Only received this this morning, 30.4.2020
and haven't yet had time to try out the links, but
https://mailchi.mp/marsdenjazzfestival/where-to-watch-live-jazz-this-international-jazz-day-2020?e=9a9ffcdf98
holds a lot of promise.
Geoff C
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Jazz from Geoff
28.4.2020
Another Tuesday, another blog for you to read.
This one does contain some sad news.
Long time Hedsor Jazz supporter and Jazz Angel John Jordan
died of Coronavirus 19 last Wednesday, April 23rd. He had previously
attended Wexham Park A&E for his known heart condition, but sadly on
returning home he became unwell and was transferred back to Wexham Park
hospital where he died a few days later.
I am sure all of you would like to express our sympathy
and sadness at their loss to wife Joan and daughter Mandy. Normally I would let
you all know when the funeral would be, but in these difficult times that event
will be limited to only 10 people anyway. I will pass on the date when I get it
for you to think of him at that appropriate time.
We do live in very difficult times, but I do intend to
keep nagging on about jazz, and to keep providing links to the music that you
can listen to or add to your own collection with via the pages of this blog.
One of our Hedsor regulars has emailed me to say what he
has been doing with his socially distancing time since we last met. What he
wrote is:-
Geoff
I've been binging on the latest Harry Bosch series on
Prime and tonight got to episode 10. Harry (or his creator Michael Connelly)
clearly likes jazz as Harry was playing this on his old fashioned vinyl player.
As you know Pepper was another troubled character but the music is still
wonderful.
Jim
He had previously mailed me about the death of Lee
Konitz:-
Did you miss the passing of Lee Konitz on
15 April from the virus in New York. I’ve spent some time this last week
listening to some of his stuff and while I was never a great fan there is some
good stuff on You Tube. He was also a bit of a comedian in front of the
audience and it looks as if he wouldn’t stop talking sometimes.
Now some new avenues for you to research.
I have been re investigating some of the earlier forms
of jazz, mainly triggered by my mention of Jelly Roll Morton and my purchase of
the JATP 10 CD set from the 40’s and 50’s the other week.
I know I linked to Jelly Roll’s version of Buddy Bolden’s
Blues from the 1938 library of congress recordings he made with folk historian
Alan Lomax, but he did make some more recordings with and without fellow jazz
musicians before he died (in 1941). He made 25 more titles for the General
record label, mostly all issued on 78’s and about a year after he
recorded (for Alan Lomax) the library of congress recordings.
These last recordings have all now been gathered
together on one CD called “The Last Sessions” and they can be found on “Commodor”
CMD 14032. You may have to search for it as my copy was issued in 1997. You will
find a slightly different version of Buddy Boldens Blues here with references
to both a notorious law enforcement man (Judge Fogerty), who made miscreants
sweep New Orleans streets as a punishment, and a reference to Bolden’s trombone
player Frankie Dusen. If only we could hear today what that band sounded like!
Jelly Roll Morton was only 51 when he died. He suffered
for a long time before with a version of Asthma which was thought to have been
caused by a violent attack on him made in a nightclub, where he was stabbed in
the head and chest. The asthma weakened his heart (according to his wife) and
he died of his heart condition. His condition may have been assisted by his
previous lifestyle, I’m sure being the piano player in a brothel may have had
its health risks.
He was without
doubt a remarkable musician, and one has to wonder what might have been jazz
musics outcome if he had lived into a more modern era. These last recordings of
his solo piano do reflect some of that brothel style (I am told!). However the
group tracks on this CD do not adequately reflect the kind of music he was
making in 1926 Chicago with his famous Red Hot Peppers, but they are a great
piece of history.
More modern history can be found back in 2018 when The
Clive Burton Celebration Quintet played us some New Tunes at Hedsor Jazz. These
were recorded on my mobile phone, in glorious mono, and you can revel in the
nostalgic memory of that evening by visiting and downloading the files from my
DropBox folder
When you get to track 11, you will realize that there is
an error in the label for the titles on the sleeve, but you can never have
perfection! Just enjoy the music, because that’s pretty good.
So until I write some more, be good, stay safe, wash
your hands, and we will meet again.
PS, Once again I have no idea why blogger.com changes the background colour sometimes without editorial direction!
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Jazz from
Geoff
Tuesday, 21 April
2020
As I said in last weeks blog I did succumb to the
temptation of the 10 CD set of “Jazz at the Philharmonic”, so this week I
haven’t felt tempted to add anything new to my collection. Maybe you have?
Don’t forget to tell me via my email address for this blog
together with any
thoughts you may have had on your new purchase.
With this issue I will again point you at some stuff you
might like to look at and to listen to via YouTube.
I have also uploaded to DropBox a Hedsor Jazz concert
from 2018 with Duncan Lamont Jr and Stuart Henderson that I recorded on my
mobile phone, so do check out
The first YouTube link this week might look a bit odd, as
it has a reference to Sandy Brown. BUT it carries a very nice tribute to Clive
Burton, together with a clip of Clive and the band playing “The Night has a Thousand
Eyes”, again with Zane on keyboard and filmed at “The Fifield Inn”, the
regular Sunday night spot for the band.
OK, I also get quoted from an old blog report! Is that
fame?
I must admit I have been wondering not just when we can
all get back to having such wonderful live jazz together at Hedsor again, but
how we can do it.
You may remember that when we first stopped live jazz at The
Hedsor Club because of the virus we said we would possibly resume on Thursday 23rd April?
Now we know from experience that sadly this
cannot happen.
Maybe though when some of the restrictions are lifted we could possibly
produce a video of an evening, a bit like the way I have recorded CD’s of
concerts in the past, so that those who don’t want to risk possible exposure to
that virus (before a vaccine has been
developed to protect all of us?) can become a virtual audience. Again, please
post your ideas and suggestions to Octogeoff@outlook.com
One of the joys I have had from YouTube these past few
weeks has been the amount of music you can hear from “Tuba Skinny”, a New
Orleans band still playing in New Orleans very much in the style handed down
from earlier inhabitants of that town.
Do check it out. I know it isn’t the kind of jazz we were
used to listening to at Hedsor, but do take a good listen to them, and at there
ability to play. The young lady on the cornet makes it look SO easy, when it
certainly isn’t, I still have my trumpet from the days when I used to play some
of the same tunes and know how hard it can be. Then again the understanding
they all have of each tune, of each other and the way the tune should be
played. Your thoughts on their music on a postcard please. Or you could simply
use that email address.
One last picture below
You may be able to blame a lot of the development of jazz
on his man, who died in a lunatic asylum in 1931.
His name was Buddy Bolden. He never recorded, although
the early recording process was available to his band. He said he didn’t want
other people to copy his solos! So none of us have ever heard what he sounded
like. However, a fragment of one of his solos does exist in musical memory. It
is generally thought that the main theme of the tune “Buddy Bolden’s Blues” was
one of his solos!
Sometimes you can be too careful!
Another of the early
exponents of jazz was Jelly Roll Morton, piano player and band leader (look up
his “Red Hot Peppers”). He wasn’t so shy of recording, and before he died in 1941
he laid down some solo piano tracks for the US Library of Congress and on one
of those recordings you can hear him sing “Buddy Bolden’s Blues”.
OK this is the last last picture this week!!
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Jazz from Geoff
Sadly not information about upcoming jazz at Hedsor Jazz,
but still, something to while away the Jazz Hour you may still like to give
yourselves in this unusual time in our lives. One that we just didn’t see
coming in January. Who knew that when we first wrote 2020 on an email or
greetings card that it would turn out to be such a time of isolation. And a sad
time where we have all become aware that this invisible enemy is an
indiscriminate killer without moral or conscience.
I think most of us feel that it is the inability to share
time with friends and family that is the worst of the new every day. I think we
will all learn again what a joy it is to actually share a common interest in
someone else’s company. How we had taken for granted the simple pleasure of
going with a mate to sink a pint of beer in a pub!
However I do want to try and give you something new to
listen to, and something to watch as well. Not really new, but sound and vision
from times past that you may not have listened to before
First a link to about 6 minutes of music from 2008. The
Clive Burton Quintet at The Fifield Inn on a Sunday evening. The quintet is in
one of its first manifestations, with Zane Cronje on keyboard.
I think last week I overloaded your attention span and
gave you too many links, so I am cutting back this week. I will share however a
bit more Clive Burton Quintet, this time one of the recordings I made in June
2017. Below you will find a link to a DropBox folder for an evening of the
Quintet with added guitarist Jezz Cook. 2 one hour recordings plus the artwork
for a CD cover if you want to keep it.
Last week I reference my listening of “Jazz at the
Philharmonic” CD’s. In the end I succumbed to my own temptation, and purchased
the 10 CD box set.
Wonderful music. I have only managed to play a couple of
the CD’s so far, but have been impressed particularly by the recordings of
Lester Young. You tend to forget how good he was in the 50’s before his
lifestyle caught up with him.
These legendary musicians may not have had the university
education and grooming that many jazz musicians have now, but they had
identifiable character. In the jam sessions that JATP were you can easily tell
Lester Young from Coleman Hawkins for example. If you listen to trumpeter Buck
Clayton or trumpeter Jo Newman, you can tell which was which by their signature
sound. Each musician had something to say, and no matter what their lifestyles were,
they conveyed their view of the tune, of the language of the times that they
were living in, as only each one of them could.
 |
| Buck Clayton |
 |
| Jo Newman |
 |
| Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins |
not the best sound quality, or the best visual quality either, but who cares, the music is terrific!
Do send feedback on both the jazz you listen to and how
you are coping with lock down life to my email address :- Octogeoff@outlook.com
I will have more music to share with you in the weeks to
come. Stay safe, don’t forget to clap for the NHS on Thursdays. Its a different
kind of Thursday night out!
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
Jazz from Geoff
IF you are anything like me, you are becoming accustomed
to managing self isolation and social distancing!
You have probably found a new routine that works for you.
Maybe you are discovering new programs to watch on TV. Maybe you are catching
up with some old ones that you didn’t get to see back in the day, I know I am.
However have you forgotten yet what Live Jazz feels like?
At the Clive Burton Quintet's 20th Anniversary Party I took a few photos. Below is one which goes to prove that you can improve on the lighting and the curtains in the Hedsor Hall! It was taken by me at that party in 2016!
This past week I have looked over some of my record collection and found
a number that were recorded in front of an audience. The Eddie Condon ones were
broadcasts, but always recorded in front of an audience. BBC Jazz Club
broadcasts were also usually recorded in front of a studio audience, and I can
remember many visits to the BBC Maida Vale Studios in Delaware Road to watch
and listen to Jazz Club recordings being made, often with Peter Clayton as the
compare. Some of these are now available on the Upbeat label, and I will write
about those at a later date.
This week I have been listening to some slightly earlier
recordings made in front of a very live audience. I have been doing this via a
box set from Proper Box called “Jazz at the PHILHARMONIC, the first 10 Years”,
a 4 CD set with a good booklet.
(Properbox 82). The recordings aren’t studio perfect, but the music is vibrant,
and sometimes really groundbreaking, with obvious excitement caused by the
music for the live audience.
A 1946 concert has 4 great choruses on “Sweet Georgia
Brown” by Charlie Parker. He had been late turning up for the concert as he had
been on a search for a drug fix to get him through the event! The audience
noticed his arrival (after about a minute into the tune) in the wings, and then after
the piano solo 4 blistering choruses by Parker follow!
The 4cd box set is a small sample of what was recorded
during the lifetime of JATP, See https://www.discogs.com/Jazz-At-The-Philharmonic-The-First-Ten-Years/release/5691242
for this set.
A much larger set produced by “The Intense Media” called
“Milestones of Legends at the Philharmonic”
can be found at
where 10 cds provide the coverage!
Some excellent music can be found of course for free,
especially if you investigate YouTube, Amazon Prime, or Spotify.
One I found that is available is by the pianist John Bunch who was on many recording, but only as a
leader I think on 3. You can find “John’s Bunch” from 1975 via YouTube at https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mhIgCiSajdhoUm8ibmErhhOvx3QoTKraw
where he is joined by Al Cohn and Urbie Green. 11 tracks
that include 2 alternative takes.
I have had this ever since the CD came out. It was originally issued in the 1970's on LP, but in the 2000's on CD with the 2 alternative takes..
One final link this week in my efforts to keep you
amused during this time of being away from it all.
On YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6INbe5lC3LI
you will find a very nice, previously unreleased track by the Humphrey Lyttelton band.
The tune is called“South” and has some nice photos and sketches to keep
your eyes occupied during the 5 minutes of so of the tune. BUT can you identify
all the people in the pictures?
Just to start you off in the cut above(!) you will see John Pickard trombone, Humph trumpet and Bruce turner alto sax.
If you would like to tell me who they all are in the 5 minutes video,
and would be prepared for me to share your notes and any other comments you would like to make about your
well being, inspirational jazz tracks from your past and/or any greetings on
others in “our” jazz fraternity, please email me at Octogeoff@hotmail.com I am reserving this email address for just that purpose!
These are difficult times we are living through. We will
come out from this invisible cloud into “broad sunlit jazzlands” to paraphrase
a WW2 speech! Those lands may be slightly different to those we can remember.
Until then we must satisfy ourselves with a few little
comforts, and our history of recorded jazz is certainly one of those. We must also be prepared to restart Live Jazz. The meeting and greeting and the applauding on a Thursday, not only our essential workers , but also applauding our musicians. We took it all so much for granted didn't we?
More of my recordings from Hedsor Jazz next week.
In the
meantime do search back on recent issues of this blog for links to my DropBox
folders where I have already shared some of my Hedsor Jazz recordings. Because
I will have to take them down soon in order to put new ones up. You have been warned!
Take care
TTFN
Geoff
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Its
blog time again.
How
did you all get on with Eddie Condon? In last weeks blog I put in a link to
Eddie Condon’s 1940’s broadcasts.
Reading
some donated magazines this past week I came across this, which may help you
understand a bit more about Eddie Condon.
If you're not
familiar with the music of Eddie Condon, now is a good time to check him out!
Eddie
Condon was a jazz guitarist who seldom took guitar solos. He did not sing and only wrote a
couple of songs. But, despite that, he was one of the most important figures in classic jazz.
He helped form and
formalize what came to be known as Dixieland, even
though he never liked the name. Dixieland music carried some negative
connotations when played by white
musicians.
What
he believed in was old-time jazz, the brash and exuberant kind with some of the "bark" left on it.
Jazz that came originally
from New Orleans by way of Chicago, Kansas City or Detroit.
Condon
once gave a colourful description of the
excitement he felt as a youth when he hung
around the Chicago joints where the
New Orleans jazz masters played. "Notes I had never heard were
peeling off the edges and dropping through
the middle; there was a tone from the
trumpets like warm rain on a cold
day," he said. "That music
poured into us like daylight running
down a dark hole. The choruses rolled on like high tide, getting wilder
and more wonderful."
Condon was one of
the Austin High Gang, an informal group of
young, up-and-coming white musicians who frequented the jazz clubs in Chicago, learning from the likes of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band
and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. This historic gang of upstarts included drummer Gene Krupa, clarinetist Frank
Teschemacher, tenor saxophonist Bud
Freeman and cornetist Jimmy McPartland.
Condon
quit high school early and joined Hollis Peavey's Jazz Bandits to play Odd Fellows dances in
Chicago and one-night stands in lakeside dance pavilions in Iowa, Minnesota and
Wisconsin.
For
the rest of his life, he remained loyal to hot jazz. He said, "Hot jazz was the child of ragtime, with
some of the bristle left in."
Eddie
Condon stood up for the traditional music that he believed in. He made witty comments.
Music
has always had the purpose of helping us get through
our day. Jazz continues to sweep us up and shake out the bad stuff.
Somewhere,
I once read, "When you bring New Orleans your sad story, New Orleans will put a beat to it."
This
was culled from an advertising article for “The Dirty Dog Jazz Cafe” in the
September 2019 edition of the American magazine “Downbeat”. The original text
is attributable to John Osler.
Not
on the recordings from the 1940’s, one of the best examples of the Condon style
produced, I think in 1955, was “How Come You Do Me Like You Do”. It lasts
nearly 13 minutes, and some of the players are introduced by Mr Condon himself together
with occasional comments on their performance!
Personnel on this
track are :-
In
last weeks link ( http://tinyurl.com/bao26ea ) there are 50 or so ½ hour broadcasts. If you do click the link, you
can save the file, and convert each file into CD’s (2 broadcasts per CD). Most
PC’s have the ability to burn CD’s and there are a number of online and free
bits of software that will enable it all to happen. Try Ashampoo Burning Studio
Free.
NEW
MUSIC
In
this weeks blog I am placing another DropBox link to a CD of music that I got
from the late Ken Rankine.
 |
| Ken Rankine at Ealing Jazz Festival 2012 |
Ken
was one of the founding players at The Ealing Jazz Festival, and in 1985 played
a set with some names that you will know. Some from Hedsor, and some from other
jazz venues! The session was recorded by the sound engineer, and Ken had a tape
of that performance. I turned it into a CD some years ago, and think now would
be a good time to let more people hear it.
The
titles and performers are listed in a file alongside all the music, all you
have to do is download and play that music:-
In
1985 I was at The Brecon Jazz festival in August, and had the late great Slim
Gaillard lean on me to help him down the stairs on to the stage! Veroony!
I
have never forgotten that one of the local dignitaries welcoming everyone to
the festival called him “Slim Whitman”, upon which he really broke up! Ah, the
days when I was young!
Well,
that’s it for now. Keep playing the music. One day we will meet again.
Then
we will make Jazz Live again.
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Jazz from Geoff
The Blog 24. 3. 2020
OK,
we are all missing the live stuff, and we are all getting used to a closed environment,
and maybe we are all getting used to a slightly modified diet.
No, you can’t
eat the loo rolls, or even cook with them, but they are not the only things now
definitely NOT on the shelves.
That
is of course if you can actually get to the shelves. Yesterday I tried my hand
for the first time at ordering food online for home delivery. With wife June
looking over my shoulder we logged in to Tesco, went through the list of what
was available, gradually building up a modest shopping basket.
Then
for the delivery slot.........none available until Mid April, yes, mid April,
and that even included the opportunity of going to pick it up yourself!
OK,
at least I could get onto Tesco’s web site. Sainsbury’s and Waitrose were unable
to take my online call!!
So
how can we cheer ourselves up?
I
know many of you have a greater knowledge in depth of the jazz music we love
than I have, but I thought I would share with you some of my jazz journey, but
maybe not in a chronological order!
In
this and future blogs I will provide links to some of the recordings I have
made at Hedsor over the years and I will also publish links to music on the
world wide web, both sound recordings and video. There is a LOT of great stuff around “out
there”.
First
this week, something to keep you quiet for at least 25 hours.
Some
of you will have heard of Eddie Condon. Nominally a guitar and banjo player, but really a professional
drunk, and gatherer of bands to play together in the roaring twenties around,
at the start, Chicago, but he went on to run 3 clubs in New York.
He
was much associated with players of the formulative music of the early white
jazz that eventually became known as “Dixeland Jazz” and that then developed in
the 1950’s to form “Mainstream”. How we all love labels!
Below,
is an article I culled from a magazine eons ago, written by Steve Voce, which
will put the link to the music into perspective.
“IF
YOU take yourself to http://tinyurl.com/bao26ea you'll find a quite extraordinary
library of Eddie Condon Town Hall concerts from the 40s. There are almost 50
half-hour broadcasts. The sound quality is surprisingly good considering the
age of the material, and in any case one's ears soon adapt to it. Condon's
concert series ran weekly from 21 May 1944 until 7 April 1945. There was the odd
gap in the broadcasts and so the set above is, if not complete, almost so. In
this version each programme in the list is identified by its opening number. If
you mouse click on a programme, it will begin to play.
The
wartime concerts were broadcast on the Blue Network before a live audience that
was admitted free. Because of the popularity of Condon's music there was a
capacity audience each week with many turned away. Condon drew on musicians
working in the New York clubs (he had the band at Nick's). So Max Kaminsky and
Gene Schroeder were regulars, but the pianists who played in the bands included
Joe Bushkin, Art Hodes, Cliff Jackson, Norma Teagarden and Jess Stacy. These
three were tremendously effective.
Featured
in more specialised roles were James P Johnson, Willie The Lion Smith and Earl
Hines. The brass involved Bobby Hackett, Muggsy Spanier, Wild Bill Davison,
Yank Lawson, Rex Stewart, Wingy Manone, Hot Lips Page, Jack Teagarden, Tommy
Dorsey, Miff Mole, Benny Morton and, oddly. Bill Harris from the Herman band.
Herman himself starred in one of the programmes, as did another bandleader of
the time, Gene Krupa.
Condon used musicians from the staff of radio studios
like Billy Butterfield and Ernie Caceres. Pee Wee
Russell was the clarinettist on most
programmes and Condon ribbed him throughout, referring to him as "The commando" and introducing him as
"Miff Mole is the one with glasses, Pee Wee
Russell is the one who needs them."
Pee Wee's contributions to these sessions are highly
regarded, but I regard
them as a handicap, the vagaries of his playing becoming tiresome after a
while.
Much
more satisfying was the work of
Caceres who occasionally played clarinet in the ensembles, but more often took a feature
number with Bushkin and
the dependable Wettling, who was used in most broadcasts. Caceres baritone playing is
seriously good and has an authority to rival Carney's.
The absentee who one would have expected to find in any
Condon session
was Bud Freeman. His omission was probably because of an incident from 1939.
Bud's Summa Cum Laude band with Condon had been
very successful in the musical Swingin' The Dream. After its short run, Bud was asked to take the band on
tour. He dropped Eddie from the band
because Eddie was drunk most of the time and Bud thought he would spoil the
tour. Condon held a grudge for the rest of his life”.
Steve
Voce
Last
night that link http://tinyurl.com/bao26ea still worked, and will lead you into
an adventure in 1940’s radio. Sit back and enjoy, but possibly not all in one
week. When I was an apprentice, I worked a 47 hour week, so doing Condon in one
go may be a bit exhausting! Just in case the link leads you back to me (I first
mentioned this in 2013), I will try ripping the music into DropBox for future
blogs. Feedback please via Octogeoff@outlook.com if the links don't work for you.
Now
for some back Hedsor Jazz.
will
take you to 23rd May 2019 and Lester Brown and Mark Aston.
Please
enjoy all of the approx 27 hours of jazz available via the above links.
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