I’m in the San Francisco Bay Area at the moment. Although it is an extremely unpleasant circumstance which finds me here (this is no vacation), I’m glad to get away from New Orleans for a couple of weeks. As it happens even here, 2,300 miles from the Sugar Shack, it seems I can’t get away at all.
Part 1, The Coffee Shop: I wanted a cup of coffee. There is a Starbucks near my mothers house, which is not unusual in this part of the world as there is a Starbucks near everyone’s mother’s house. When I walk in there is music playing. New Orleans music. Professor Longhair. Although it was the music of the very same H. R. Byrd that first compelled me to visit New Orleans 15 years ago, and for whose grandchildren I once bought a Butterfinger and some pickled pigs lips at an insane Dryades Street grocery, at this moment I just want it to stop. It does, only to be followed immediately by the sound of Leo Nocentelli’s guitar…The funky Meters! In UnFunky Starbucks! In really UnFunky Daly City!
Part 2, The Nightclub: My sister Mary, along with her husband Mitchell and the only human being who seems to appreciate my ukulele stylings—their nine month old son Eli—live across the Golden Gate in the charming hamlet of Mill Valley. Walking about the town square one recent afternoon Captain Mitch pointed out the popular and renown night spot “Sweetwater.” As we approached the bulletin board out front which detailed upcoming entertainments, my eye was drawn to the poster afforded the most space among the many: “Walter ‘Wolfman’ Washington and the Roadmasters, appearing July 15th!” Another coming attraction, “Zigaboo Modeliste” who they call a master of many drumming styles including “Dixieland.” That night I decided to check the place out. If one lopped the superfancy linen shop off the left side, physically Sweetwater would fit quite comfortably in New Orleans with its long bar and ceiling fans. And the crowd, well, it was like being at the Maple Leaf during Jazz Fest, except that here the shows end at 11:45 instead of starting at that time and these folks are well behaved because it’s their city not ours. The first song the band offered after I walked in was “Lawdy Miss Clawdy.” And as the accountant /vocalist passionately delivered the tune to the assembled dotcom gazillionaires who populate this geography like, say, roaches do in New Orleans, I couldn’t help but look past him and gaze at the main feature of the back wall of the club …a poster of Professor Longhair. An inspection of a wall of photographs revealed one of Aaron Neville. I went home about the time I would usually get ready to go out.
Part 3, The Record Store: “Jonnie, you ought to go check out Village Music,” Captain Mitch suggested the next morning. Elvis Costello, it is said, counts this record store among the world’s greatest. I walk the few blocks down East Blithedale Avenue to take a look. The first thing I notice is the proprietor of the shop is wearing a “New Orleans Artists Against Hunger and Homelessness” t-shirt (the next day he will be wearing an Irma Thomas number). At my feet is a box that says “Free Magazines.” It is piled high with OffBeat back issues (which I rifle through to complete my collection of Mark Meister “Feedback” columns). I pick up the LP Is This Your Rudy Vallee? the past-his-prime crooners attempt at comedy, recorded live in Bermuda (Initial joke: “My wife and I came over on Pan American Airlines. We wanted to fly united but the stewardess wouldn’t allow it.” Racy!) An amazing record store, indeed.
Part 4, The County Fair: On the Fourth of July we decide to indulge in a bit of Independence Day Americana and head for the County Fair, held on the grounds of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Marin Civic Center. I was primed for livestock and mincemeat after watching “State Fair” (“Starring Dick Haymes!”) three times in a week on Channel 12 before I left town. We passed through the midway (where I did my best Shaquille O’Neal impression from the foul line and failed to win young Eli a stuffed animal) and decided to get a bite to eat. “Look Jonnie, New Orleans food!” Oh, the gumbo, oh, the etouffee, oh, the Humanity! At 2 p.m. we consulted the schedule of events and were faced with the following choices:
- a) Pig racing!
- b) Flea Circus!
- c) Direct from New Orleans The Preservation Hall Jazz Band!
Although I argued passionately in favor of the pig racing because, you know it’s not something you really see everyday and I was pretty sure Eli was with me on this, but we were outnumbered and the family opted for that which I can see everyday, the Preservation Hall Band. The tent was packed, and after Wendell Brunious and the gang got through a few choruses of “Hindustan,” I remembered why I fell in love with New Orleans jazz in the first place. Frank Demond excited the crowd with his trombone as well as the wacky Humphreyesque gesturing (both Willie and Percy) that he picked up over the many years spent sitting alongside those late legends. And the crowd went mad, folks of all types and ages and sizes and everything else were smiling and clapping and dancing, all of which reminded me of the power of this music.
At this point in my stay I’m thinking that this sort of thing will keep happening, New Orleans will keep creeping up and I would walk in to, say, the Gold Dust Lounge on Powell Street and John Gill (long a staple on the Crescent City scene, but no longer) would be playing “St. James Infirmary/Gambler’s Blues” and interpolate “Jon Pult, all the way from New Orleans” into the song (which he did). And I would turn on the radio and hear long discussions of Louis Armstrong’s life on the fine NPR (that’s Nicaraguan Public Radio for you righties out there) program “Talk of the Nation” (a full hour). Or I would scan the listings in the trusty Pink Sheet and notice that the ubiquitous Los Hombres Calientes would be among those performing at a local jazz festival (which they are). However, something else happened too, so I will veer from our New Orleans story for a moment and tell you about the new figurative love of my life, Janet Klein.
In previous columns I have let be known my affinity for hot music and the ukulele. Janet Klein sings and plays the ukulele, her band, the Parlor Boys, plays the hot music. They assembled on a recent Friday evening in the subterranean depths of Café du Nord on Market Street in San Francisco, a club with a slightly dangerous, prohibition era speakeasy feel. When the curtain opened on the small stage Ms. Klein, this sprightly oddball prone to wacky hand gestures (rivaling DeMond) and peculiar jazz age posturing, began singing “Good Little Bad Little You,” a number I count among my favorites as performed by the great Cliff Edwards, and a tune one never ever hears performed live. She sang “Exactly Like You” and “If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight.” When she sang “Banana in My Fruitbasket,” well, let’s just say I was glad to be presently on the “Dole.” She even unearthed a little known Cole Porter masterpiece, “The Physician,” and I therefore melted when Ms. Klein, this lively thrush, cooed the following: “He said my epidermis was darling, and found my blood as blue as could be, he went through wild ecstatics when I showed him my lymphatics, but he never said he loved me.”
While I was pining in a sort of joyous trance, the parlor boys (three guitars, standup bass, washboard and a guy who doubled on Hawaiian lap steel and musical saw) were augmented by a trumpeter and accordionista (this is San Francisco after all). The latter looked quite familiar to me, and soon my assumptions were correct when Ian Whitcomb, the spry English chap who had a rock and roll hit in the 1960s with “You Turn Me On,” and then turned his formidable talents to playing, researching and writing about the music of Tin Pan Alley and its immediate precursors, was introduced. It is fitting that Mr. Whitcomb’s latest offering is a songbook and CD set entitled Ukulele Heaven for that’s where he put me when he and his little Martin uke were featured on that most buoyant of Walter Donaldson numbers “T’aint No Sin,” (“When a gal wears X-Ray dresses, and shows everything she owns, t’aint no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.”)
In this instance to arrive in Ukulele Heaven, where Klein and Whitcomb undoubtedly had me, one first had to spend considerable time in Ukulele Hell. Opening act “The Hobnobbers,” billed as a “Vaudeville Ukulele Duo,” failed to grasp one of vaudeville’s most important teachings—perfect five to ten minutes and get off the stage! For although their overwrought smiling and use of props (a papier-mâché moon dropped down when they sang of getting out and under it) charmed initially, they and their silly straw boaters quickly grew tiresome, then on to agonizing, until finally they had me ruing the notion of the background check.
To leave purgatory and wrap things up here, let me say that among the wonderful set list that Ms. Klein put together was the tune “Sunday,” which brings us back to New Orleans. As this is August, once again George Buck will be celebrating the anniversary of the initial recording session for his Jazzology label. It was 51 years ago this August 16th that young George gathered Tony Parenti and his New Orleanians in the Beltone Recording Studio in New York. If I recall correctly, the first tune they waxed on that sweltering summer afternoon was “Sunday.” Congratulations, George.
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