PROVOCATIVE JAZZ

“Provocative” is the word that a number of those present at Dr. Frederick Starr’s keynote address to this year’s Satchmo SummerFest used to describe his characteristically thoughtful and witty presentation, (the essence of which was outlined in the article by Bunny Matthews in last month’s OffBeat entitled “The Primitive-ization of New Orleans Jazz.”)

Having been among those provoked, I thought I’d offer a few comments.

The problem of course is that much of what Dr. Starr had to say is true. Al Rose did have a way of stretching the facts, often to bizarre proportions. Bill Russell, whatever his accomplishments, was a rotten violin player. Danny Barker raised more than eyebrows in the New Orleans jazz community when upon hearing the band at Preservation Hall for the first time he remarked, “These cats can’t play!”

I would indeed have let the whole issue slide was it not for Dr. Starr’s prefacing his remarks about Al Rose with the phrase, “Al Rose, bless his heart…”

Since even Yankees like Dr. Starr and myself know well that the Southernism “bless his (or her) heart” can be used to make charges of child molestation or mass murder sound affectionate and endearing, it was this formulation that put me on my guard.

So here Dr. Starr, bless your heart, are a few adjustments I’d like to offer to your comments.

It is not true that jazz historian Dick Allen was not a musician. He played trombone, but was graceful enough to acknowledge that he wasn’t very good and gave it up on that basis. No saxophones? Captain John Handy performed on sax at Preservation Hall almost from the start.

If Bill Russell tried to keep Bunk Johnson from playing anything but the most primitive music, which I doubt, he certainly was not successful at it, as Dr. Starr professed in his spoken presentation. I offer for example, the wonderful collaborations between Bunk and Don Ewell on Russell’s own American Music label, including the lovely “Poor Butterfly” which I believe derived from Italian opera [Puccini’s Madame Butterfly] not jungle tom-toms. There’s also the Johnson Band’s delightful “Tishomingo Blues” on Decca, a melody which I’m sure Dr. Starr would agree is not primitive, and virtually all of the Bunk Johnson recordings with his last New York band which appeared on the Columbia label.

It is true that Bunk did not think much of Jim Robinson and George Lewis. But if you listen to the “Franklin Street Blues” recording by Louis Dumaine’s Jazzola Eight that was done in New Orleans in 1927, you will have to admit that the clarinet sounds remarkably like George Lewis, although it was certainly not him. To the point though, I don’t think Dr. Starr would describe the Louis Dumaine orchestra as primitive.

Jim Robinson was indeed on the primitive side, but so was the Sam Morgan Jazz Band, also recorded on portable equipment by Columbia in 1927, one of the most remarkable examples extent of New Orleans jazz of that period. And the trombonist on those recordings is none other than the Jim Robinson who was chosen by these Yankee charlatans to play with Bunk in the 1940s.

Aside from all of this, I think that many readers including Dr. Starr will be fascinated to learn that one of the original Columbia 78s of the Sam Morgan Jazz Band, “Steppin’ On The Gas” and “Mobile Stomp,” with primitive Jim Robinson on trombone, sold at auction this past May on eBay for $1752! With that noteworthy but totally irrelevant postscript, I rest my case.

—Steve Steinberg, New Orleans, LA

The sophisticated jazz tradition that Dr. Starr champions, and indeed, my father Al Rose championed, had been forced out of New Orleans long before Larry Borenstein opened Preservation Hall, not by Starr’s paranoid conspiracy theory of three Commie, Jew, Yankee outside agitators who strangled it like a sinister vine, but by New Orleans itself when it closed the dance halls. The jazzmen went to New York and Chicago, where they were appreciated. They got prosperous and old there. Most did not return. Louisiana was segregated, or did Starr forget? What sane black musician, including Louis Armstrong (whose home was Queens, New York), would return when up north jazzmen were appreciated, respected, paid well, and could go to a decent restaurant? Starr’s fantasy might fly better in New Orleans than the real pigheaded racist history. However, it was really guys like Larry Borenstein, Danny Barker, Al Rose, and Harold Dejan who resuscitated jazz in New Orleans, and ironically the New Orleans Repertory Jazz Ensemble finds itself thriving within this same preservationist tradition today. Bill Russell and my father bought Bunk Johnson a set of dentures with their own money so he could play his horn again, and now Starr offers fifty-year hindsight about the band lineup when the contemporaneous pool of musicians in New Orleans was almost nil. Maybe they should have looked for jazzmen at the New Orleans Country Club. This would all be funny if Starr’s omnipresent stack of accolades did not threaten to lend credence to his scholarly kudzu.

—Rex Rose, Austin, TX

BLOW ME

Thanks for your open letter explaining WWOZ’s unfortunate decision to divorce from OffBeat. If anyone cares about local music—all of it—then it is OffBeat. Maybe ’OZ’s mission in life is to broadcast “New Orleans” music to ex-pat hipsters in Prague via the Internet. As far as my community goes, the only times the names of any of my pissant bands were in print they were in OffBeat. I guess Where Y’at and Gambit too. But the only times my gigs have been announced on the air have been on the Live Wire or else between Crackhead George’s mangled chlamydia PSA’s on ’TUL back in the Stretch Matt days. The point is: I am about as far down on the musical ladder as this town allows, yet I have your magazine’s support. Sure OffBeat is in every bar in town, but maybe you’re driving down the road listening to ’OZ when the Live Wire airs and you realize that Mike West is playing tonight. Or Lynn Drury or the Fessters or Stover’s Bad Mayo or, or, or… I don’t think ’OZ would even play a Morning 40 tune, and their Dixie-sleaze shit is 100% Ninth Ward. At least, whenever I called in a request, they couldn’t “find it.” Are the DJs also volunteers?

As for “being in it for the money,” I bet the profit margin at the OffBeat is slimmer than the take in a Checkpoint Charlie tip jar, and even if it isn’t, so what? You think all these dough dicks selling CDs out of their guitar cases would mind actually selling a few? Aren’t people always saying the trick in life is to do what you love and somehow get paid for it? It seems to me that’s exactly what the OffBeat is doing. You know, Dicktar and I handed out OffBeats with Blake [Thompson] and Brenda Lee at the Fair Grounds in exchange for free Jazz Fest admittance back in April, and it wasn’t glamorous, but it wasn’t glamorous equally, and you kinda got the feeling we were all in it together. I’m pretty sure the ’OZ crew had a gold-plated parking lot and an electric cooled cheese plate. Which is closer to the common experience?

That Mangina got a decent write up really takes the sting out of Dirty Mouth losing to the Hazard County Girls as Best Emerging Rock Band of 2002 at OffBeat Awards last year. Hazard County Girls over Dirty Mouth? I mean, that’s something ’OZ woulda done.

So, WWOZ, if you’re reading this, tell Dr. John to watch out for the Dorito truck and when you’re done that, blow me. For real.

—Dean Lutz, Patient Zero, New Orleans, LA

NO JAZZ ON BOURBON STREET?

Phillip Rucker reported on August 5, 2004 in the Times-Picayune: “[Scott] Aiges [New Orleans Director of Music Business Development] said the city plans to invest in the Frenchmen Street arts and cultural district and hopes to develop a live music district along Rampart Street in the French Quarter. He also said the mayor’s office hopes to institute noise ordinances on Bourbon Street to lower the decibel level and control sound frequencies so that street musicians elsewhere in the Quarter can be heard over loud nightclubs on Bourbon.”

Mayor Ray Nagin was heard on WDSU-TV saying that the city was going to promote Frenchmen Street because there was virtually no jazz on Bourbon Street.

Both statements to me appear to be either statements of blatant denial or conclusions based on misinformation.

I am the musical director and headlining bandleader of Fritzel’s European Jazz Club at 733 Bourbon Street. Fritzel’s is the oldest, continuously operating jazz club in the city. On October 6th, Fritzel’s will turn 31 years old and will have provided live traditional New Orleans jazz without interruption for 31 years on Bourbon Street.

Fritzel’s celebrates French Quarter Festival from the end of March to the end of the first week in May. During this time, musicians and fans from all over the world come in to Fritzel’s to hear live traditional New Orleans jazz on Bourbon Street. In fact, during the month of April, Fritzel’s features live jazz daily from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. performed by the many European and international jazz bands which come to play at Fritzel’s at no charge—all of this just for the honor of playing their music on Bourbon Street. In October we celebrate our anniversary/Oktoberfest and the April trend is again repeated.

Previous administrations recognized this strong influence on tourism Fritzel’s is responsible for. It had been the tradition during Fritzel’s French Quarter Festival and Oktoberfest that the mayor or someone deputizing in his stead would visit Fritzel’s and honor the international bands with honorary citizenships. This tradition has ceased at Fritzel’s for no apparent reason. In October of 2003, I contacted Scott Aiges and asked him to drop by for our 30th anniversary on behalf of the city to say a few words. I was never contacted with a yes or no; I was left with an impression of disregard for Fritzel’s on behalf of the city.

In addition to Fritzel’s there are many other venues which feature live traditional jazz on Bourbon Street. Among them, the Jazz Parlor at Storyville, Arnaud’s Jazz Bistro, the Court of Two Sisters, the Mystic Den in the Royal Sonesta Hotel, Original Papa Joe’s, the Seaport Restaurant and Bar, the Maison Bourbon, and two clubs featuring jazz just opened up and are neighbors of Fritzel’s.

Here is a partial list of venues surrounding Bourbon Street which provide live jazz: Palm Court Café, Ritz Carlton, the French Quarter Bar, the Sheraton, the Hilton, Torticelli’s, Cafe Sbisa, the Market Cafe, the Gazebo, the Bombay Club, Preservation Hall, etc.

To say or imply that jazz in the French Quarter or Bourbon Street, for that matter, is non-existent or non-deserving of aid or recognition is either foolish or blatant ignorance of the situation. Why must we focus all of our attention on Frenchmen Street, when the very area famous for jazz still has much jazz, despite what Mr. Aiges and Mayor Nagin have said?

I am not declaring that Mayor Ray Nagin or his staff have fallen short of their job duties. All cannot be done in a four year term. However, with commercials for tourism advertising jazz in the French Quarter, I feel it is a “bait and switch” tactic to steer tourists off of Bourbon Street and onto the city-favored Frenchmen Street. Why I and my fellow jazz musicians on Bourbon Street must suffer to promote another area is beyond me.

I am not against the Frenchmen Street music “scene.” I am for live music anywhere, being a musician myself. I find it unfortunate, however, that there seems to be a focus on the part of the city to promote Frenchmen Street. Does Mr. Aiges just have a leaning towards the Frenchmen Street scene? Does he have an aversion to Bourbon Street and its scene?

—Ryan Burrage, Musical Director/Bandleader, Fritzel’s European Jazz Pub, New Orleans, LA

STEAL AWAY

In a doctor’s office in Austin, Texas is a copy of the September, 2002 OffBeat, the one with all the quotes from 15 years of the magazine. Is it possible to get a copy of this issue or do I have to make another appointment and steal that one?

—Marcia Ball, Austin TX

AARON EXCITES BROOKLYN

If you catch up with any of the Neville Brothers, ask them how they liked New York City, particularly Brooklyn. We had such a great time. So many of the folks hadn’t heard from them in such a long time. There were more folks of color than they probably usually get—and it was felt. The vibe was fantastic. How can we “city” fans help to get them in cities more? I saw them in the Hamptons—a totally different vibe…. the Brooklyn visit reunited many older fans and made new ones. Aaron was so sweet. At 63 he was getting young chippies excited. He did autographs and took pictures with the fans—before and after the show. He was so humble and sincerely nice. It was a great Brooklyn day with the best of New Orleans.

Ask Cyril why he moved out so quickly. Aaron autographed my The Brothers book before the show. I wanted Cyril’s but he disappeared so quickly. I figured he maybe had to use the bathroom…God knows I don’t wish for divorces but if you guys hear about Aaron becoming free give me a heads up… just kidding.

—Makeda Abdullah, Brooklyn, NY

DOPSIE KILLS ITALY

I have six groups at Umbria Jazz now, including Rockin’ Dopsie, Jr. I looked at the OffBeat newsletter yesterday [Weekly Beat], big hurry. Today I received an email from Jef Jaisun in Seattle, so I looked again, and as I was opening the letter, Dopsie came down to the hotel lobby and I showed it to him. It is really fun to get things from home after eight days in Italy. Dopsie is killing them every show. Last night, the crazy sucker dived off the stage into the audience, I almost had another heart attack, but all was okay, and the audience went wild yet again. Dopsie perhaps the world’s best stage general, he had musicians from the other groups coming up to play throughout the set: I wish that we were doing good video on some of these shows. Sunday night is finalé, and we are planning the world’s biggest R&B band, with the Mitch Woods five horns (with our Tim Green on sax), the Funky 7 brass band section, Donald Harrison and adding Bill Solley on guitar, two or three drummers, and the Nashville Super choir as back up vocals, it should be pandemonium! The amazing hit of Umbria Jazz this summer is the newly 15-year-old Francesco Cafiso on alto sax. He will be studying with Ellis Marsalis in New Orleans from July to August. I will try to get him into every gig in town. He is truly amazing, especially to be from Sicily!

—Gary Edwards, Sound of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA

DANIEL STUNS AUSTIN

I just witnessed a stunningly beautiful set by Daniel Lanois and his compadres here in Austin.

When we spoke afterwards he told me to express his kind regards to all his friends in New Orleans. Since I have no current plans to be there I’m using your magazine to pass on Daniel’s sentiments.

—Kevin Combs, Austin, TX

CRIB RENOVATIONS

Since I am in the process of renovating the crib, I certainly wouldn’t refer to it as a penthouse. I think I need a poster of Mr. Rebennack receiving the blessing of “Fess,” Earl and James. It will prove a suitable centerpiece in the music room and pay a fitting tribute to my Louisiana music obsession. It wouldn’t be so bad if the obsession was confined to Louisiana. However, it ranges a wee bit further than that, much to the chagrin of my financial adviser. But some things you just have to have, right!

Can we have the Cajun version next year? Maybe, Michael Doucet receiving a similar “touch” from Iry Lejeune, Nathan Abshire and Harry Choates.

—Craig Hannah, Durban, South Africa