Piano Man

The spirit of Earl "Fatha" Hines has been hovering around the Jim Cullum Jazz Group for quite awhile…

A couple of weeks ago, we played "You Can Depend on Me" at Bohanan's.  Pianist John Sheridan added a sparkling right-hand tremolo on his solo chorus, then looked up and smiled as he said, "Why not?  It's a 'Fatha Hines' tune!"  A few nights later, Jim mentioned hearing the 1940 recording session by Sidney Bechet -- which also included Hines, Rex Stewart, John Lindsay and Baby Dodds -- for the first time.  He marveled at the interplay between Earl Hines and Rex Stewart and enthusiastically exclaimed, "Man!  It sounded like Hines and Louie on 'Weatherbird'!"

Last weekend, our friend David Boeddinghaus filled in for John at the Boardwalk Bistro and on a concert in Schertz (a small town just north of San Antonio).  David was in full-on Hines mode and his playing was full of ringing tremolos, "trumpet-style" single-note lines and the same kind of suspended and broken left hand patterns that characterized Hines' playing.  We were all grinning ear-to-ear as amazing sounds continued to emanate from the keyboard.  Time after time, Jim yelled "Go on, David!  Take another one!  Take another one!"  He obliged, and each solo chorus was more fantastic than the previous one.  After David returned to New Orleans, Jim told me "I sure like Earl Hines, filtered through David Boeddinghaus!" 

Jim has experience with the real thing, too.  In 1971, as then-owner of AUDIOPHILE records, he recorded Hines' tributes to Louis Armstrong, Hoagy Carmichael and W.C. Handy over a two-day span.  Later, Jim assembled an all-star group consisting of Hines, Joe Venuti, Bob Haggart and Ray Bauduc to perform at the "World Series of Jazz" in San Antonio, opposite the Happy Jazz Band (the predecessor of the Jim Cullum Jazz Band).

In May, 1990, the Jim Cullum Jazz Band, with guest pianist Dick Hyman, recorded a broadcast entitled "Piano Man: Earl Hines, The Father Of Modern Jazz Piano" for the  RIVERWALK program.  The band's regular pianist, John Sheridan performed alongside Hyman on the broadcast.  He recalls that not long before the Hines show, a program was recorded that featured the intricate music of pianist Bob Zurke.  John said, "The Zurke show was a picnic compared to the Hines!"  (Zurke played "contrary-motion" bass and treble lines and busy, syncopated figures in the melody but none of it is nearly as complex as a typical Hines performance)!

I asked Dick Hyman for a description of Earl Hines' playing.  Dick's reply was as concise and accurate as he is on the piano:

Earl Hines broke with the ragtime-stride tradition by basing his playing on what single-note horn players, in particular Louis Armstrong, were attempting  in the 1920s. He translated their horn-playing phrases  into pianistic octaves and occasional filled chords, interrupting the regularity of  the stride left hand with sequential tenths and single note punctuations, while his dazzling right hand runs anticipated [Art] Tatum and [Teddy] Wilson. I’ve entertained the notion, though it’s perhaps a stretch of thought, that Hines’ playing in its individuality might be compared to that of Jelly Roll Morton, though Hines’ keyboard technique was far fleeter, and his ideas more “modern.”  I suspect, too, that neither pianist would have appreciated the comparison.

As a side-note to Dick's last comment, David Boeddinghaus mentioned that he visited one of Hines' disciples -- Jess Stacy -- in Los Angeles in the late 1980s.  Stacy remembered a late-'20s visit to the Sunset Cafe' in Chicago where he was paying rapt attention to Hines' performance.  Suddenly he felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned around to see Jelly Roll Morton standing behind him.  Morton pointed to Hines and said to Stacy, "Son, that boy can't play piano!"  Jelly Roll Morton was a Jazz icon, but it is a safe bet that several generations of Jazz pianists would disagree with his assessment of Hines' talent!

One of the songs performed by Dick Hyman, John Sheridan and the Jim Cullum Jazz Band for the Earl Hines program was "Piano Man," which was originally recorded by Hines' Orchestra in 1939.  There is a band vocal, which includes the refrain "Swing it, Fatha Hines!"  Everybody did swing -- on the original recording as well as the broadcast!  The RIVERWALK program can be heard in streaming format at http://riverwalkjazz.stanford.edu/.  ("Piano Man" is program number 228).  And if you are as enamored of Hines' music as this writer, be sure to order a copy of Limited Edition Box Set number 254 "Classic Earl Hines Sessions 1928 - 1945" from www.mosaicrecords.com.

-- Hal Smith

Meet Hal

I want to take a minute to introduce Hal Smith, regarded by many as the county's finest jazz drummer. To those of you who don't already know him, I'm pleased to tell you that Hal recently joined the Jim Cullum Jazz Band. He is also a respected jazz historian who has written for publications all over the world. Hal is a band leader in his own right and has played on hundreds of recording sessions and broadcasts including Riverwalk - Live from the Landing, A Prairie Home Companion, and Ken Burns' "Jazz."

Now here's the good part - Hal is joining me here at Le Blog Hot. He'll be blogging every other Wednesday, talking about every sort of jazz-related subject you can think of - deconstructing what you hear on the radio, stories of jazz greats and jazz history, and on and on. Hal and I even disagree on a couple of things and we might get a debate started once in a while. Keep your eyes peeled for it.

See you at the Landing!

Thoughts about Your Technique and Stories about Spud and Big "T"

Jack Teagarden

In the photo above, that's Spud Goodall, Gene McKinney,
Jim Cullum, Jr., and Jim Cullum, Sr., about 1972

The young trumpet player plays for the older trumpet player and then he asks, “What do you think?”

“Well, kid,” the old guy says, “There is the good news and the bad news. The good news is you have a great technique. The bad news is you have a great technique!”

On the other hand, I have recently met and spent some time with Arturo Sandoval, generally considered the world’s greatest trumpet virtuoso. Arturo, a sensation because of his technique, can also play with passion and swing too. There have not been many like him.

Guitarist Spud Goodall was quite a virtuoso. We all talked about him. The older guys who had been around San Antonio for years loved to tell stories of how this or that hot-shot guitar player had come from Los Angeles or some place and how the guy would get up and play a lot and how they would let him go on just long enough to hang himself. Then they’d throw Spud out there.

Their eyes would sparkle when they told it. You know how it comes out and why they have to tell it. “Spud carved the guy up and sent him packing,” they would say. It vindicated the old guys.

There is something all of us love in a story like this. We relish the occasional long-shot victory. It is about the unknown underdog, David, going up against Goliath. Our country was born on this. Completely outnumbered and out-gunned for most of the Revolution, Washington’s ragtag Continental Army struggled against all odds and finally defeated the highly-trained and disciplined British army, by far the most powerful in the world. Relishing underdog victories is in our national DNA.

In jazz, a young Louis Armstrong, his fame off in the future, came face to face with the veteran cornetist Freddy Keppard. Louis was self-taught, and only a few years before had been living as a New Orleans street urchin. Keppard came on strong. “Boy,” he is reported to have said to Louis, “Give me your horn.” And Freddy played and played. He handed the horn back to Louis who then seriously took him apart.

I think the appeal of these upsets is highlighted when they happen in the provinces. Mighty Wild Bill Davison traveled from New York to San Francisco for a concert. Afterwards he went out to El Cerrito to be wiped out by local boy Lu Watters. Anyway, that is the way Watters fans love to tell it.

Benny Carter, the legendary saxophonist, was from time to time, part of the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra of New York City. In the mid 1920s, Henderson led what was generally considered the finest hot dance orchestra in the country.

In 1926, Fletcher Henderson went first in a Battle of the Bands against a new band, the Jean Goldkette Orchestra.

Benny Carter told me about it. “They were from the sticks,” he said, “and when they got on the stand they looked to us like a bunch of fraternity boys.”

Jazz fans know the result: Goldkette’s band was like nothing that had come before. Brilliant Frank Trumbauer led the band and played C-melody saxophone. Bix Beiderbecke starred on cornet, Steve Brown on bass, and arrangements were by Bill Challis. The whole band was on fire.

“What a band,” Benny Carter said. “We had never heard anything like it. They became a huge influence on us.”

These scenarios tend to drive us forward, and usually it is not just virtuosity. Often there is something else in the music that reaches into us and touches us deeply and makes crusaders of us. For David’s sling arm was driven by something other than his technique.

Jack Teagarden is an example. No jazz musician performed with more pathos. At first one might be drawn to his arresting technique, but when you dig a little deeper, the “soul” in his playing is right there. It is the beautiful part.

He would tell me, “It’s about the story. The only reason you need technique at all is so you can tell the story.” He would go on: “When you hear jazz by a master like Bix and you listen, the technique is there but it soon becomes invisible. You become directly connected with his mind and sound. And then all you get is the story. Listen to Bix,” Teagarden said. “He was the greatest artist in history — not just the greatest musician, the greatest artist.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Show me a greater one,” Jack Teagarden said.

Of course, no one can make such a statement accurately, because no one can know all the artists. For one thing artists of the world go back thousands of years. Some, even most, are completely hidden from us.

It has been 50 years now since Jack said these things about Bix. I was only a boy then, Jack sat across the table. He exaggerated to make his point.

But there was no light of humor in his dark eyes. He looked square at me, his patent leather hair reflecting the ambient lighting of the restaurant where we cut pieces of the New York strip steaks we were having for dinner.

It is funny, the things you remember. I was only a teenager seated with a towering figure of the music that was already tugging irresistibly at my life. I was a little self conscious. I thought of my table manners. My mother’s voice was interrupting us, saying silently to me, “Change hands,” and things like that.

The years blur a little. But this was 1959 I think, and that would have made me 18. I had followed Jack’s band on a circuit of Texas concerts. At that point, Jack had heavyweights in the band: Barrett Deems on drums, Don Ewell, piano, Little Maxie (Kaminsky) had been in there on trumpet. They had come back from a Far East State Department tour and the stories of it are still repeated by musicians. In one of those countries, Thailand, I think, the Teagarden band went out to set up before the concert.

“How is the piano?” they asked Don Ewell.

“Oh, it’s okay,” he said, “But it’s a little low.”

The band went to dinner. When they returned for the concert the piano had been set up on blocks!

When they got to Japan the band toured, performing at several cities. At one point they were in Hiroshima, where several band members went on a tour and were shown the atomic bomb devastation.

A lady guide was explaining how it happened, how destructive it was, etc.

Little Maxie spoke up and said, “Well, next time, don’t mess around!” The other band members shuddered, they said, and the Japanese lady blanched.

One of the guys called her aside and said, “Don’t mind him. He was in the Navy during the war.”

“Yes, I understand,” she said, and they walked on.

But Jack liked the way Maxie played in the band. After the tour, Maxie dropped out and was replaced by Don Goldie.

The band went on, playing constantly. If there was a way to describe Don Goldie’s trumpet playing, one might say that it was the direct opposite of Beiderbecke’s—lots of up front technique and very little story. I know that Don Goldie frustrated Jack.

But, Jack never said any negative thing about anyone.

Somebody told Jack that I was a great young cornet player and this led to our dinner. “Come sit in with the band tonight,” Jack said.

“Oh, Mr. Teagarden, I couldn’t do that.”

“Sure, I’d love it,” he said. “You should play a couple of tunes. Do you like Bobby Hackett’s playing?” he asked.

“He’s one of my idols,” I said. Jack was always looking for another Hackett, another Bix.

This was in Houston. That night, I went to the Tideland’s Club where the band was playing and I sat in for two pieces. The night before, Peck Kelly had been there and Jack and Peck had played duets for a whole set while the crowd sat spellbound. Almost none of the people had ever heard of Peck Kelley, but there was an electricity in the air that pulled their heads around. “You should have heard it,” Don Ewell said. Jack would say the same kinds of things about Peck that he said about Bix.

I had missed a big moment in jazz history – missed it by one night. Twenty-four hours later, I got up there and played my best on “Sweet Sue” and “Muskrat Ramble.” In my teenage years, I was not much of a cornet player. Nobody said much. Don Goldie was extra nice to me.

In a few more years Jack collapsed and died in a New Orleans hotel room. At that point, he had broken several years of sobriety

“I could have helped him,” my father said. He grieved for Jack. “I knew he was drinking again,” he said. “I should have gone down there. I could have saved him…”

In 1945, my father had joined the Teagarden band in St. Louis, and on his first night in the band, Frank Trumbauer showed up to sit in. “I couldn’t believe it, “he said. “Trumbauer was sort of a god figure to me. Jack and Tram played with the rhythm section for a whole hour while the rest of us sat on the stand and soaked it up.”

“Jack called ‘Body and Soul,’” my father remembered. “It was in five flats and on Trumbauer’s C-melody saxophone, it was really five flats. Tram slightly messed it up. A week later, he was back. ‘What do you want to play?’ Jack asked. ‘Body and Soul.’ And there it was again – perfection this time. Trumbauer having run over it, really had it under his fingers.”

Most agree, Jack Teagarden was Texas’ greatest jazz player. He always had it, even from the time he was a child. When Jack started on trombone he was a little kid, unable to reach 6th and 7th positions. They say that is how and why Jack developed his unique technique.

The jazz world all knew about this. His hand rarely went past the bell!

Spud Goodall was from Texas too. Like Jack, he swung like crazy and was a natural musician. Teagarden became a world figure. Spud Goodall was hardly known.

When I came up, it seemed that almost everybody was swinging. At least, there were many more swingers among rank and file musicians. In those days, most players were completely influenced by the swing bands that dominated the bandstands and the radios. Louis had started the whole thing. Most knew about Louis and listened a lot to his records. But some of the musicians did not know where it had come from or how it had happened. They just did it.

Tommy Dorsey became famous in the trade for saying to his band members: “Swing or I’ll kill you!” Almost everybody could swing reasonably well, except for the guys in the symphonies. They did not swing at all and tended to hold us in awe and in disdain at the same time.

Spud Goodall’s real name was Alan Goodale. For some reason he had changed it. Musicians have standard phrases about someone like Spud. He can really play, they say. When you are in a band with a musician like Spud, he will swing the band and make the others in the band play better than they can play.

Spud was typical of many artists who reach great heights in jazz in that he was an eccentric in the extreme . When you heard him play you knew he was obsessed with music and obsessed with the guitar. Like Teagarden, Spud could not help him self. He had to do it. You could tell that Spud had spent long years — a lifetime — with the guitar. I don’t know if he actually slept with his guitar like they say Django did, but it sounded like it!

By the time I worked with Spud he was in his mid-50s. He always dressed in expensive Italian suits and alligator shoes.

At that point Spud was ready to pour it on in many ways. He had become an entertainer. He wore a gold ring with the initials TKH displayed across its crest. “That’s my name,” he would say. “Tyler Kilgore Henderson, at your service!” And he would take off with stories of East Texas around the towns of Tyler, Kilgore and Henderson, Texas. Spud was raised in the country around those towns.

Having dazzled the crowd he would grab the mike, double his Texas accent and pretend he was a hick. “Well,” he would sometimes begin, “The first time I come to San Antone, I was downtown on the sidewalk there by the Gunter Ho-tel and I met this feller with a guitar. He says his name is Curly Williams, and I says, ‘Well, I heared of you. Why, you’re that famous gee-tar player. Why I heared you played with the Texas Top Hands and even that Jim Cullum feller!’

"And we’re standin’ there just gettin’ real friendly and talkin’ about Gibson this and that, an’ I says, ‘Why lookie here, Curly, here comes a young feller with a goat on a rope, walkin’ right downtown here.’ An’ Curly, well he says to me, ‘Why Spud, that’s Jim Cullum himself.’ And I starts wonderin’ what he’s a doin’ downtown with that goat on a rope. So Curly, well he calls this Jim Cullum over an’ I says, ‘I’m Spud,’ ‘n’ all that, an’ then I says, ‘Say, where you goin’ with that goat on a rope?’ An’ he says, ‘Well, I’m a takin’ him home with me.’

"And then we stands there for a minute and I’m tellin’ you again it was all out there on Houston Street right in front of the Gunter Ho-tel. And then I asks him, ‘Well, where you gonna keep him? You gotta place with a big lotta grass and all?’ And he says, ‘Nope, I’m gonna keep him right in the house with me!’ ‘Is that so?’ I says. An’ he answers, ‘Yep, that’s so!’ And I looks again at the goat on a rope an’ I asks, ‘What are you gonna do about that smell?’ An’ he says, ‘Well, he’s just gonna have to get used to it!’”

Having worked this story up from a whisper, Spud would struggle to control his laughter as he got toward the punch line and he’d always bring if off perfectly and laugh like crazy at his own joke and the crowd would always explode with laughter.

Immediately he would stomp four beats and take off on “Limehouse Blues,” and just burn it up for three to four choruses, each one getting hotter and swinging harder.

Spud played with us three nights a week for about two years and was featured on my father’s solo clarinet album, Eloquent Clarinet. This was one of my father’s highlights, for Eloquent Clarinet received 5 stars in Down Beat.

We all said it: Eloquent Clarinet is really good. Still we knew that as good as it was, my father and Spud had cooked it up in a hurry and we knew that both played even better outside the studio. That is what the old guys used to say about the Bix records, “Good as they are, you should have heard Bix live.”

My father died in 1973. Soon after, Spud left San Antonio to sort of retire in Tyler. There Spud played a bit with local hillbillies. I heard that he then made a number of guest appearances with Willie Nelson.

I never saw Spud after he left for Tyler. He died up there about seven years ago.

From
Jim Cullum,
your reporter (and historian)

What is Funny, Anyway?

In 1956, I was 17. I made my first trip to New York that year. Jazz was seriously on the place. Teagarden at the Round Table, Gene Krupa at the Metropole, Red Allen was there too in another band. I went to Jimmy Ryan’s every night for there the great Wilbur de Paris band was at its zenith. And what a band it was.

All these things will be chased around in future blogs. But wait!

While I was in New York in 1956, one of the movie houses was running W.C. Fields movies- a week-long festival. I went there and saw a different Fields film every day. The classics I saw included “It’s a Gift,” which is often spoken of as Fields’ masterpiece.

I left New York with a better understanding of what a jazz band should be and with my concept changed forever about what was and what was not funny.

The more modern comics I mostly prefer to skip, enjoying so much more the works of Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy, Ben Turpin, Fields and a few others. I have suggested to my wife Tina that if I am ever confined to a bed, she will almost certainly cause me to become well by setting me up to watch the old comedy movies. “It’s a Gift,” is my favorite movie of all time.

But there is another more modern movie that I would like to have included: “Young Frankenstein” by Mel Brooks. This movie is for me! If you haven’t seen it, I recommend a quick trip to Blockbuster video or Netflix.

Recently, my wife, Tina, and I went to see “Young Frankenstein – the Musical,” a road show touring from what I assume was a hugely successful run on Broadway.

Here in San Antonio, these things almost always play at the Majestic Theatre and the Majestic Theatre is one of a cluster of classic movie palaces across the USA. Just to walk into the place and see it without a play is worth a lot. But, of course, we were there for all the bells and whistles.

Okay, here is my verdict: This “Young Frankenstein” was about the most fun I ever had at a play. I thought it was, as Louis would quip, “a gasser!”

If you have, as we used to say, “even a Chinaman’s chance” you should grab it and pay the bread and see this thing fast.

Of course, the famous climax of “Young Frankenstein” is the monster in top hat, white tie, tails and walking stick dancing and singing “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” all out of meter.

At intermission I peered into the orchestra pit and saw several of our San Antonio aces resting their chops having wailed out the first half of the tricky New York score. One was John Carroll, who also is the principal trumpet player in the San Antonio Symphony. Also looking up from the floor of the pit, was Ron Wilkins, trombonist and jazz virtuoso the likes of which cannot be found anywhere, even New York (no kidding). Ron used to play a lot at the Landing and he still blows a set at the Landing on rare occasions, but usually he is a big shot over at the University of Texas.

Back to what is funny. Check out the amazing tickling scene from Laurel and Hardy’s “Way Out West.”

“Give me that deed to the gold mine,” a woman says to Stan Laurel.

Stan shakes his head and puts the deed in his shirt.

“Give me that deed or else,” she says, approaching slowly with clenched fists.

Stan is resolute.

The woman makes a dive for the deed and an insane tickling scene ensues – a perfectly choreographed wrestling match full of Stan's insane, high-pitched laughter and convulsing.

The scene is crazy, random and hilarious.

Here’s what Stan Laurel thought about comedy: “A friend once asked me what comedy was. That floored me. What is comedy? I don't know. Does anybody? Can you define it? All I know is that I learned how to get laughs, and that's all I know about it. You have to learn what people will laugh at, then proceed accordingly,” he said.

Okay, this is the end of Le Blog Hot for today, but listen, and seriously, try to see that road show. I posted videos of Stan Laurel being tickled and "Puttin' on the Ritz" following this blog for your enjoyment.

Yes, it’s true! Jim Cullum’s a Crossdresser!

“What’s this?” you say. And, well…let me explain for when I was a little girl…

When my kids were little, I would often begin this way, saying things like, “Well, when I was a little girl we did this or that” – made homemade ice cream on Sunday afternoons or went barefoot all summer or built tree houses or whatever it was….And the kids would say, “Wait a minute, Dad, you weren’t a little girl!”

“Yes, I was a little girl.”

“Mommie,” they would call out, “was he a little girl?”

And she would answer, “That’s what he says.”

They would stand there, hands on hips and shake their heads, “You were not a little girl, Daddy.”

“Okay, okay, come upstairs with me and I’ll show you a photo.”

The old album pages of old Brownie Hawkeye snapshots fold by.

“Who is that?” they would say, pointing to one image after another.

“Well, that one is of my grandfather and that one is my mother and my sister and those are some of my cousins.”

“But here, kids, look at this photo. As you can see, I was a little girl.”

They stare, for before their eyes is their own father with a big girl’s hat and a blouse and skirt and even girl’s shoes. The kids now stare with genuine wonder.

After about a minute of silence, one of them finally asks “Were you really a little girl, or were you just dressed up like a girl?”

And I’d start in, “well, what do you think, Beeky? What do you think, Chris?”

Mostly, they would decide that I was really a little boy and I was just dressed up like a little girl.

My delightful daughter Blanquita (whose nickname is “Beeky”) is now 34 with three small children of her own. She laughs a lot about this. For a year or so when she was four, she really bought it and said, “Oh, yes, my Daddy was a little girl. I’ve seen a picture.”

The other kids mostly decided that I was really a little boy and I was just dressed up like a little girl. Eventually, I confessed and explained all about it.

“It was my sister,” I’d start out. She was seven when I was born and she helped in taking care of me when I was a baby. It was fun for her. She had a real live doll. She would dress me and pick me up and put me in the baby carriage and take me for rides, at least until she got tired of it.

When I was two, I was stricken with a terrible fever. Lucke, our old come-to-the-house-with his-little-black-bag doctor, came over. Dr. Lucke determined that I had polio! Of course, everybody flipped. Everybody, that is, except my sister, who was nine years old by that time.

Dr. Lucke was wily. He had read a lot about President Franklin Roosevelt and the president’s struggle with polio.

In the Roosevelt case, they massaged his legs a lot. Dr. Lucke knew that polio, being a virus, should not be stimulated by massage. He said stimulation of any kind caused it to spread, become more active and aggressive.

“Don’t even let that baby stand on his legs. Doctor’s orders.”

Some of the time when they could not be right there, my sister was assigned to wait and watch.

“If he wakes up, grab him. Don’t let him stand.”

And this my sister did, , holding me, rocking me, changing me just like the grown-ups did.

It all came out amazingly well in the end. I had only the slightest residual effect of the polio: the muscles of one eye were weakened so that I needed glasses. I could see with 20/20 vision, but looked cross-eyed. I wore glasses and took eye exercise therapy three times a week and I almost completely was able to correct this problem. When I was 25, I attempted to join the military. It came to the big white board with the black letters in rows, and I hit a snag.

“But,” I said, “I always passed the Texas Driver’s License eye test.”

The sergeant quipped, “The Department of Public Safety doesn’t want you to hurt anyone and we want you to kill a lot of people – different test. Got it?”

So I went on back to civilian life.

And now let me back you up in the blog. I completely recovered from polio (except for the eye thing that only counts if you try to go into the army). In fact, I have been a natural athlete all my life and used to win the 100 yard dash once in a while. For years I ran for the sheer joy of it and even for transportation.

I owe this, I think, to Dr, Lucke and, at least in part, I owe it to my sister.

Here’s the dressing in drag part. The polio had been over for a couple of years, but my sister was still dressing me up like a doll. I had not gotten old enough to protest. In act, I have been very close to my sister for as long as I can remember.

So along there at one point when I was about four years old, I was mostly ready for anything she wanted.

Dress me up like a girl –okay, sure!

Halloween was on and as some of you cats will remember, no one worried about anything weird happening to their children as they went around the neighborhood.

“Knock, knock! Trick or treat! Trick or treat!” And the door slowly opens revealing some ancient grown-up probably at least 30 years old.

“Well, well, what have we here?” They typically held a large plate of homemade tollhouse cookies – held just high enough to be out of range.

“And what are you, little boy?

“Oh, can’t you tell? I’m a spider.”

And to the next kid: “And you? What are you?”

“I’m Superman! I can fly, too!

“Wow. What spooks! You’re a ghost, right?”

“Yes, I’m a ghost.”

“And what about you? What are you – a Spanish senorita or something?”

“Me? No, I’m a girl!”

The Time Machine

It’s a fool’s game to try and copy Bix. Go and listen to “Somebody Stole My Gal."

It’s not just his solo. It’s the whole record. He just kicks the whole band in the ass and makes them play. I can tell you that this is something that no mere mortal can accomplish – only the occasional genius like Mozart.

I don’t try to copy Bix. I hear the kind of things he did and let them mingle with all of my musical ideas. There’s a melancholy – a kind of suffering or depression- that is hard to describe in Bix’s playing. When you listen to him you hear the madness of his life, the romance, the mood swings. The same characteristic is in Hemingway, Lincoln, Churchill and other great figures whose melancholy became famous parts of their lives.

While listening, I feel almost as if I were there with Bix, even though I was born ten years after his death. I’ve felt a spiritual connection with him since I was 13 years old. At the time, my father was completely absorbed and preoccupied in fixing his life, which had been destroyed by alcohol. He didn’t pay the slightest attention to me and I listened to record after record. I listened to them so many times it was easy to memorize. I was like a teenage girl who sang along with the radio.

Bix, like all artists, had limitations that defined his style. The great artist shapes what he is saying and that’s how he talks to you. Often, when someone talks with way too many words and with so much command of the language, the true meaning is lost. Bix was the antithesis of this. He used very few words – or notes – to make his point shrewdly.

The greatest jazz musicians can be recognized instantly after playing only a single note. Bix’s sound has been described by others as striking a chime with a soft, padded mallet. The big sound starts with a little explosion – but it was more than the sound – how he strung the notes together, the way he searched for a new, interesting way to twist the phrase.

There were characteristics in his music that are found nowhere else in music. Bix is one of a handful of great, original, American musical artists. That’s what I think.

No More Daylight Savings Time. What?!

I am opposed to Daylight Savings Time. We need more music of the night. How about Night Savings Time?

This is true, baby. It is night time when you hear the beautiful music. The world’s great concert halls and the symphony orchestras that pour out the banked up work of our musical geniuses of the centuries do not happen at mid-morning.

The great music of the night goes off after dark.

The jazz player will tell you that it’s damned hard to get the creative juices going at noon. We go hear jazz after dark – at night clubs! That is when it happens! Right? Count Basie’s Band was built playing this schedule at the Reno Club: start at 9 pm and play until 4 am.

A lot more than the music happens after dark, you know. You look across the table and search deeply into her eyes and there is a thing in there that causes you not to be able to look away for she is giving you something you have never known before and you don’t know what it is yet, but whatever it is you are not nearly as likely to see it at the coffee shop at 7:30 am with the hard sunlight blinding you through the plate glass.

No, this kind of thing, and every human hungers for it, almost always happens at night. For the night is when we drink the fine red wine in the delicate bowl-shaped stemmed glass. And we also drink up what she is saying with her eyes. All this stuff that goes into the big container we label “romance” happens almost always at night.

To get down to it – the love-making is not going to be happening at mid-morning either. At least, not much!

How about the candle light, the great dinners, the phases of the moon, the searching of the stars in the heavens? I can go on. You get the idea.

At mid-summer, we jazzers start up the first hot tunes at 8:30 pm and it is still daylight at the night club. You know, we set our clocks back to make the daylight stretch. But we all know the good stuff happens after dark. Maybe more daylight is what some of us want. I think it is a bad idea. It just happens to us, and I’m not sure anybody much thinks about the why of it.

They say it started during the World War II when the country was absolutely back-to-the-wall desperate for more production. But the war has been over for 65 years!

Why are we so anxious for more daytime hours? What happens in the day anyway? Most of us struggle and beat ourselves up in the traffic and feel bad and are not in happy moods and work frantically, talking constantly on our cell phones and driving while we do it. In the daytime, we eat standing up, sling down one more cup. The only music we might hear is on the car radio, or if you are a kid you may have it pumped through “Apple” gadgets straight into your ears. This is between text messages, and you’re certainly never hearing it straight from a Stradivarius as the practiced master’s hand guides the bow across the double stops, the perfect intonation making the violin speak with a soft growl.

Now, I am not saying that making it get dark earlier will fix everything so that we prioritize for music and for love.

No, I’m not saying that. But I am saying that if we didn’t mess with the clock and hold off the night, life might be a little more fun and that is worth a lot!

Maybe we should move the clock the other way, so that it got dark even earlier.

If we did that, life just might, in a generation or two, get to be a lot more fun with more of the good stuff such as real jazz bands playing in night clubs.

How about it? What do you think?

Keep Austin Weird

The “Jazz Disease” has always been the carrot dangling in front of my nose. All during my hot and heavy-breathed pursuit of it I have enjoyed what has been for me the extra charm of life in South Texas.

Huckleberry Finn said that his story was told to us by Mr. Mark Twain, “who didn’t tell no stretchers” – at least not too many stretchers. But this isn’t about Huck– only about jazzers – people so entertaining that the stretchers are left at the sideline. In the meantime, I will act as your scout and advance man.

If you take the time to read these blogs, I will hopefully make it worth the regular computer struggle. Probably the best parts of my story are about how jazz emerged here, fighting hard against the cowboy stereotype. But I love everything about San Antonio. Everything, that is, except the relatively new and quickly expanding suburban sprawl.

Today, let’s get out of town.

To the north and the west there’s the Hill Country. Famed Barbeque joints lie in the East. The beach is to the South (and who knows what will happen there with the oil all over the place? Don’t throw away and burning cigarette butts. Whoosh.). Still, there are lakes and rodeos and beautiful lost maples and tubing on the rivers and ranches and so much so that one could never see it all. Drive two-and-a-half hours and you can be at the Rio Grande, beyond which Mexico stretches for 1,000 miles.

To the north, like a beacon, is Austin – its Bohemian lifestyle constantly beating back modernity.

In Austin, there are more tattoos per capita than anywhere. Austin is flooded with artists of all kinds. In fact, you could say that it has more just plain weirdos per capita than anywhere in the world. There are also lot of musicians in Austin – some not so hot – but we can all learn from elementary school math books. The law of averages has given Austin a number of good Jazzers.

People actually go out and dance to good music in Austin. Amazing! They even step to “The Balboa”, a dance from the 1940s. Live music is everywhere, and, you’ll find it at unexpected places.

I often drive to Austin on Monday nights and play at a restaurant called Quality Seafood. There, I am constantly confused for an Italian man by the name of Luigi Spimoni il Capo del Mondo. I go along and speak with an Italian accent I learned from “Life with Luigi,” a radio show from the early 1950.

The Quality Seafood Band is named Aunt Ruby’s Sweet Jazz Babies. The bandleader is “Frankly Divine,” and a sometimes-present cornet player is named Pesci Pete Backbiter. One Aunt Ruby’s “babies” is Tarrton Poúrri who plays clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophones (I belong to a cult in which we don’t say “soprano saxophone.” We say “Torture Tube.” It’s always said with a smile and the comment, “Of course, there was always Bechet.”). Other members of Aunt Ruby’s are “The General” on bass and “Speedy” on the trombone. I mention these cats and their unusual names because they are typical of the weird ones who prowl around Austin.

Anyhow, last Monday I was in Austin to have dinner with bassist Ed Wise and his wife, Lizzie, who were visiting from Philadelphia. I’ve known Ed for many years, and, since he’s from out of town, he isn’t weird at all. He’s actually pretty normal, distinguished, in fact, by his swinging bass playing.

So Ed, Lizzie and I are kicking around in the land of the tattoos when we ran into cornetist Pesci Pete Backbiter, who directs us to a new joint in town: The East Side Showroom, 1100 6th Street.

This joint is the cat’s pajamas. No fooling. I am recommending it to you!

Everything about it is pleasing. It is owned and run by two young gals. They serve first-class food and have a full bar, with bottles set check-by-jowl and floor-to-ceiling with creative lighting that highlights every liquor bottle and their time-honored contents.

There is always music at the East Side Show Room. Pesci Pete Backbiter himself plays there one night a week.

According to eastsideshowroom.com: “The East Side Show Room is a mother and daughter owned Bar and Restaurant inspired by the Cafées and Delicatessens from eastern Europe to Texas in the pre World War II era, the turn of the century Music Halls of Berlin and Vienna, and the 1920’s avant-garde Theatres of NYC; Offering patrons a stimulating, artistic, and social environment to enjoy vintage cocktails, gourmet cuisine, fine wine, eclectic beer, coffee, live music and art.”

I was there three-and-a-half hours in a listless daze. When I die, this is where I want to go. For most of the evening, a screen played Charlie Chaplin silent movies. At 11:00 p.m., the crowd had been stirred into a frenzy by a four-piece Gypsy band. That was followed by a 15-piece ensemble of Austin weirdness that began outside.

The “Minor Mishap Marching Band” blasted in with two snares, a bass drum, gigantic cymbals, three cornets, two trombones, a baritone saxophone, accordion, violin, clarinet and a couple of old alto horns. Out-of-tune insanity ensued. The Minor Mishap marched out 45 minutes later – and kept playing outside, most likely to the last man.

The effect on the crowd was powerful. Grown people stood on their chairs and stomped and clapped. There was dancing and singing along around the tables.
“Wow!” shouted my dinner guest, Ed Wise, who thought he had done all and seen all.

As the Minor Mishap faded, the owners walked amongst the crowd, passing hats and encouraging patrons to tip the marching band. In these Austin joints there is a lot of playing for tips.

But above the tips, Austin musicians keep the wolf away in a heretofore unheard of fashion: The City of Austin works hard to support the arts in general, and some of these starving artists in particular, with medical insurance and grants.

Acting as one of the lynchpins in “Keep Austin Weird,” my daughter, Bonnie Cullum, is a shining example. Having received her Master’s degree in drama in 1988 from the University of Texas at Austin, Bonnie dug in, and, in 1989, set up the Vortex Theatre and the Vortex Repertory Company.

In 1993, after trying some temporary venues, Bonnie began meticulously searching the east side – east of I-35. The east side was continuing its age-old pattern of being a black-only part of town.

A little white-owned repertory company, doing original and strange “Keep Austin Weird” comedies, dramas and musicals was just not supposed to happen over there.

Some told Bonnie: “Whites just won’t come over here and see your oddball productions.”

She’d reply: “Guess we’ll find out if you’re right or I’m right!”

Bonnie set herself up in a derelict, leaky building and did the impossible. Every year, the Vortex, the pinnacle of Austin weirdness, sweeps the Austin Critic’s Awards. The older black neighbors who live around the Vortex have supported Bonnie like crazy.

The reward is a thriving little arts center located on Manor Road, one mile east of I-35. In Bonnie’s wake, about eight restaurants and nine other theatres (many have come and gone), new houses and apartments have sprung up.

Bonnie, who sports no tattoos, is plenty weird in many other ways. She leads the charge. Last year she was inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame. This is the highest local achievement for an Austin artist. Bonnie didn’t receive the award for being weird but for being good at what she does. You can be weird and good at the same time.

Here are your marching orders: Go see a play at the Vortex. Occasionally there is nudity, but never pornography. The Vortex has a beer and wine bar and a café with a limited menu.

After the show, go to the East Side Showroom. On Mondays go to the Quality Seafood Company – music and dancing and eating, 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

There is a lot more going on around there. For example, in the afternoon (free at night), there is swimming at Barton Springs. It is been loved by many as the best swimming hole in Texas for more than 100 years. Beginning in the 1960s, a few female bathers started removing their tops – a tradition that continues now and then.

When and if you’ve had enough, float down to San Antonio and we’ll play you some really hot jazz. Lots of the Austin lovers will be there with you.

The Austin swing dancers show up once in a while at The Landing. After a couple of stomping-swing tunes, the dancers leave the floor panting. I buy them a drink or two and we salute Austin’s weirdness.

Bow Ties and Jazz for the World

I went recently to a wedding reception. Everyone there was very dressed up – many little black dresses. All the gentlemen wore sport jackets or suits.

But I was the only one there wearing a necktie. You may think, “Oh, thank God! No more ties,” and, if you do, it is obvious that most of the world is on your side on this.

Personally, I like ties. I wear them a lot – even when I don’t have to. Usually, I wear bow ties.

That really gets them: “Bow tie? And you tie it yourself? No! That must be a clip-on bow tie,” they say. I pull on one end and it comes undone and hangs there looking like Sinatra or Dean Martin at Las Vegas.

My cousin says that ties chafe his neck. I blew him off. At one time we all wore ties and I don’t remember anyone having neck problems.

Here is the real deal: Ties aren’t cool anymore. My cousin, whose neck has become sensitive in his old age, says that ties are for the elite and, while he is elitist down to his toenails, it’s my opinion that he doesn’t want to appear to be elite. So, no ties and he lines up with the elite – the type that attended the wedding. They were all very cool guys – too cool for ties.

Now I especially like bow ties for the following reasons:

1. They don’t bother my neck. In fact, no tie bothers my neck.
   
2. Bow ties don’t get in your soup.
   
3. If you wear a bow tie (and a jacket) out into the world, it sometimes, and in strange ways, helps with things like getting a clerk or a nurse to pay attention to you. Maybe that is just my imagination, but I don’t think so.
   
4. Bow ties seem to have helped me talk my way out of traffic tickets.
   
5. If you are called to jury duty and you show up in a bow tie you are very unlikely to be placed on a jury. A lawyer friend of mine, who happens to be a fellow bow tie wearer, insists that it usually works this way, because they know if you are eccentric enough to show up in a bow tie, you may dominate the jury, and this would be bad.

I have become expert at tying bow ties. I will give a tying lesson to anyone who asks me. I think I am very good at teaching an easy to remember formula that will have you tied up in no time flat.

Here are good bow tie sources:

• Carrot and Gibbs – Boulder, Colorado. These guys make very classy bow ties, the length of which is controlled by four buttons and corresponding buttonholes at the back of the neck.
  
• Beau Ties of Vermont. Their ties are great and Beau Ties of Vermont publishes a monthly catalog that presents excellent photos of their ties.

If you do go for a few bow ties, try turning them upside down. (What?) I mean turn the tie so that the label, which is sewn at the center of the back, is upside down – this before you tie the tie, you know. And the next time, try placing the label inside out, away from the back of your neck. The label, of course, will not show because it is under your shirt collar.

This is all getting pretty complicated. The reason for it is, however, that if you switch a bow tie around all the time, it will last four times as long. If you don’t, you will eventually wear some holes in the fabric right where the knot goes, but probably you won’t live that long.

Another advantage which you might welcome is that bow ties, particularly brightly colored ones, bring forth a host of favorable comments from young women. I can’t tell you why. Maybe bow ties are cool after all.

Come and see me at the Landing. I’ll show you how to tie your new bow ties.

And listen – jazz sounds better when you are there with a date, who will quickly figure out that bow ties make you completely different from all the previous men in her life. Maybe they were too dull for bow ties!

Rehearsing New Shows in San Antonio

Presently, I am running hard with the bit in my teeth, for a Riverwalk radio production show is closing in. I have now done hundreds of radio shows.

All the time, people ask, “Does it get old?” Well, I’ll say straight away: No, it absolutely does not get old. And let me add that I love the music so much it sometimes tends to make me pretty weird. It’s a real love/hate thing!

Generally, if it swings I love it like crazy, but if it doesn’t, I mostly want to get away from it, and fast. And you know this kind of personal preference thing is not all black and white.

Back to the bit and the teeth – we have been rehearsing for three new Riverwalk radio shows that will be performed live at the Pearl Stable in San Antonio – this in a couple of days.

I am excited like a young kid. The band is playing at a 50-year high.

Our guests for the shows are Dick Hyman and Catherine Russell. Both these artists seriously separate the wheat.

Let me elaborate: The jazz world knows Dick Hyman, who at 82 years old is in a class by himself – able to roll off creative perfectly-crafted stuff at a mile a minute. Hyman can play anything he can think, and more importantly, he can really think of limitless quantities of things quite wonderful which, as Eddie Condon said, “Don’t bother me.”

But wait! I know that you know about Dick Hyman, but you might not know about Catherine Russell. She is the finest jazz singer I have ever heard.

No kidding, when she sings, there is no fooling around:

1. Every pitch is right there in the center.
   
2. She doesn’t copy anybody.
   
3. Everything swings.
   
4. The sound is pure.
   
5. There is a hint of the blues in all of this.
   
6. She knows the music.
   
7. She is not a bebopper or a traditionalist.

In addition, she is the daughter of jazz pioneer Luis Russell, so she comes with a heavy duty jazz pedigree.

We have been rehearsing at night at the Alamo Piano Company (now called Alamo Music Center). I am also charged up about playing there. This is the Flores family store and they have been in business, father and son, for 80 years.

I bought my first cornet at a pawn shop and then walked around the corner to Alamo Piano and bought a book, “How to Play the Cornet,” price $1 – this is 1956.

Alamo Music hasn’t moved a peg in all these years. It is right in the center of downtown San Antonio. The Musician’s Union office is upstairs.

It has been a thrill for us to rehearse at this classic old musical oasis.

Last night, Dick Hyman and Catherine Russell rehearsed there with us. I had selected for them a rich piece by Alec Wilder.

I am standing there at Alamo Music Center in the middle of all these world-class grand pianos and here we go with Hyman and Catherine making honey come pouring out of a pitcher with “South to a Warmer Place.”

Jim Turner slaps me on the arm and we say things like, “Doesn’t get any better than that” and “Nothing in the world is better than this.” And I turn and walk around between the pianos. The tears are running down my cheeks.

I come from the tradition where you choke back tears. In a way, you’re embarrassed by them.

I don’t think I was embarrassed. Still, I walked away and dried my eyes on my shirt sleeves.

I wasn’t embarrassed at all, or I wouldn’t be writing everybody emails about it.