The clarinetist / saxophonist / arranger Frank Teschemacher, a brilliant individualistic voice in Chicago jazz of the late Twenties, didn’t live to see his twenty-sixth birthday. Everyone who played alongside him spoke of him with awe. Even though the recorded evidence of his idiosyncratic personality amounts to less than ninety minutes, he shines and blazes through any ensemble.
In celebration of what would have been Tesch’s centenary, Marty Grosz put together a tribute at the September 2006 Jazz at Chautauqua weekend. It wasn’t a series of note-for-note copies of his recordings (this would have horrified the Austin High Gang) but a sincere hot effort to capture Tesch’s musical world — with great success. I was there with a moderately-concealed digital recorder, and couldn’t bear that this set would only be a memory, so what follows is my audio recording.
Marty Grosz, guitar, vocal, commentary; Duke Heitger, trumpet; Dan Barrett, trombone; Dan Block, Scott Robinson, reeds; James Dapogny, piano; Vince Giordano, string bass, tuba, bass saxophone; Pete Siers, drums. (The voice you’ll hear discoursing with Marty is that of the late Joe Boughton, creator of this and many other festivals.)
PRINCE OF WAILS (Dapogny transcription / arrangement) / BULL FROG BLUES (JD arr) / WAILING BLUES (JD arr) / I MUST HAVE THAT MAN (possibly Marty’s arrangement) / TRYING TO STOP MY CRYING (possibly Marty arrangement, his vocal, glee club) / SUGAR (possibly Marty arrangement, his vocal) / COPENHAGEN (with Marty’s Indiana etymology / story of Boyce Brown getting fired for talking about reincarnation). Thanks to Chris Smith for his assistance.
This post is in honor of Missy Kyzer, who was fascinated by Tesch and his world a long time ago. See her work here and here.
I think of this as the Jazz at Chautauqua Thursday Night All-Star Jam Band, and after you hear and see them for nine minutes I predict you will understand why.
Thursday night sessions, before the jazz weekend began, were loose swinging affairs in the Athenaeum Hotel parlor, where we sat at the same level as the musicians (rather than below them in a large ballroom) and all kinds of good things happened, as they did on September 20, 2012.
Here are Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Scott Robinson, cornet; Dan Barrett, trombone; Bob Reitmeier, clarinet; Alex Hoffman, tenor saxophone; Rossano Sportiello, piano; Jon Burr, string bass; Pete Siers, drums, romping on I’LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS, which begins in the most sweetly exalted 1936 Teddy Wilson style. Imperishable. I can’t watch it only once. And to list all the delights would take away your pleasure in finding them, so get ready to compile your own list of astonishments:
That kind of performance — expertise, wit, enthusiasm, joy — happens often when musicians of this caliber gather and the cosmic vibrations are right, but to me this is a perfectly memorable interlude, one I treasure.
Thanks to the musicians and to the late Joe Boughton, the emperor of rare songs, swing, and good feeling.
Here’s a location in space and time where the past and present embrace, each retaining all their distinguishing features. That is, Marty Grosz, guitar, vocal, and erudition, leading an ensemble at the 2014 Cleveland Classic Jazz Party in the song first introduced by Ethel Waters, SUGAR, that was then taken up by the Austin High Gang for their 1927 record date as “McKenzie and Condon’s Chicagoans.”
The noble creators are Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Dan Barrett, trombone; Dan Levinson, tenor saxophone; Scott Robinson, taragoto; James Dapogny, piano; Jon Burr, string bass; Pete Siers, drums.
It’s clearly impromptu (but all the great performances were in some part) from Marty’s heartfelt rubato solo chorus to the split-chorus solos with special reverence for James Dapogny’s piano in glittering solo and supportive ensemble. It’s confectionary. And memorable.
Incidentally, if, after enjoying Marty and his pals, you need more sugar in your bowl, try Ethel’s version, Louis’, and the Lee Wiley – Muggsy Spanier – Jess Stacy one. And of course the McKenzie-Condon version, which is playing in my mental jukebox as I type. Then follow your own impulses to heated sweetness.
My time machine won’t go back to 1935 and the Reno Club, nor to Fifty-Second Street, no matter how hard I twist the dials, but it does go back to 1970 — audio only — and 2009 — adding video. One of the great pleasures of this century for me was being allowed to bring my video camera to what was Jazz at Chautauqua and then took on different names and a different venue. We miss it terribly. But some wonderful evidence remains.
It was held during a long weekend late in September at the Athenaeum Hotel in Chautauqua, New York, and its founder Joe Boughton had certain rituals in scheduling. Friday afternoon, solo piano recitals in the parlor; Friday night, Saturday afternoon and evening, and Sunday afternoon were for organized sets in the large ballroom.
A session in the ballroom — opening or closing ceremonies, c. 2012.
But Thursday night was informal, because musicians and guests arrived as they could — for me, it was about a seven-hour trip there whether I drove or flew to Buffalo — but certain rituals were observed. I believe the open bar opened itself around 5 PM, and the line for the buffet dinner began also. At around 6, music began in the smaller back room, and I learned quickly to bring my plate, my knapsack of video equipment there rather than dining like a civilized person at a table among others. (“I can always eat, but I can’t miss this set,” I reminded myself.)
I’m not exaggerating when I say some of the best musical moments of this century, for me, took place on those Thursday evenings. Sometimes the piano wasn’t perfect, or I had to sit behind friends and shoot video with their heads as part of the scenery, but those sessions are joyous memories. And they exist to be shared with the faithful. The little ad hoc groupings didn’t have official leaders, but someone might suggest a tune that everyone knew, they would agree on a ley and tempo, and magic would happen.
It did on Thursday, September 19, 2013, thanks to Dan Levinson, clarinet and tenor saxophone; Andy Schumm, cornet; John Sheridan, piano; Kerry Lewis, string bass; Pete Siers, drums. They did three classic standards; they had fun; so did we.
A SAILBOAT IN THE MOONLIGHT, which suggests what might have happened if Bix had lived into 1937:
I think of these five players as Idiosyncratic Swing Lyricists, singers on their instrument who play beautifully with others but are full of surprises. Possibly Joe and Chuck had done other club dates with Frank, being heroes of the New York scene, but Larry and Pete lived elsewhere, so it was only the genius or whimsical taste (you pick) of Joe Boughton that brought them together for this brief interlude. For those unfamiliar with these artists and craftsmen, Joe played trumpet and flugelhorn; Chuck, alto saxophone (although doubling other reeds); Larry, piano; Frank, string bass; Pete, drums. Happily, Frank and Pete are still with us, doing what they do so splendidly.
I recorded this with my illegal digital recorder, so there will be audio artifacts (the fancy name for extraneous noises) but I think it is a treasure. Alas, you can’t see the five of them grinning at each other and listening intently: take it from me, their pleasure spread throughout the huge ballroom.
I’M BEGINNG TO SEE THE LIGHT / AUTUMN LEAVES / THERE IS NO GREATER LOVE / LOTUS BLOSSOM (Eanet-Wilson) / SAMBA DE ORFEU // Jazz at Chautauqua, the last weekend in September, 2006.
I will now indulge myself in a few ruminations about the five heroes. I cannot picture Frank Tate without a grin on his face, either ready to break into laughter or just coming out of it, perhaps at something absurd or coincidental or weird. Pete Siers is the master of the unexpected gesture that comes out perfectly, on the drums and off: a red George Wettling candle is only one of the great gifts he has bestowed. I miss them both — and hope for reunions somewhere, sometime soon.
I never spoke with Larry Eanet in person, but remember explicitly one of his beautiful sentences (his touch on the piano and in prose were similarly beautiful): recalling his early jazz epiphany — someone had given him the Columbia 78 album of Louis and Earl. “It hit me,” he wrote, “like Cupid’s arrow.” Of late, I have been listening to his solo recordings for JUMP: lovely and beyond.
I saw Chuck Wilson up close a number of times — occasionally with an assorted group of musicians playing in the afternoon in a particularly rowdy basement, once or twice at The Ear Inn — and often my camera and its propensity to record his work for posterity made him ill at ease, and he would frown at me as if he was mildly in pain or something smelled “putrid-like,” and say, “Awwww, Michael, I’d really rather you didn’t,” and I’d say, “But you played so beautifully!” and once in a while he allowed himself to be convinced. He wasn’t annoyed, just — in his own way — shy.
Joe Wilder, although the most courtly of gentlemen (I have a few of his handwritten notes) was in his own way boyish — in that he said what he felt, respectfully and wittily, but people like me (“civilians” to some) he treated as equals, as friends. His absolute refusal to construct barriers, whether he was at an airport when we were waiting to fly to Buffalo and telling me of his morning’s stomach distress, or whether I saw him be completely delighted to meet someone he hadn’t expected to meet. That joy, that openness, bubbles through his playing, and I think at gatherings like Jazz at Chautauqua, he could be among friends and admirers, play the music that made him happy. It certainly made us feel sky-high.
Marvels from rare individualists, music and memories I cherish.
I’ve written elsewhere about the intense pleasures of the informal Thursday-night sessions at Jazz at Chautauqua. “Informal,” however, took on new meaning when the Emperor of Chautauqua, Joe Boughton, was involved and well: even in relaxed settings, he deplored the aimlessness sometimes prevalent at “jam sessions,” which would lead to his strongest aversion — musicians playing over-familiar repertoire. In my mind’s ear, I can hear Joe’s voice, although not on this, my sub rosa audio tape of one of several sets, and can envision him, a glass of Dewar’s in his hand, listening and observing with deep appreciation. As well he might . . .
Joe’s sterling idea was to have a quartet: trumpet, cornet, piano, drums — the sort of thing one might have heard at an after-hours session, but of course the intent was friendly rather than competitive, since Duke Heitger (trumpet) and Randy Reinhart (cornet) are allied in mutual admiration. Pete Siers rocked the room, as he always does, on the drums. And later Frank Tate set up his string bass and joined in. Yes, there are the usual extraneous noises (a few seconds of surrealistic “clapping along,” chatter, and some tubercular coughing) but if you were in the room you might have heard some of them.
I’m posting this now not only because it is both a wonderful memory and a wonderful experience, but in honor of the one musician who’s not around to enjoy the applause, the splendid pianist John Sheridan, who left us this year. He shines; he sparkles; he gets in no one’s way; he holds up the building by being his own multi-colored swing orchestra.
The songs are JAZZ ME BLUES / I’VE GOT THE WORLD ON A STRING / I FOUND A NEW BABY / A BRIEF ETUDE / JUST YOU, JUST ME:
Remembering that I was there is a great pleasure; being able to share this music with you is even greater.
Some nine years after this performance, I think of my immense good fortune at being “there,” and being able to document these moments. In those nine years, I thought now and again, “I’m going to save these for my retirement,” and now I can say, “Hey, I’m retired! Let the joys commence.”
These two performances — perhaps from a SONGS OF 1928 set? — are accomplished, joyous, and hilarious — created by musicians who can Play while they are Playing and nothing gets lost, nothing is un-swung. For instance: the bass clarinet and taragoto figures created on the spot by Scott Robinson and Dan Block behind Dan Barrett’s DIGA solo — Louis and Duke applaud, but so does Mack Sennett. The jubilant expert Joy-Spreaders are Marty Grosz, guitar and arrangements; Jon Burr, string bass; Pete Siers, drums; Rossano Sportiello, piano; Duke Heitger, trumpet; Dan Barrett, trombone; Scott Robinson, tenor saxophone, taragoto; Dan Block, clarinet, bass clarinet.
Ask yourself, “Who’s wonderful? Who’s marvelous?” and the answer is of course MISS ANNABELLE LEE:
and another hit (I hear Irving Mills’ vocalizing) DIGA DIGA DOO:
I feel better than I did ten minutes ago. You, too, I hope. Marty and everyone else in these performances are still with us: talk about good fortune, doubled and tripled.
James Dapogny at Jazz at Chautauqua, September 2014. Photograph by Michael Steinman.
I am never sure how closely the audience at a live performance is paying attention to the details of the music being created in front of them. Because I have spent a long time considering the subtleties of this holy art, I believe I hear and see more near-collisions than those who (happily) absorb only the outlines of the music.
I’m not boasting: my over-attentiveness is like being the person at the movies who can notice that a character went out the door in one scene with a green scarf and when we see her in the next shot — no scarf. . . not exactly like having perfect pitch, but the analogy might work.
Today, I am going to show-and-tell an experience that I happened to capture for posterity (or, perhaps, “for posterior”). I present it not to embarrass the musicians I revere, but to praise their collective resilience, ingenuity, and perseverance. In this case, that redemption in 4/4 is because of my hero, Professor James Dapogny, who might have cocked a skeptical eyebrow at what I am doing and said, “Michael, do you really need to do this?” and I would have explained why.
For those who already feel slightly impatient with the word-offering, I apologize. Please come back tomorrow. I’ll still be at it, and you will be welcome.
An uncharitable observer might consider the incident I am about to present and say, “Well, it’s all Marty Grosz’s fault.” I would rather salute Marty: without a near-disaster, how could we have a triumphant transformation? Or, unless Kitty escapes from her basket and climbs the tree, how can she be rescued by the firemen? Precariousness becomes a virtue: ask any acrobat.
But this is about a performance of I WISHED ON THE MOON that Marty and Company attempted at Jazz at Chautauqua on a late morning or early afternoon session in September 2008, along with Duke Heitger, trumpet; Dan Block, clarinet and tenor saxophone; Chuck Wilson, alto saxophone; Dan Barrett, trombone; Professor Dapogny, piano; Marty, guitar and vocal; Vince Giordano, string bass; Pete Siers, drums. The amateurish camera work in bright sunshine is evidence that it was one of my sub rosa escapades: I was using a Flip camera and trying to not get caught by the authorities.
We know Marty as a peerless work of nature: guitarist, singer, wit, artist, vaudevillian. But many might not be aware that one of his great talents is arranging. Yes, he can uplift an impromptu session on BACK IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD, but he loves the effects that can be created by any ensemble with directions sketched out on manuscript paper and then hastily explained on the spot: “No repeats!” “jump to letter D,” “trumpet break at the start of the last chorus,” and so on. Marty works hard on these things, and his earliest recordings — although he dismisses them as “‘prentice work” — show him in pursuit of the ideal: swinging, varied, surprising, effective.
But he is happier with pen and pencil than with the computer, so a Marty score is handwritten, in calligraphy that is italic, precise, lovely, but not as easy to read (especially in dim stage light, seen for the first time, without rehearsal) as the printed scores many musicians are used to in this century.
Thus, the possibility of chaos. Thus, the possibility of triumph.
In the recording studio, when things start to go awry, musicians used to look at each other and break into a sort of Twenties near-hokey jamming, away from the score, and the “take” would end in laughter. A “breakdown,” the recording engineer would call it. Or the engineer would give a piercing whistle, to say, “Let’s start over.” You can hear this on “rejected takes” by Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, and many other jazz heroes, that have been saved over the decades. They are reassuring proof that our jazz-deities are human, that people get off on the wrong foot, that someone missed a cue or made a mistake.
In performance, though, in front of an audience, musicians do not want to stop and say, “We loused this up. Let’s start over,” although I have seen it happen: it is the equivalent of Groucho speaking directly to the audience in a film, “breaking through the fourth wall,” and it is always surprising.
But back to our musical and heroic interlude. I WISHED ON THE MOON is made famous by Billie Holiday, but it is not by any means a classic, a standard, part of “the repertoire” so often played that musicians perform it with full confidence (take AS LONG AS I LIVE as an example of the second kind). MOON has its own twists and traps for the unwary. The very expert musicians in this band, however, had at most been given a minute or two before the set to know the tune list and to glance at the manuscripts Marty had given them — roadmaps through the treacherous landscape. But since everyone on this bandstand is a complete professional, with years of sight-reading and experience, it would not have been expected that they needed rehearsal to play a song like MOON.
That Marty gives directions to this crew before they start suggests to me that they hadn’t seen his score before, nor would they stand in front of the audience studying it and discussing it. Professionals don’t want to give the impression that they are puzzled by any aspect of their craft while the people who have paid to see and hear them are waiting for the next aural delicacy to be served.
Thus, Professor Dapogny, who “knew the score,” plays his four-bar introduction with verve and assurance. He knows where he is. But the front line is faced with a score that calls for Dan Barrett, master melodist, to play the theme while the reeds back him up, and Dan Block, another sure-footed spellbinder, plays the bridge neatly. Marty has his eyeglasses on — to read his own chart — and he essays a vocal, trusting to memory to guide him through the mostly-remembered lyrics, turning his lapses into comedy, more Fats than Billie. While this is unrolling, the Professor’s rollicking supportive accompaniment is enthralling, although one has to make an effort to not be distracted by Marty’s vocalizing.
I feel his relief at “having gotten through that,” and lovely choruses by Duke Heitger and Dan Block, now on tenor saxophone, follow. However, the performance has a somewhat homemade flavor to it — that is, unless we have been paying attention to the Professor’s marking the chords and transitions in a splendidly rhythmic way: on this rock, he shows us, we can build our jazz church. He has, in the nicest and most necessary way, taken charge of the band.
At this point, my next-seat neighbor (there by chance, not connection) decides she needs more lemon or a napkin; her entrance and sudden arising are visually distracting, even now.
But, at around 3:55, the Professor says — with notes, not words — that he himself is going to climb the ladder and rescue Kitty; he is going to turn a possibly competent-but-flawed performance into SOMETHING.
And does he ever! — with a ringing phrase that causes both Marty and Dan Block to turn their heads, as if to say, “Wow, that’s the genuine article,” and the performance stands up, straightens its tie, brushes the crumbs off its lap, and rocks. Please go back and observe a thrilling instant: a great artist completely in the moment, using everything he knows to focus a group of adult creators towards a desired result that is miles above what would have resulted if he had blandly played an ordinary accompaniment.
And you thought only Monk danced during his performances? Watch Marty, joyously and goofily, respond to what his friend Jim has made happen. After that, the band must decipher Marty’s swing hieroglyphics, his on-the-spot directions, “Play a fill!” and someone — to cover up a blank spot — whistles a phrase, and the performance half-swings, half-wanders to its conclusion. Relief sweeps the bandstand.
These five minutes are highly imperfect, but also heroic: great improvisers making their courageous way through territory where their maps are ripped, unreadable, and incomplete — refusing to give up the quest.
If you need to understand why I have written so much about Professor Dapogny, why his absence is a huge void in my universe and that of others who knew and love him, watch this performance again for his masterful individualistic guidance: Toscanini in a safari jacket. Completely irreplaceable, modeling joy and courage all at once.
Preparing to write this post, I needed to know, so I spent a few minutes while my coffee cooled, inquiring of Google, “Where is Hindustan located?” And finally the reliable Encyclopedia Britanica (much more hip than the World Book Encyclopedia) of my childhood genially answered:
Hindustan, (Persian: “Land of the Indus”) also spelled Hindusthan, historically, the northern Indian subcontinent—in contrast to the Deccan, the southern portion of the Indian subcontinent. This area can be defined more particularly as the basin of the five Punjab rivers and the upper Indo-Gangetic Plain. As a mostly fertile and well-populated corridor situated between walls of mountain, desert, and sea, Hindustan has been regarded as the principal seat of power in South Asia, containing the bulk of wealth and physical energy. The name Hindustan is sometimes used to indicate the lands “north of the Vindhya Range.” It is also occasionally used as a synonym for the entire Indian subcontinent.
Now that’s settled. Moving closer to our usual concerns, there is the 1918 hit song of the same name. I didn’t know that one of the composers, Oliver Wallace, also wrote the score for Disney’s DUMBO; his collaborator, Harold Weeks, seems only to have composed HINDUSTAN.
A more erudite cultural historian schooled in “Orientalism” could write a great deal about the fascination in the late teens and early Twenties with popular songs celebrating the non-Western: THE SHEIK OF ARABY, SONG OF INDIA, SO LONG OOLONG, CHINA BOY, SAN, NAGASAKI, CHINATOWN MY CHINATOWN: songs that Americans and others sang and played, while they regarded people from those regions with suspicion — “You’re not from around here, are you? Where were you born?” — and refused them employment and housing. As a species, we are fascinating.
I think I first heard the song on Jean Shepherd’s radio program (circa 1969) and he is the reason I knew a portion of these lyrics — which, I confess, I also looked up this morning for accuracy: “HINDUSTAN, where we stopped to rest our tired caravan / HINDUSTAN, where the painted peacock proudly spreads his fan / HINDUSTAN, where the purple sunbird flashed across the sand / HINDUSTAN, where I met her and the world began.”
“Where we stopped to rest our tired caravan”! This performance, from the 2009 Jazz at Chautauqua weekend, is anything but tired, sparked by Jon-Erik Kellso’s idea of changing the key for every chorus (I believe between C and Eb). Trumpeter Jon is joined by Tom Pletcher, cornet; Bob Havens, trombone; Bob Reitmeier, clarinet; Dan Block, tenor saxophone; Ehud Asherie, piano; Howard Alden, guitar; Vince Giordano, string bass; Pete Siers, drums:
Is the world going a little too fast for you? Is this your internal soundtrack?
Do you feel like a character in a Fleischer cartoon where everything’s too speedy to be brought under control? (I mean no disrespect to the 1936 Henderson band — with spectacular playing on this fast blues, appropriately called JANGLED NERVES — from Chu Berry, Roy Eldridge, Sidney Catlett, Fernando Arbello, and Buster Bailey.)
I believe the following interlude will calm and enliven your nerves at the same time. It happened here, in a vanished but remembered past — the third weekend in September 2009 at Jazz at Chautauqua, Joe Boughton’s creation, at the Athenaeum Hotel in Chautauqua, New York.
Joe loved to begin and end his weekend programs with ballad medleys, and here is a segment of one of them, featuring Duke Heitger, trumpet; Andy Schumm, cornet; Dan Barrett, trombone; Scott Robinson, tenor saxophone; Bob Reitmeier, clarinet; Ehud Asherie, piano; Marty Grosz, guitar; Frank Tate, string bass;, Pete Siers, drums. The bill of fare is MEMORIES OF YOU (Duke), STARDUST (Bob), PRELUDE TO A KISS (Scott), OLD FOLKS (Andy), IF I HAD YOU (Dan, with the ensemble joining in):
Let’s see how you’re feeling tomorrow. Leave a message with Mary Ann.
News flash: Laura Beth Wyman, the CEO of Wyman Video and a fellow videographer, has pointed out that in September 2014, Jazz at Chautauqua had morphed into the Allegheny Jazz Party and moved west to Cleveland. Since a lesson of later life is that I have to live with my errors, I do so here: some of the prose details that follow are now in the wrong state, but the music still gleams.
Making the annual trip to the Athenaeum Hotel for the Jazz at Chautauqua weekend was never that easy, so once there I felt relief as well as excitement. But it was heavenly once I could see the people I love whom I saw so rarely, and even more blissful once the music began. Now, through the lens of 2020, Jazz at Chautauqua seems poignant as well as heavenly.
So it’s with those emotions — joy, nostalgia, wistfulness — that I offer you eight minutes of an elixir for the ears and heart: ‘WAY DOWN YONDER IN NEW ORLEANS, which used to be a medium-tempo saunter. I present the first recording of this 1922 Creamer and Layton song, with its “Spanish tinge” verse. And note that the Crescent City angels are wearing blue jeans, a garment that goes back to the end of the nineteenth century: see here:
But we can talk about clothing another time. Now, a mighty crew of hot players take this jazz standard for a gentle yet propulsive ride: Marty Grosz, guitar; Andy Schumm, cornet; James Dapogny, our Prof., piano; Bob Havens, trombone; Dan Block, clarinet; Scott Robinson, tenor saxophone; Jon Burr, string bass; Pete Siers, drums. I offer a special bow of gratitude to Nancy Hancock Griffith, who we see briefly at the start: she never sat in on an instrument, but she and her mother, Kathy Hancock, made it all happen.
Such a weekend will probably never come again, but I bless the players and the organizers . . . and I’m grateful for my little camera, that made audio-visual souvenirs like this possible.
This fellow is little known except to connoisseurs of late-Twenties jazz. He was a wonderful reedman, imaginative arranger, composer of modernistic melodies, but perhaps more people know Fud Livingston because of one mournful song:
Here’s our Becky — Rebecca Kilgore to those who haven’t yet taken her to their hearts — with Dan Block, tenor saxophone; Rossano Sportiello, piano; Frank Tate, string bass; Pete Siers, drums, performing this lament at the 2011 Jazz at Chautauqua weekend:
Performances like this — consistently for several decades — are why, when someone says, “Have you heard the new singer _____? She’s great!” I often say, “Before you launch someone at me, do you know Rebecca Kilgore’s work?” Becky’s individual mix of delicacy and intensity here is so touching — her quiet emotional fervor, her beautiful natural-sounding phrasing and diction. She’s it. Dan Block matches her in feeling: his vocalized sound is close to tears. And that rhythm section: the very soul of soulful understated support. Watching this, I feel so fortunate that I was there to witness this music and how glad I am to be able to share it with you.
A relevant postscript from our Jazz Eminence, Dan Morgenstern, who, in the late Fifties, was “in between,” and working at Colony Records in midtown New York City, the hours 7 pm to 4 AM:
A sad note: Fud Livingston, not quite sober, with a guy he wanted to show how many recordings there were of his “I’m through with Love” which I looked up for him in that big Phonolog. He was gassed that I knew who he was, or had been. Wanted to do an interview but didn’t connect…he was in twilight zone. (This would have been before March 25, 1957, when Livingston, fifty, died. I hope he made a good deal of money from the song’s appearance in SOME LIKE IT HOT, sung with breathless ardor by Marilyn Monroe.)
I can promise you more treasures created at Jazz at Chautauqua, although this one is singular in its art and feeling.
Yesterday I published a post where four wonderful musicians — Eddy Davis, Conal Fowkes, Jon-Erik Kellso, and Evan Arntzen — improvised on OUR MONDAY DATE in December 2019 at Cafe Bohemia in Greenwich Village, New York City. You can enjoy it here. And I hope you do.
A MONDAY DATE has a personal resonance. It’s not unique to me, but I haven’t had the pleasure of “being on a date” with a tangible person since the end of February (dinner and a festival of short animated films). For me, songs about dating are poignant and hopeful: such encounters can come again, although the February evening was more short than animated. Mirror-gazing over. Onwards.
This MONDAY DATE was performed at Jazz at Chautauqua in September 2009, although not on a Monday. These brilliant players are Tom Pletcher, cornet; Dan Barrett, trombone; Bob Reitmeier, clarinet; Jim Dapogny, piano; Frank Tate, string bass; Pete Siers, drums. I was, as I have explained elsewhere, shooting video sub rosa without Joe Boughton’s permission, which lends a subversive air to the recording, but I was thrilled it came off, then and now. It is a special pleasure to hear Jim’s piano ringing through, adding magic.
Jim Dapogny and Tom Pletcher are no longer with us: I’ve written about them here and (with a beautiful long essay by David Jellema) here. Both posts also have video-recordings of performances you won’t see or hear elsewhere.
A note about “recordings” at Jazz at Chautauqua. Joe Boughton was enthusiastically kind to me long before we met in person: he recognized that we adored the same music. When I visited Chautauqua in 2004, he greeted me warmly, and I spent the whole weekend writing about the joys I experienced there, and wrote the program biographies for more than ten years.
Joe had certain aversions, in large type. The most dramatic was his loathing for over-familiar songs: SATIN DOLL, SWEET GEORGIA BROWN, slow blues, and more. Musicians who broke this rule were asked not to return — in one case, in the middle of the weekend. Secondly, although Joe apparently recorded every note of the weekends I came to — someone operated a videocamera high above our heads — he would not tolerate anyone else recording anything, although he let an amateur jazz photographer make low-quality cassettes. I gave Joe valuable publicity in The Mississippi Rag, which he appreciated: I don’t know whether he saw me with my camera and tacitly accepted it as part of the Michael-bargain or whether he was too busy with the music to notice, but I send him deep gratitude now. I hope you do also.
Jim Dapogny, September 2, 2018, photograph by Laura Beth Wyman (Wyman Video)
He answered to various names. Jim Dapogny, James Dapogny, Professor Dapogny, “American musicologist,” as an online source calls him. I prefer to think of him as admired artist, departed friend.
Jim would have turned eighty today, September 3, 2020. He didn’t make it that far, moving somewhere undefined and inaccessible on March 6, 2019. I have not gotten used to his absence, and I am not alone. Others knew him better, longer, at closer range, but his absence is something tangible.
I promised myself I would not write a post on the metaphysics of bereavement, but rather offer evidence so those who never heard Jim in person would understand more deeply why he is so missed.
I can’t reproduce here the pleasure of having him speak knowledgeably yet without pretension about the dishes of brightly-colored ethnic food spread in front of us. Nor can I convey to you his gleaming eyes as he spoke of a favorite dog or the mysterious voicings of a Thirties Ellington record. And it is beyond my powers to summon up the way he would nearly collapse into giggles while retelling a cherished interlude of stand-up comedy — not a joke, but a presentation — by someone none of us had heard of.
Those who were there will understand the serious yet easy pleasure of his company, the way he was always himself, wise but never insisting that we bow down to his wisdom. I can only write that he was was boyish in his joys but modest about his own accomplishments, and so gracious in his eager openness to different perspectives. Those who never had the good fortune of seeing him plain — counting off a tempo by clapping his hands in mid-air, crossing one leg over the other when particularly happy at the keyboard — should know that they missed someone extraordinary.
Jim and I communicated more by email than in any other way, but I did meet him once a year at Jazz at Chautauqua, then the Allegheny Jazz Party, then the Cleveland Classic Jazz Party, from 2004 to 2016, with a year out when he couldn’t join us because of illness. I made a point of going from New York to Maryland to hear his “East Coast Chicagoans” in 2012, and visited him and dear friends in Ann Arbor a few years later. It is one of my greatest regrets, on a substantial list, that I never made it back for a return engagement.
Our remarkable friend Laura Beth Wyman caught Jim explaining something to me in the informal classroom of a parking lot at the 2014 Evergreen Jazz Festival, and I treasure this moment:
But let us move out of the parking lot before darkness falls.
Here is Jim, with Mike Karoub, cello; Rod McDonald, guitar; Kurt Krahnke, string bass, performing his own FIREFLY (blessedly captured by Wyman Video):
Jim loved the blues, and enjoyed window-shopping in their apparently austere structure, peering in at unusual angles, so what was expected — nothing more than three chords repeating over twelve bars — was all of a sudden a hand-knit tapestry, subtle but ornamented, full of dips and whorls.
I caught him “warming up the piano” at the 2014 Jazz at Chautauqua, in what I think of as full reverie, monarch of an emotional landscape where he and the blues were the only inhabitants, where he could ignore people walking by, and also ignore my camera. This, dear readers, is the quiet triumph of thought, of feeling, of beauty:
Here he and beloved colleagues create and recreate the TIN ROOF BLUES (al fresco, in rain or post-rain, at the 2014 Evergreen Jazz Festival): Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Chris Smith, trombone; Kim Cusack, clarinet; Russ Whitman, tenor saxophone; Rod McDonald, guitar; Dean Ross, string bass; Pete Siers, drums:
Jim was thoughtful but not morose. He delighted in swing and stomp, so here’s COME EASY, GO EASY LOVE, from the same weekend:
One of his set pieces not only was a rousing jam on more austere themes but also a nod to his love of comic surprise, WASHINGTON POST MARCH:
There is much more that could be said, more that can be seen and heard.
But the important thing is this: he remains a model for me and others. Quietly and without affectation, Jim lived so deeply and generously that we will not forget him nor stop missing him.
I’ve been digging into my archives of performances I video-recorded but hadn’t yet shared, and I have a small jewel for you, from the informal Thursday-night jam sessions at Jazz at Chautauqua, almost eleven years ago. I had a slightly less sophisticated camera; I’m sitting behind friends . . . but I think those are minor flaws compared to the lovely music. The song is CHINATOWN; the musicians are Pete Siers, drums; Frank Tate, string bass; Ehud Asherie, piano; Bob Havens, trombone; Dan Block, clarinet; Duke Heitger, trumpet. And they play.
Won’t you join me? It’s better than a virtual visit to any non-musical healer.
The music that follows requires some prelude. It was created at the now-legendary Jazz at Chautauqua, almost seven years ago — which seems like several lifetimes. The founder and imperial monarch of this jazz weekend, Joe Boughton, responsible for so many hours and days of wonderful jazz music, loathed what he thought of as overplayed repertoire. SWEET GEORGIA BROWN was forbidden; A GARDEN IN THE RAIN was bliss. Not for him Hot Lips Page’s ecumenical idea, “The material is immaterial.” But, whether it was Jon-Erik Kellso’s idea or Joe’s, a set called “‘WAY DOWN YONDER IN NEW ORLEANS,” its repertoire consisting of well-worn Bourbon Street favorites, happened. And it was wonderful.
The regular band was Pete Siers, drums; Kerry Lewis, string bass; John Sheridan, piano; Dan Block, clarinet; Bob Havens, trombone; Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet. But one of Jon-Erik’s Michigander friends, the fine multi-instrumentalist — clarinet, soprano saxophone, banjo, tenor guitar and perhaps more — Tom Bogardus, was also at Chautauqua, and Jon-Erik not only invited him to join in for this set, but Howard Alden generously lent Tom his tenor banjo and Tom added so much to the sound. He told me recently, “This was a big night in my musical career, getting to play with these outstanding musicians in today’s jazz. I am so thankful that Jon-Erik asked me and Howard Alden let me use his banjo. Now I have video proof. It’s a 4 string tenor banjo with traditional tenor tuning. I think it’s a Bacon & Day, but am not sure.”
Before we move on to the music, a small — possibly irrelevant — personal note. I sat at my table with my video camera on a tripod, as if it were my date, and the world of people talking, getting up for drink refills, and having dinner happily swirled around me. So the first voice you will hear on the first video is the amiable waitperson asking me, as they are trained to do, if I was finished, “Can I take that away for you? Are you through?” which is really, “Let me get all the dishes off the tables as we are required to do,” and my response — I am proud to say, not in a snarl, “No.” My people have certain boundary issues: “Touch my food if I haven’t offered it to you, and I will be unhappy,” which is why I weigh more now than in 2013. But I digress.
‘WAY DOWN YONDER IN NEW ORLEANS:
BASIN STREET BLUES, featuring Bob Havens:
MUSKRAT RAMBLE:
DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO MISS NEW ORLEANS?:
and a quick set-closer, SOUTH RAMPART STREET PARADE:
Alas, Jazz at Chautauqua and its successors, the Allegheny Jazz Party and the Cleveland Classic Jazz Party, are no more, but we have our happy memories and these videos. Incidentally, when I asked Jon-Erik for permission to post these videos, “Happy memories!” is what he said. So true. Thanks to the musicians, to Joe Boughton and all his family, to Nancy Hancock Griffith and Kathy Hancock. And to my polite waitperson: can’t forget her.
When a relative or friend returns from a trip, children sometimes burst out, free from polite inhibition, “What did you bring me?” Adults may think this, yet the more well-brought up ones say, “Did you have a good time?”
The 2015 photograph is of Laura Wyman of Ann Arbor, CEO of that enterprise, devoted to videography of jazz, dance, recitals, and more. I first met Laura at Jazz at Chautauqua in September 2013, when we were introduced by our mutual friend Jim Dapogny: she was part of the Michigan contingent there: Jim and Gail Dapogny, Pete Siers, Sally and Mick Fee. Laura was then an expert still photographer then, but became an avid videographer less than a year later.
She’s been going through the archives of Wyman Video and has shared two early efforts with us — capturing music from the September 2014 Allegheny Jazz Party that we would never have experienced without her.
First, THE MOOCHE (originally a dance), with commentary, by Dan Levinson, clarinet / leader; Dan Block, clarinet and tenor saxophone; Scott Robinson, taragoto; Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Dan Barrett, trombone; Howard Alden, banjo; James Dapogny, piano; Jon Burr, string bass; Ricky Malichi, drums.
Dan Levinson: “First, I don’t know that this tune has ever been attempted on 2 clarinets and tarogato, but there’s one thing I do know, for sure, is that the note that Scott is about to start on does not exist on that instrument! Never been played before!
The version of “The Mooche” that we played was my own transcription from the original Ellington recording, which featured three clarinets. Scott Robinson, in typical – and admirable – Scott Robinson fashion, showed up at the event with a tárogató instead of a clarinet. The tárogató is an instrument used in Hungarian and Romanian folk music that looks kind of like a clarinet but uses a different fingering system and has a smaller range. So I gave Scott the clarinet part that would be best suited to his instrument’s range. He looked at the music, worked out some fingerings, and then he was ready. Although I announced that the first note he was going to play was out of his instrument’s range, I didn’t realize that I had inadvertently given him the wrong clarinet part, and that it was TOTALLY out of his instrument’s range. There was no moment where he seemed concerned or hesitant. In a few seconds, he merely reinvented his instrument by working out fingerings for the notes that didn’t exist on it prior to that performance. There’s only one Scott Robinson on the planet!” – Dan Levinson, May 2020
THAT is completely memorable, no argument. And a gift.
And since we need to live in a major key as well, here is Professor Dapogny’s romping chart on CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME, performed by Dan Block, clarinet; Scott Robinson, tenor saxophone; Andy Schumm, cornet; Dan Barrett, trombone; James Dapogny, piano / leader; Marty Grosz, guitar; Frank Tate, string bass; John von Ohlen, drums:
For context, you need to hear the lyrics to this song before we proceed — sung by one of the most influential and perhaps least-credited singers ever. Incidentally, the personnel is not identified in my discography. If Brian Nalepka reads this, I wonder if he hears that strong bass as Joe Tarto’s:
If you want to play that again, I don’t mind. Go ahead: we’ll wait.
But here’s something only the people at Jazz at Chautauqua in September 19, 2009, got to hear and see. This amiably trotting performance, led by trombonist Dan Barrett, also features Tom Pletcher, cornet; Keith Ingham, piano; Howard Alden, guitar; Dan Block, tenor saxophone; Bob Reitmeier, clarinet, Frank Tate, string bass; Pete Siers, drums. Video by Michael sub rosa Steinman, lighting by Henry “Red” Allen:
I hope you go away humming this song, and that the affectionate hopeful music is good protection against all those nasty things we are reading about now. The music and the musicians are — seriously — lucky to us. (So, next time some players and singers offer their hearts and language “for free” online, toss something larger than an aging Oreo in the tip jar, please.)
We know many people born on February 28th. However, we know a much smaller number born on that date in 1930. And there is only ONE Martin Oliver Grosz, who will thus turn ninety in a few days.
Marty won’t read this post, so I will spare him and all of us a lengthy explication of his particular virtues. But let me inform you about a few events related to his birthday . . . and then there will be a reward for those with high reading comprehension skills. “Three ways,” not chili . . . but a book and two parties. And patient readers will find another reward, of a particularly freakish nature, at the end of this post.
Marty has talked about writing his autobiography for years now (I was almost a collaborator, although not in the wartime sense) — he has stories! And the book has finally happened, thanks to the Golden Alley Press, with the really splendid editorship of Joe Plowman, whom we know more as a superb musician. Great photos, and it’s a pleasure to look at as well as read.
The book is entertaining, readable, funny, and revealing — with stories about people you wouldn’t expect (Chet Baker!). It sounds like Marty, because the first half is a tidied-up version of his own story, written in longhand — with elegant calligraphy — on yellow legal paper. I’m guessing that a few of the more libelous bits have been edited out, but we know there are severe laws about such things and paper is flammable.
The second part of the book, even more vividly, is a stylishly done series of interviews with Marty — a real and sometimes startlingly candid pleasure. I’ve followed Marty musically for more than twenty-five years and have had conversations with him for two decades . . . this, as he would say, is the real breadstick, and I learned a great deal I hadn’t already known. More informationhere and here. The official publication date is March 4, but you can pre-order the book from several of the usual sites — as noted above.
And two musical events — Marty encompasses multitudes, so he gets two parties.
One will take place at the Hopewell Valley Bistro, tomorrow at 6 PM, where Marty will be joined by Danny Tobias, Scott Robinson, and Gary Cattley, for an evening of swing and badinage, sometimes with the two combined. Details here. And on March 4, another extravaganza — at the World Cafe Live in Philadelphia, with what used to be called “an all-star cast”: Vince Giordano, Danny Tobias, Scott Robinson, Dan Block, Randy Reinhart, Joe Plowman, Jim Lawlor, Jack Saint Clair, and I would guess some surprise guests. Details here. Even though I am getting on a plane the next morning to fly to Monterey for the Jazz Bash by the Bay, I am going to this one. You should too!
Now, the unearthed treasure . . . for all the Freaks in the house, as Louis would say, a congregation in which I happily include myself. I’ve written elsewhere of taking sub rosa videos at the 2007 and 2008 Jazz at Chautauqua weekend ecstasies, and I recently dug out this spiritual explosion. The camerawork is shaky and vague (I was shooting into bright light), but the music is life-enhancing. Even the YouTube Disliker is quietly applauding:
Let us celebrate Marty Grosz. He continues to be completely Himself, which is a fine thing. With Dispatch and Vigor, Fats, Al Casey, and Red McKenzie looking on approvingly.
We all know what a ballad is — a rhapsodic experience, possibly melancholy, played or sung slowly. But a “rhythm ballad” is something created in the Thirties: a sweet ballad played at a danceable tempo, so that you and your honey could swoon while doing those steps you had practiced at home. Even when the lyrics described heartbreak, those performances had a distinct pulse, or as Marty Grosz says below, “I gotta wake up.” Here are some moving examples of the form, performed during the closing ballad medley at Jazz at Chautauqua in September 2012. First, Marty evokes 1931 Bing Crosby, then Rossano Sportiello honors Hoagy Carmichael, and Dan Barrett tenderly expresses a wish for gentle romantic possession:
Howard Alden’s melodic exposition of an early-Fifties pop hit:
Finally, Dan Block — incapable of playing dull notes — woos us in a Johnny Hodges reverie over imagined real estate:
It’s appropriate that this post begins with THANKS — words cannot convey my gratitude to these artists who continue to enrich our lives. And I am particularly grateful to those who allowed me to aim a camera at them . . . so that we can all enjoy the results.
Marty at a 2008 recording session for Arbors Records.
Marty Grosz doesn’t necessarily believe in the lyrics of the love songs he chooses (although he can croon most tenderly) but he does return to this one, a swing perennial for bands and singers, and I for one am glad.
This song is apparently c0-written by the mysterious Rob Williams, Alex Hill and Claude Hopkins (my money’s on Mr. Hill, whose memorable tunes often had lyrics that told of unfulfilled romantic yearning). It states one wild promise of devotion after another — things imagined only by Edgar Rice Burroughs — but all in the conditional — “I would do,” and some versions have become even more cautious: I WOULD DO MOST ANYTHING FOR YOU. Is this an “if-then” construction, or is it “I’ll do this if YOU do that?” It sounds like uptown seventeenth-century poetry, and perhaps I would feel more confident if its title were I WILL DO. But let us clear our minds and enjoy the frolicsome sounds rather than lingering too long on how we would respond if these tokens of affection were offered to us.
Our mellow sermon for today comes from the delightful enterprise known as Jazz at Chautauqua when I first made my way to it in September 2004 — a weekend cornucopia of music where I met many heroes, made new friends, and was eventually accepted as someone doing good things for the music. And what music!
The Atehaeum Hotel, where the joys happened.
More than many jazz parties, Chautauqua put people onstage who didn’t have the opportunity to perform together, and the results were often magical. As in this case: a little band led by Marty, with Scott Robinson playing, among other instruments, his alto clarinet; Andy Schumm on cornet; Kerry Lewis on string bass and Pete Siers on drums making up a delicately unstoppable rhythm team. Pay particular attention to Mr. Siers — someone who should be acclaimed worldwide as a flawlessly swinging versatile percussionist, a maker of great sounds.
They certainly rock, don’t they? More to come from the JAZZ LIVES vaults, I assure you. For the moment, find someone to profess love to, with or without Marty to provide the soundtrack.
A math problem or perhaps a logic one. When you add this
and this
what is the result? From my perspective, pure joy and a delightful surprise.
The Hawk.
Hereand hereI’ve shared the story of Flip as well as two otherwise undocumented live performances by Randy Reinhart, Jon-Erik Kellso, Duke Heitger, James Dapogny, John Sheridan, Marty Grosz, Vince Giordano, John Von Ohlen at the September 2008 Jazz at Chautauqua weekend.
Horace Henderson.
And here is Flip’s final gift to us — a performance of the Horace Henderson composition (recorded in 1933 by a small group led by Coleman Hawkins) JAMAICA SHOUT by Marty Grosz, guitar; James Dapogny, piano; Duke Heitger, trumpet; Dan Barrett, trombone; Dan Block, clarinet and tenor sax; Chuck Wilson, alto saxophone; Vince Giordano, string bass; Pete Siers, drums:
There are many things I do not know about this song and this performance. I suspect that the JAMAICA in the title refers to the Long Island, New York suburb — “the country” in 1933 — rather than the Caribbean island, but neither Walter C. Allen nor John Chilton has anything to say on the subject. I don’t know if the chart is Marty’s or Jim’s, but it certainly honors the original while giving the players ample room to be themselves.
I do know why I only recorded three performances — fear of the Roman-emperor-of-Hot Joe Boughton, who could be fierce — but I wish I had been more daring. You’ll note that my video-capture has all the earmarks of illicit, sub rosawork — there is a splendid Parade of Torsos by men entirely oblivious of my presence and camera, but Louis forgive them, they knew not what they did. And they may have been returning to their seats with slices of cake, a phenomenon which tends to blot out all cognition. (On that note, Corrections Officials here or on YouTube who write in to criticize the video will be politely berated.) However, the music is audible; the performance survives; and we can celebrate the living while mourning the departed, James Dapogny and Chuck Wilson, who are very much alive here.
There are many more newly-unearthed and never-shared performances from the 2011-17 Jazz at Chautauqua and Cleveland Classic Jazz Party to come: one of the benefits of archaeological apartment-tidying. For now, I thank Flip, who enabled this music to live on. And the musicians, of course — some of whom can still raise a SHOUT when the time is right.
JAZZ LIVES 