Jim)
LAZY BONES [Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer]
SWEET GEORGIA BROWN [Maceo Pinkard, Ben Bernie, Kenneth Casey].
Had you peeked in through my window when I stumbled across this marvel, you would have seen that most odd spectacle of a man seated in front of his computer, applauding a video. It delights me so. . . .not only the three brilliant rocking soloists, but the companionable layering of the three very different but evocative instrumental voices.
The Royal Garden Trio might appear happily archaic — they make beautiful swing chamber music — but they do exist in the twenty-first century. They have, believe it or not, a Facebook page, an up-to-date band website, and three compact discs for sale as discs or downloads. Could they possibly be more hip?
As Jake Hanna often said, “PAY ATTENTION!” I direct that summons to PBS, to NPR, to the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall . . . and I am sure you can add other names to this list. Help people find out about the delicious phenomenon that is the Royal Garden Trio.
Laura Wyman, completely focused on the task at hand
WYMAN VIDEO is the new brainchild and business venture of Laura Wyman, whom you should know as the CEO and head videographer of JAZZ LIVES’ Michigan Bureau, headquartered in Ann Arbor. She has taste and a dilligent perfectionism.
Before there was a WYMAN VIDEO, Laura was bringing us video of such wonders as this:
ST. LOUIS BLUES (W.C.Handy; arr James Dapogny) – Erin Morris, Brittany Armstrong Morton, Sarah Campbell, Rachel Bomphray & Hayden Nickel (dancers). Tom Bogardus (cl), Paul Finkbeiner (tpt), Chris Smith (tbn), James Dapogny (pno), Shannon Wade (bass), Rod McDonald (bjo) & Van Hunsberger (drms). Zal Gaz Grotto, Ann Arbor, Mich. 6-21-15.
and this gorgeous interlude:
FIREFLY (James Dapogny) – The James Dapogny Quartet. James Dapogny (pno), Mike Karoub (cello), Rod McDonald (gtr) & Kurt Krahnke (bass). Kerrytown Concert House, Ann Arbor, Mich. 1-10-15.
But WYMAN VIDEOreally came in to its own at the 2015 Allegheny Jazz Party, with evidence right here:
CHERRY (Don Redman) – Dan Block (cl & bass cl), Andy Stein (vln), Scott Robinson (bari sax & tarogato), James Dapogny (pno), Marty Grosz (gtr & leader) & Hal Smith (drms). Allegheny Jazz Party, Cleveland, Ohio. 9-11-15. Filmed by Laura Beth Wyman for Wyman Video.
I AIN’T GOT NOBODY from the same session:
All of this would suggest that WYMAN VIDEOis rather like JAZZ LIVES, and it is true that Laura is deeply involved in hot music and swing dance. But her range is far broader than mine: Laura has been capturing speakers, readings, weddings, and other occasions. I don’t think she goes to traffic court or other gloomy events, but I know she’s captured for posterity graduations, parties, swing dances, and other occasions where people gather happily.
So I urge you — if you live in or near Ann Arbor, Michigan, or if you want an expert videographer, contact Laura Wymanfor videography that will help you have swinging memories. And if you are not on Facebook, you can certainly contact her at wymanvideoa2@gmail.com.
In some states, possession of even a small amount of forbidden substance is a crime. But — thankfully — few regimes have currently criminalized RHYTHM, so the James Dapogny Quartet is safe to swing out. It’s delightful to hear a group of improvisers take on I GOT RHYTHM in its natural plumage, since the chord changes have become “adapted” and “adopted” for so many swing originals. The only problem here is that the Gershwin title is singular. For this group, it has to be WE’VE GOT RHYTHM, and they are decisive about the ownership of same.
James Dapogny, piano; Mike Karoub, cello; Rod McDonald, guitar; Kurt Krahnke, string bass. Recorded by Laura Beth Wyman at the Glacier Hills Senior Living Community, Ann Arbor, Michigan, on June 26, 2015. Two other marvels from this session can be marvelled at here.
Laura has set up a Facebook page for her video efforts celled simply Wyman Video. If you admire her generous efforts, why not “like” the page?
It could be the best slightly-under-three-minutes you will spend this year. And Hank Duncan sends his love.
Though it’s a fickle age, beauty can always rescue us if we know where to look. And how to listen. This spiritual panacea is brought to us by James Dapogny, piano; Mike Karoub, cello; Rod McDonald, guitar; Kurt Krahnke, string bass. Recorded by Laura Beth Wymanon June 26, 2015, at Glacier Hills Senior Living Community, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Fats Waller’s declaration of high fidelity:
Irving Berlin’s celebration of bliss (here with a little DROP ME OFF IN HARLEM nuance at the start and a little Spanish binge on the bridge):
I am not a student of the dance (ask my former ballroom dance instructor) so I cannot annotate the various gestures and motives that Erin Morris and Nathan Bugh so sweetly and nimbly offer us on their exploration of MY DADDY ROCKS ME — performed with the James Dapogny Quartet.
I know it’s hard work to look so casual. But for me, while I am admiring their hilarious slinky grace, their obvious joy in movement, I see an entire emotional drama, the subtle shifts that take place within and through a pairing, the way two individuals become a couple, echoing, mimicking, mirroring, delighting. This too-brief interlude seems a novel without pages, an opera without words. A play about play. Visual and mobile purring.
Details? MY DADDY ROCKS ME (J. Bernie Barbour; arr James Dapogny) – Erin Morris (dance), Nathan Bugh (dance), Mike Karoub (cello), James Dapogny (piano), Rod McDonald (guitar), Joe Fee (bass). Improvised social dance from Erin Morris & Her Ragdolls’ JASSAFRASS show. College Theater, Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan, May 8, 2015. Filmed by Laura Beth Wyman.
I find it also very touching that this dear interlude is described as “Improvised social dance,” for isn’t that what we are doing every moment of our lives on the planet? If only we could perform our various curlicues with as much grace as Erin and Nathan do here, this world would blissfully swing, and grinning would be the rule rather than the exception. I hail them — and James, Rod, Mike, and Joe — as uncredentialed spiritual teachers — the best ones, teaching us by example that existence is too gorgeously large to be put in to words.
Parenthetically, a friend affectionately needled me, “Hey, Michael, JAZZ LIVES is becoming the Official Erin Morris Lovefest Site, isn’t it?” And I immediately said, “Wow, you say the nicest things!”
As a postscript, a laginappe, an amuse-bouche or what you will, here’s everybody’s rollicking get-off-the-stage to music adapted liberally from a Fats Waller song:
The Felons of Swing, in addition to the Band, are Erin Morris (dance/choreography), Nathan Bugh, Brittany Armstrong-Morton, Sarah Campbell, Rachel Bomphray, Hayden Nickel.
To set the mood, Bessie Smith singing NEW ORLEANS HOP SCOP BLUES, from where I take my title. (It’s especially appropriate because of the welcome attention paid Miss Bessie, and this track counteracts the prevailing impression of her as an artist who lived in darkness and sadness.)
She sings most convincingly about the joys of gliding, sliding, prancing, dancing. But that’s only sound. We need more.
Let’s have some thrilling audio-visual evidence here from Erin Morris and friends, performed and recorded on May 8, 2015.
AIN’T ‘CHA GOT MUSIC? (by James P. Johnson) performed by Erin Morris and Brittany Armstrong with vocal by Nathan Bugh. Instrumental support by James Dapogny, piano; Mike Karoub, cello; Rod McDonald, guitar; Joe Fee, string bass. And they offer the verse:
LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME, by Erin and Nathan, a performance that is clearly more about dancing love than making exits:
and EXACTLY LIKE YOU, by Nathan and the Quartet:
I think of these performances — aurally, visually — as happiness in its purest form embodied. When I am sad ad I need an aural reassurance that the world is a generous place, I put on the music of Louis Armstrong and Gordon Jenkins.
When I want to look at something to remind me how joyously expansive life is, I look at the videos of Erin Morris and her Ragdolls / James Dapogny and friends. Works for me, and it can work for you too. These three videos come from Erin Morris & Her Ragdolls’ JASSAFRASS show: recorded for us by Laura Beth Wyman.
If you feel the spirit, why not truck on down to Erin Morris and Her Ragdollsand click the button marked “Like.” Costs nothing; no obligation; it makes these hard-working joy-spreaders happier. And you can see more life-affirming videos there as well.
Has today been surprisingly rough, friend? Did you turn away from the milk you were heating on the stove to find it had taken on new life as Vesuvius? Are your ears still hurting from what someone said to you last night? Did the Havanese puppy you bent down to pat on the street nip your hand? Is your performance rating 10 . . . but the scale is now 1 to 100? Are you being blamed for something you didn’t do? Did someone siphon out all your emotional energy while you were sleeping? Have all the treats been moved to a shelf higher than you can reach? Have the rules of the board game been changed while you went to get the popcorn?
You know the feelings. No over-the-counter cream has yet been invented to take away those stings.
But at JAZZ LIVES, we offer an infallible transfusion of joy. Two, in fact. Created by skilled practitioners. One tincture is in honor of an ancient dance; the other celebrates a noted explorer (and Chu Berry, let his name ne’er be forgot).
Healing tincture one:
And its counterpart:
Dancers: Erin Morris, Brittany Armstrong-Morton, Rachel Bomphray, Sarah Campbell. (For more information about Erin Morris and her Ragdolls, visithere, and then, feeling the spirit, here.JAZZ LIVES will soon be able to offer information for those wishing to form local chapters of the Erin Morris and her Ragdolls International Fan Club.
Those who feel properly moved are encouraged to “like” the Erin Morris and Her Ragdolls Facebook page. JAZZ LIVES readers who show proof of a properly completed “like” of this page will be entitled to a free lifetime subscription to JAZZ LIVES.
Musicians: , Mike Karoub (cello), James Dapogny (piano), Rod McDonald (guitar / banjo), and Joe Fee (bass). Nathan Bugh sings on BALLIN’. College Theater, Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan. May 8, 2015. Filmed by Laura Beth Wyman.
A first helping of joy can be experienced here. And more is promised, which is indeed joyous news.
The instructions on the prescription are very simple: REPEAT AS NEEDED. ay
Any universe is a beautiful place that has such brightly-shining people in it, including the unseen woman behind the camera.
Here are the details . . . the song, the dancers, the musicians, the occasion.
ALL GOD’S CHILLUN GOT RHYTHM (Walter Jurmann, Gus Kahn, Bronisław Kaper; arranged by James Dapogny).
Dancers: Erin Morris, Brittany Armstrong-Morton, Rachel Bomphray, Sarah Campbell, Hayden Nickel, Nathan Bugh, Patrick Johnston, Chris Glasow, Ryan Morton, Bryant Stuckey. (For more information about Erin Morris and her Ragdolls, visithere, and then, feeling the spirit, here. JAZZ LIVES will soon be able to offer information for those wishing to form local chapters of the Erin Morris and her Ragdolls International Fan Club.
Musicians: , Mike Karoub (cello), James Dapogny (piano), Rod McDonald (guitar), and Joe Fee (bass). College Theater, Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan. May 8, 2015. Filmed by Laura Beth Wyman.
Bless each of them . . . so generously blessing us with joy. Tell your friends.
I’ve been around the world in a plane. But I’ve never been to Ypsilanti, Michigan. However, this event is exerting a powerful pull west for the evening of May 8, 2015, at 8 PM.
No, it doesn’t feature Little Orphan Annie figurines or those most beloved, apparently boneless, felines.
Erin Morris and and her Ragdolls are a splendid improvisatory jazz dance group. And that requires some explanation. For me, most “jazz dance” is either wildly unfettered — tap dancers rioting percussively — or stylized, sometimes stiffly choreographed exercises performed to jazz music but without much flexibility.
Erin and the Ragdolls (do I see a comic book series, syndication rights, and real money? Any hip investors?) are quite different. They create their own loose-limbed but precise world. It is easy to imagine them as the twenty-first century reincarnation of sisters / friends jiving in the basement to the new blue-label Decca or OKeh, and to the casual eye they might look more like kids who are following similar impulses, but their choreography masterfully fools the eye: it looks as if it was just thought up on the spot, but anyone who’s ever done a right rock turn can tell that their routines are intelligently planned while appearing improvised. Just like jazz music, as a matter of fact. Roadmaps plus passion, if you know the lingo.
I delight in the idea of an “all-girl vintage jazz dance company.” It gives me hope for our civilization.
Here’s a sample, and an inspiring one, of what JASSAFRASS will be all about. Cross-species, too, as the Ragdolls work it out to the ALLIGATOR CRAWL:
The clip is from 2014; the dancers are Erin Morris, Brittany Morton, Sarah Campbell, and Rachel Bomphray. The musicians in the James Dapogny Quartet are James Dapogny, Mike Karoub, Rod McDonald, and Joe Fee. Videography by Richard Peng.
JASSAFRASS features live hot jazz from the incomparable James Dapogny Quartet, in a full-length show that unveils fresh, exciting dance numbers from the Ragdolls and scintillates with special guest dancer Nathan Bugh, all the way from New York City. The College Theater at WCC provides amazing acoustics and cozy raked seating for your unfettered viewing enjoyment.
Tickets $15 in advance (see your local Ragdoll), $20 at the door.
In case you are confused by all this, here is a visual aid. This is what the thing in itself — a ticket to the show — will look like. Don’t you covet this paper and what it offers you?
If THE SPEAKEASY QUARTET is new to you, you might conclude that it was a vocal group, or a faux-Twenties ensemble, heavy on costume and affectation. Happily, you’d be misinformed:
Sounds very nice, doesn’t it?
A friend, knowing of my delighted reverence for the playing of jazz cellist Mike Karoub (with the Royal Garden Trio and most recently in James Dapogny’s hot string ensemble) said, “Karoub is an integral part of this quartet. Have you heard them?” Thus, the Speakeasy Quartet — originally a trio, formed in 2009 by rhythm guitarist — tenor rhythm guitarist — Hugh Leal, with Karoub, soprano saxophonist Ray Manzerolle, and pianist Mike Karloff.
They are unusual but they are also rewarding — mere novelty in music doesn’t win me over. The odd instrumentation in itself would mean little if the players weren’t lyrical and swinging, which they are. Ray Manzerolle is new to me, but I am glad to know him. Often the soprano saxophone becomes at best an assertive instrument, at worst an assault weapon. Ray has a delightfully centered tone, a sweet but not sugary tone, and a lightness of approach that reminds me happily of (still with us and playing) Robert Sage Wilber. I know Ray, like Bob, draws inspiration from Bechet, but he does not adopt Bechet’s violent romanticism — and volume.
Pianist Mike Karloff is a quiet but essential member of the quartet, offering lilting melodic lines, subtle harmonic support and a modern Hines / Wilson commentary and comping. Hugh Leal’s tenor guitar — the instrument of Eddie Condon and a young Marty Grosz — offers airy but strong support and a wonderful light swing. He’s been playing since 1970, and his pulse never falters.
I think Karoub is one of the great multi-taskers: a swinging rhythm player without the ponderousness one sometimes finds in traditional string bass, then adding a wondrous light eloquence on swinging bowed cello. Think of Casals sneaking uptown to take lessons from Milt Hinton, and you have Karoub. The Quartet’s sound is, be definition, silken and airy, but it’s not effete: they swing, and they swing effectively.
The group’s repertoire is a mixture of Bechet-associated classics — PREMIER BAL, EGYPTIAN FANTASY, INDIAN SUMMER — three very pleasing Manzerolle originals — TAKE ME UPTOWN TO DOWNTOWN, A LETTER FROM BECHET, CAFE ROYALE — and jazz classics covering a wide range — THE MOOCHE, EAST ST. LOUIS TOODLE-OO, JUBILEE, WRAP YOUR TROUBLES IN DREAMS, WILLIE THE WEEPER, WILD MAN BLUES.
Here’s the group’s Facebook page. And their website, where you can hear more sound samples from the CD.
The first pressing of the Speakeasy Quartet is sold out, but there is a special limited second run: the price is $18.00 including postage. Send checks made out to Hugh Leal — to Hugh Leal, P.O. Box 681, Detroit, MI 48231. And Hugh tells me that the second SEQ CD is coming out at the end of this June.
And here’s another taste — sweetly sad instead of frolicsome, Gordon Jenkins’ BLUE PRELUDE:
James Dapogny of Ann Arbor, Michigan, is properly known as a pianist, arranger, bandleader, jazz scholar, culinary explorer, and wit, among other things.
But from the performance you are about to see, it’s clear that he is insufficiently recognized as a composer. FIREFLY is a haunting melody with harmonies that never seem formulaic. It seems new yet instantly familiar, going its own ways without being consciously and distractingly innovative. I think of a three-way conversation between Professor Dapogny, Brahms, and Alec Wilder — sweet lyricism that’s never sentimental and continues to swing in its own gentle fashion:
This performance comes from a magical concert of January 10, 2015, at the Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor, blessedly captured by Laura Beth Wyman. The superb players are Mike Karoub, cello; Rod McDonald, guitar; Kurt Krahnke, string bass. For more from this concert, click here for uplifting performances of THAT OLD FEELING, RUSSIAN LULLABY, and MY DADDY ROCKS ME. And there is more to come.
JAZZ LIVES 