Our generous friend Sonny McGown, through his YouTube channel called “Davey Tough,” has been at it again, spreading jazz goodness everywhere. And this time he features the man Louis Armstrong called “Little Bobby Hackett.” If you’ve missed Ricky Riccardi’s wonderful presentation — music and words — of the remarkable relationship of Bobby and Louis, hereit is.
And here are more Hackett-gifts. The duet with Jack Gardner I’d heard through the collectors’ grapevine, but the 1964 Condon material is completely new. And glorious. Sonny, as always, provides beautiful annotations, so I will simply step aside and let Robert Leo Hackett cast his celestial lights.
Here he is with the rollicking pianist “Jumbo Jack” Gardner — and they both are wonderfully inspired:
and a wonderful surprise: an Eddie Condon recording I’d never known of, with Condon exquisitely miked for once (let us hear no more comments about his not playing fine guitar; let us hear no more about “Nicksieland jazz”). And let’s celebrate the still-thriving Johnny Varro, alongside Peanuts Hucko, Lou McGarity, Jack Lesberg, and Buzzy Drootin:
When I was a boy, my father brought home books from the public library and perhaps in an anthology of verse for children, I encountered the simple poems by Gelett Burgess about the Goops stick in my mind decades later. Here are two — didactic, but also witty and pointed.
Table Manners
The Goops they lick their fingers, And the Goops they lick their knives; They spill their broth on the tablecloth — Oh, they lead disgusting lives! The Goops they talk while eating, And loud and fast they chew; And that is why I’m glad that I Am not a Goop–are you?
and
The meanest trick I ever knew Was one I know you never do. I saw a Goop once try to do it, And there was nothing funny to it. He pulled a chair from under me As I was sitting down; but he Was sent to bed, and rightly, too. It was a horrid thing to do!
This is not a post about table manners, and I think practical jokes of the latter kind are vanishing from the earth, or I hope so.
But it is about the people we know who are Goops. Being a Goop in the twenty-first century, to me, is based in self-absorption, heedlessness, and the desire to make a splash, often through being unpleasant.
I have wanted to write about Goopish behavior as it intrudes on my sphere. So here are a few examples, and you can add more. I think mostly of the Video Goop, the Spectator Goop, and the Online Goop.
THE VIDEO GOOP holds his iPhone up in the air to catch a minute of his favorite band, never thinking for a minute that it is now in our line of sight. Or he shines the light from his phone in the musicians’ eyes; perhaps he has a camera that clicks loudly or one whose strobe flash blinds everyone. He doesn’t think to ask permission of the musicians he videos and is astonished when they object to hour-long sets of their work appearing immediately on YouTube. The Video Goop has a cousin, the “Professional Photographer” Goop, who gets in the way of the audience because he is working — so that we see his back and his camera constantly.
THE SPECTATOR GOOP treats the music as background to their conversation. Concert hall or dive bar, when someone who wants to hear the music asks for lowered voices (raised voices and alcohol go together) the answer is often a huffy “I’m just here to have fun with my friends. What the hell is wrong with you?” At jazz festivals, where the audience has sometimes been following bands for decades, the Spectator Goops start speaking immediately when the music begins, socializing, “Isn’t it a SHAME that Marcia couldn’t make it this year? I hear her husband is VERY ILL!” (I feel very sorry for Marcia and Mr. Marcia, but I came to listen. Kindly go away. Far away.) The talkative Spectator Goop is often the first to whistle or yell at the end of a solo, to offer us loud whoops about music that they can’t possible have taken in.
I witnessed an amazing corollary to this some months back. At a jazz venue distinguished by superb music and loud conversation, both were in evidence. The latter got louder — imagine my pleasure at being able to write that sentence — and one of the apparent jazz fans got madder and madder, offering loud assertive shushing. The AJF, in his righteous rage, even confronted the noisy group and “gave them what for,” as my grandparents might have said, which led to near-violence. The talkers were escorted from the venue, and one would think that Right had prevailed. Alas, no: the AJF spent the rest of the evening loudly congratulating himself on his virtue and how he had done the right thing, unaware that his talk was as loud as the people he had vanquished.
THE ONLINE GOOP is so prolific and energetic that I will not do him justice here. (An attentive reader will note my conscious use of the male-gendered pronoun. Women are often SPECTATOR GOOPS but rarely if ever VIDEO or ONLINE ones. Draw the conclusions you will.) For me, their sub-groups are MEAN and FOOLISH. The MEAN ONLINE GOOP is the person who fires off a scathing critical comment, sometimes cloaked in a thin veneer of “comedy,” that offers his harsh opinion. “Nothing worse than a bad _______ band.” “X can’t play the violin.” “This band sucks.” “Y sucks.” Sometimes, this person is inarticulate but still derisive, hence the vomiting emoji. This Goop finds fault, not only with the musicians (who play badly, who don’t perform as he thinks they should, who don’t smile) but with the person who records them, to him, imperfectly.
A word about such criticisms. Not every musician is perfect; not every performance pleases. And listeners have a right to say they like this and don’t like that. But the prevailing anonymity has fostered astonishing meanness. I have been guided in this not only by one of my professors, Mr. Sigman, now gone for decades, but by Sammut of Malta, who says quietly, “Would you go up to the musicians and say this to their face? Does anyone really need to read how you disapprove of someone’s vibrato?” I have strong opinions, but does it do the world good for me to put my disdain into print? Is my subjective disapproval the same as criticism valid enough to share with everyone who has a lit screen?
Occasionally, all of these cardboard figures become one: my example is the anonymous commenter who is furious about the loud talkers in a 2011 video and says, “I’d like to kill those people who don’t shut up.” I suppose I empathize in theory, but I have written back that wanting to kill people in a video from almost a decade ago seems a vain expenditure of energy.
THE FOOLISH GOOP is hardly malevolent but is still exhausting. When I read a comment that asks a simple question, “Who wrote that song?” “Where can I get the chords for this tune? What year was this done?” “Is he the same person as the one who did ______?” I sigh noisily, and think with no regret of decades of teaching where we — as faculty — were asked to swallow constant doses of this insipidity because our students “were young,” and perhaps because we knew that if they were intellectually curious, some of us wouldn’t have jobs. But I want to say, “You have a computer. Perhaps several. You have a smartphone. Have you ever heard of Google, and have you ever spent time looking up something before you launched your question into the world?” There is also THE JOKESTERGOOP, one who has to make comedy out of everything, but he is not a serious threat to one’s emotional equilibrium. And — this just in — THE SHOPLIFTER GOOP, who sees something (a photograph, a video, a piece of text) and presents it as his own without giving credit to the source. I know this is presumably a democracy, but would you walk through the diner taking a fry or a cherry tomato off of the plates you pass?
My favorite collision of the various online Goops happened just recently. I had posted a video of an excellent band playing a piece that required a great deal of virtuosity. And someone with a YouTube name suggesting hysterical laughter commented, “Nice playing. Just felt it might have gone better without the [insert name of instrument here].” It was a polite enough comment, but I felt as if I’d been standing in front of a Vermeer and heard someone say, “Those curtains should be green.” I wrote back, with some irritation, “Why don’t you send the musicians a note with your opinion?” in hopes that he would recognize some slight disapproval, some irony. Alas, he took the comment literally, “Thanks, I tried, but couldn’t find contact details. Anyway, it’s only one person’s opinion. They make great music, that’s the main thing.” I should have desisted but I was disarmed by his politeness, so I wrote back to say I had not been serious but that the band had a website. And there it lies, I hope.
What does all of this mean? Why have I expended my time and perhaps yours in what some will take simply as “Michael is complaining again.”? I think it’s important to encourage people to be considerate, empathetic, kind, to know that each of us is not the only organism on the planet, that our pleasure might interfere with someone else’s, that we should be gentle rather than cruel. Fewer Goops would be a good thing — I don’t mean they should be exterminated, but that they should be introspective enough to ask, perhaps in front of the mirror, “Is what I am doing something I would like done to me?”
And should you think that my words come from a position of unearned moral superiority, I hope that is not so: I have made serious mistakes in my life; I expect to make other ones, but my goal is to have them be smaller and less frequent — or at least to make new mistakes. For variety’s sake.
But all the Goops in the world can’t take the shine off of this: joy and energy at the highest:
Many people who visit JAZZ LIVES have been fervent in their love for Tuba Skinny and their entreaties that I go and video them. The latter hasn’t been possible (if some wealthy patron wants to sponsor such a junket, let me know) but through the goodness of “Chris and Chris,” who are always impeccably dressed and sweet-natured, I can offer readers a heaping bowlful of what they ask for.
And here’s annotation from Chris (the fellow to the right):
After a sweltering hot sunny day, Thursday July 25th, dark clouds started rolling in from the Bay of Biscay bringing gusty winds, fine rain and thunder to the later sets. This weather change did not stop the good times at Restaurant L’Etoile de Mer, a haven for connoisseurs of the finest sea food and great ambiance. Manager Emma Lahaye with her team had set a table fit for Kings and Queens, to welcome Tuba Skinny, the New Orleanians, who would electrify this cosy jazz club, adding extra spice with their hot music. Sitting in a very tight side position, the 1st set was captured in one-go with a hand-held HandyCam, HDR-XR520, in FH quality mode. Touring France July 2019, Tuba Skinny graced this pleasant sea-side resort of Anglet, just north of Biarritz for a one-night stop-over, before heading for Andernos-les-Bains. Happy to post this footage of the complete 1st set, unedited. Enjoy! Buying two sets of their CD recordings was just a small token of our appreciation, nothing compared to all the great work Tuba Skinny does shower us with. Shaye Cohn, leader, cornet; Craig Flory, clarinet; Barnabus Jones, trombone; Erika Lewis, drums, vocals; Max Bien Kahn, guitar; Jason Lawrence, banjo; Todd Burdick, sousaphone.
and the second set:
and more:
and, if that isn’t enough, here’s another triple helping from July 28, again nicely annotated by Chris:
A spokesman from The Andernos Jazz Festival 2019 stepped forward to give a short presentation of the band, describing to the audience what it is like in New Orleans, French Quarter, when Tuba Skinny plays in Royal Street, with people passing by, dancing, sometimes sitting in. A little tip is expected to land in the guitar case as a token of gratitude. Just before noon this sunny hot Sunday, the band members gathered on Place du 14 Juillet, Andernos-les-Bains, France, July 28th, 2019, and an expectant audience congregated, eagerly awaiting. Tuba Skinny here returns to their roots, a busking band without amplifiers or microphones. Standing in a somewhat lateral position, videographing the full set in one-go was a pleasure. The music starts at 3:10. Touring France July 2019, Tuba Skinny graced this little pleasant sea-side resort of Andernos-les-Bains on the famous Arcachon Bay west of Bordeaux with a three-day stop-over, before heading to Paris and their last performance.
and
and
At the YouTube channel called CANDCJ, you will find many more hours of jazz in live performance, in fine video quality, and Skinniness in profusion. As the waitperson says when she sets down my entree, “Enjoy.” May your happiness increase!
I wouldn’t have known of these programs (now shared with us on the Musikladen YouTube channel) except for my good friend, the fine drummer Bernard Flegar. They are rich and delicious.
The WGJB lasted from the late Sixties (when they were a development of the Nine / Ten Greats of Jazz, sponsored by Dick Gibson) to 1978. In some ways, they were both a touring assemblage of gifted veteran players — I believe Robert Sage Wilber, known to his friends worldwide as Bob, is the sole survivor — and a versatile band that echoed the best of the Bob Crosby units, big and small. The WGJB came in for a good deal of sneering because of their hyperbolic title, which was Gibson’s idea, not the musicians’, but from the perspective of 2019, they were great, no questions asked. And they weren’t just a collection of soloists, each taking a turn playing jazz chestnuts (although JAZZ ME BLUES was often on the program); Haggart’s arrangements were splendid evocations of a Swing Era big band with plenty of room, and the WGJB brought its own down-home / Fifty-Second Street energy to current pop tunes (I remember their UP, UP, AND AWAY with delight). And they played the blues.
I remember them with substantial fondness, because the second jazz concert I went to (the first was Louis in 1967, which is starting at the apex) was held in Town Hall, with Gibson as host, probably in 1970, and it featured the WGJB — Vic Dickenson and Eddie Hubble on trombones — and a small group with Al and Zoot, possibly Joe Newman, where they performed THE RED DOOR and MOTORING ALONG, titles no one would forget, and Gibson told his anecdote of the white deer.
These two programs seem to have been sophisticated television offerings: multi-camera perspectives with a great deal of editing from one camera to the other, and beginnings and endings that suggest that these were not finished products. The absence of an audience — or their audible presence — on the first program seems odd, but I don’t mind the quiet. The WGJB could certainly add its own charging exuberance — hear the final ensemble of CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME — that few bands have matched.
The first program features co-leaders Yank Lawson, trumpet; Bob Haggart, string bass, arrangements; Billy Butterfield, trumpet; Bob Wilber, clarinet, soprano; Bud Freeman, tenor saxophone; Bennie Morton, trombone; Sonny Russo, trombone; Dick Wellstood, piano; Gus Johnson, drums; Maxine Sullivan, guest vocalist, and the songs performed are BLUES / MERCY, MERCY, MERCY / DOODLE DOO DOO / THE EEL (featuring its composer, Bud Freeman) / THAT’S A PLENTY (featuring Bob Wilber and Dick Wellstood) / A HUNDRED YEARS FROM TODAY (featuring Maxine Sullivan) / THE LADY IS A TRAMP (Maxine) / SOUTH RAMPART STREET PARADE/ MY INSPIRATION (closing theme) //:
And here’s another forty-five minute program, presumably aired October 17 of the same year, with certain personnel changes — this time there’s an audience but the band is also dressed with great casualness: Ralph Sutton, piano; Al Klink, tenor saxophone; Peanuts Hucko, clarinet; Bobby Rosengarden, drums; George Masso and Sonny Russo, trombones; Lawson, Haggart, Butterfield, and Maxine, performing AT THE JAZZ BAND BALL / BASIN STREET BLUES (featuring Masso) / CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME (featuring Sutton) / BABY, WON’T YOU PLEASE COME HOME (featuring Lawson and Butterfield) / LIMEHOUSE BLUES (featuring Russo and Masso) / HARLEM BUTTERFLY / EV’RY TIME (featuring Maxine Sullivan) / ST. LOUIS BLUES / STAR DUST (featuring Klink) / RUNNIN’ WILD (featuring Hucko) / BIG NOISE FROM WINNETKA (featuring Haggart and Rosengarden) / SOUTH RAMPART STREET PARADE / MY INSPIRATION //:
The repertoire for the longer program is more familiar, with few surprises, but that band could roar as well as play pretty ballads and its own version of Thirties funk. What unexpected treasures these programs are.
I have no problem understanding taste. I admire Charlie Shavers; you prefer Shorty Baker. I think that the 1938 Basie band and the 1940 Ellington band were high points in civilization; you choose, instead, Lunceford and Miller. Fine, and we need not snarl at each other on the street. I can even understand the anonymous YouTube lone disliker — out of a sea of thumbs up, there’s one person who thinks, “That’s not so good.” And I know that criticism is not new to this century, as Nicolas Slominsky has shown: for one example, I have read that the audience at the Apollo Theatre’s Amateur Night was savage and satirical in its disapproval of performers who weren’t up to what the audience thought was the standard.
I have worked hard to acquire some equanimity when faced with negative responses to videos and posts I have created for JAZZ LIVES. When people comment negatively in either sphere, I can simply make the comment go away, leaving a faint bad smell until I open the window. However, some of the comments are so acrid that they make me get up from the computer and do something else for a few minutes. Typically, someone doesn’t approve of the angle from which I am videoing (assuming, I guess, that I am using several people and a multi-camera perspective) — especially if one of the performers is an attractive woman whom the male commenter doesn’t see enough of. In that case, if the spirit moves me, I gently explain the limitations of a single-camera setup or of my desire to not get walloped by someone’s swingout, or other factors that the commenter may not have understood. And in many cases, my calm approach gets a calm apologetic response, which is gratifying.
In other situations, the prose is darker. I shoot videos in places where — you’ll be horrified — people drink alcohol, eat food, and converse . . . as opposed to videoing in the Sistine Chapel. Thus, many viewers write in to me in a near-rage: “I’d like to shoot the people who were talking while this great band was playing!” I do understand, but the impulse — even rhetorical — is frightening in this century, and again I try to write a calm explanatory note. (Years of being a college professor have left their mark on me in a gentle moral didacticism.) I have also said that yelling at people in a video shot five years ago will have little effect on making them quieter.
If the commenter, in either case, continues to fume in response, I will often suggest that he should ask for a refund. Rimshot. And no one has written in to ask for one, for obvious reasons.
I understand that there are situations were sharp criticism in public from a nameless “reviewer” is not only appropriate but helpful. If I go to a restaurant and something makes me ill, in writing about my experience I might be warning others away so that they did not have to spend hours in the bathroom. If my painter, lawyer, doctor, or other professional does a poor job, there might be good reason to say so in public. (I would hope, though, that the first line of response would be to contact the restaurant or the professional, as a courtesy.)
But a video that someone disapproves of has no power to do harm, and one can always shut it off, muttering, “Wow, that’s awful,” to oneself.
All of this distresses me, not because people are not “entitled to their own opinion,” but because it seems ungenerous to criticize a product or a production that is offered open-handedly and for free. And the criticism is often voiced in a coarse unfeeling way. Of course, this tendency is amplified by the anonymity of the commenters, who are not asked to offer their credentials in evaluating artistic performance. The man — and the commenters are all men — who says that X is a rottten trumpeter is never asked to demonstrate his own ability on the horn by playing C JAM BLUES, even in Bb.
But anonymity gives courage. Thus, this comment on a YouTube video of mine this morning. The subject, a singer I respect greatly, someone with classical training and jazz experience, accompanied by a pianist: “Listening to that whiney voice instead of the sense of the song…horrible nonsense..he’s good but who can tell w that phony warbling…yikes”
That approach and that language seems abusive. I imagine that few artists read the YouTube comments, but why should someone doing their best be skewered by a nameless “reviewer”? Would the commenter have the courage to go up to an artist in a club and say, “Your whiney voice is horrible nonsense and phony warbling?” I would guess not, for fear of getting whacked with an RCA ribbon mike. And stand. And I would dearly like to be on the jury to vote for the musician’s acquittal and then award damages in a lawsuit.
I wonder if there is some motivation I am overlooking. Does it make the commenter feel superior? “I am an experienced music critic, and everyone is entitled to my opinion, as a public service? Or does it come out of a silent insecurity? “X makes CDs and is famous. Why doesn’t anyone want to give me a gig like that? I hate X!”
What I suspect, and hope I am wrong, is that it is yet another manifestation of general pervasive mean-spiritedness, that there are hate-filled people in the world who have not got enough to occupy themselves, so they rack up disapproval right and left. That makes me sad. Someone once said, “If you’re not being loving, why are you taking up space on the planet?” True enough.
Something to end this sad essay on a hopeful note: music that no one can disapprove of:
I’ve been collecting jazz records as long as I’ve been fascinated by the music. When I began, so much of the music I craved was not easily available, so I turned to other collectors for assistance, trading items back and forth with those who were generous. I have benefited so much from the kindness of collectors, some of whom who have moved on and others who are reading this post. And I cherish most those who are open-handed. I think of John L. Fell, Bill Coverdale, Bob Hilbert, Bill Gallagher among the departed: the living people know who they are and know how I value them.
One of the open-handed folks I celebrate is collector, discographer, and scholar Sonny McGown. An amiable erudite fellow, he doesn’t feel compelled to show off his knowledge or point out that his records are better than yours.
On this 2015 podcast, Sonny, in conversation with “spun counterguy,” tells of becoming a jazz-loving record collector here. It’s an entertaining interlude with good stories (among other subjects, DON’T BE THAT WAY and POP-CORN MAN) and musical excerpts.
Sonny is fully versed in 78s and 45s, and he understands the power technology has to make generosity easy, to share precious music. The word “broadcast” is apt here: one collector sending another a cassette, mp3, or burned CD is casting very small bits of bread on the waters.
About four months ago, he created his own YouTube channel, “Davey Tough” — and although it doesn’t yet have a large audience by YouTube standards, I am counting on this blogpost to remedy that. Sonny has been quietly offering rare music, well-annotated, one surprise after another. How about Goodman, Jack Teagarden, the aforementioned Dave Tough, Peanuts Hucko, Ray McKinley, Yank Lawson, Helen Ward, Dick Wellstood, Kenny Davern, Soprano Summit, Joe Marsala, Lou McGarity, Bobby Gordon, Charlie Byrd, Tommy Gwaltney, Clancy Hayes, Ralph Sutton, Wild Bill Davison, and other luminaries. And surprises! Some are from truly rare non-commercial records, others from even rarer tapes of live performances in clubs and at jazz parties.
I’ll start with the one performance that I already knew, because it is so much fun: clarinetists Ernie Caceres, Joe Marsala, Pee Wee Russell, playing the blues at a 1944 Eddie Condon concert — backed by Gene Schroeder, Bob Haggart, and Gene Krupa (with Bobby Hackett audible at the end):
Notice, please, unlike so much on YouTube, this is factually correct, in good sound, with an appropriate photograph.
Here’s a real rarity: Dave Tough as a most uplifting member of Joe Marsala’s very swinging mid-1941 band, more compact than the norm, certainly with Joe’s wife, Adele Girard on harp, and plausibly brother Marty on trumpet:
And another performance by the Marsala band with Adele and Dave prominent:
Backwards into the past, in this case 1933, not the familiar version of AIN’T ‘CHA GLAD, although we know the arrangement by heart:
and, finally, backwards into the more recent past, for Pee Wee Russell and Charlie Byrd at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., from December 1957:
These are but a few of Sonny’s treasures. I resist the temptation to rhapsodize both about the sound of Dick McDonough and about Pee Wee, free to explore without restrictions, but you will find even more delights. I encourage readers to dive in and to applaud these good works by spreading the word.
Marty Grosz and Bob Haggart, date and location not known
When you’ve shot as many videos as I have — over a decade’s worth — there’s a sizable treasure chest of the unseen. Sometimes videos are buried for good reason, the primary one being musicians’ unhappiness with the results. And since we aim to please, I don’t post what offends the creators.
But a few weeks ago, during an atypical tussle with insomnia, I was sitting at my computer at 3:30 AM, looking at unlisted videos stored safely on YouTube, and I found this rousing delight. The musicians who like to approve of my postings have approved, so I can share it with you. It’s a hot half-hour with Marty Grosz and his Cellar Boys, from Jazz at Chautauqua, probably a Sunday morning, the exact date noted above.
That’s Marty on guitar, vocal, commentary (yes, he does like to expound, but commenters who complain will be teleported to another blog); Andy Schumm, cornet and miscellaneous instrument; Scott Robinson, reeds and inventiveness; John Sheridan, piano; Kerry Lewis, string bass; Pete Siers, drums.
The real breadstick, as Marty would say.
Sucrose, no corn syrup:
Don’t tell me different — I know I’m right! Watch Andy and Scott do magic:
And a series of wonderful hot surprises:
Once, when I was in Dublin, I found the Oxfam charity shop (as they would call it) and sniffed out the small shelf of recordings. Very little of interest, but there was one jazz lp — autographed by the band, and the band had Keith Ingham in it. I clutched it to my chest, fearful that someone would steal it away, and when I approached the cash register, the gracious woman volunteer looked at me, smiled, and said, “Well, YOU’VE found a treasure, haven’t you?”
That’s how I feel about these videos. Blessings on the musicians and of course on Nancy Hancock Griffith, who made it all possible.
Our generous friend Sonny McGown, through his YouTube channel called “Davey Tough,” has been at it again, spreading jazz goodness everywhere. And this time he features the man Louis Armstrong called “Little Bobby Hackett.” If you’ve missed Ricky Riccardi’s wonderful presentation — music and words — of the remarkable relationship of Bobby and Louis, here it is.
