Great CT Traditional Jazz Festival,
Wallingford CT, Saturday, August 1, 2009,
Mountain Ridge Resort, Wallingford, CT
I know a lot about jazz, and I know nothing about
jazz. I have grown up on the periphery of jazz --- I say “periphery”
because while I pay attention to the sound of jazz, I do not memorize or
often even learn the names, dates, places, musicians and their histories,
past and present. I listen to the sounds; and I watch the
action and the faces and the smiles of the band members. Sometimes I
watch the band play and so miss the listening. Sometimes I need to keep my
eyes on the floor to listen and miss the watching.
I know the tunes, not always by name or artist, but by
the notes. I can usually keep ahead of the tune by one beat, humming it in
advance. I can’t always identify the name of the song or the artist (or,
more often then not, I know the tune but not the artist), because I am not
an intellectual jazz listener. I get right down to the core and crust of
the tune and know it in the aural sense rather than the historical sense.
For years I thought “The Bear Missed the Train” was the
actual name of the song. I never knew that there were lyrics to “Tiger Rag”
until I heard them sung by New Orleans band on Prairie Home Companion.
For many years jazz was background music in my life
until my early 20’s, when I started actively listening to the
background music. I listened to the tuba and the bass (I guess I listened
to what I knew, what I grew up with – father played these parts).
I know very few people my age who listen to traditional
jazz. At best, they like modern jazz like Wynton Marsalis; at worst, they
like the advent-garde jazz of crashing piano notes and wheezing
saxophones. That is why is it so great to see the Sugarfoot Band play.
They do me one better; they not only listen to the jazz but actually play
the jazz. Since I never learned to play an instrument, I do not begrudge my
father’s pride in these kids.
So I don’t play jazz but I play jazz (on vinyl records,
to boot). I don’t know about jazz, but I know jazz and can feel it down to
my toes, right up to my grinning cheekbones.
The Sugarfoot / TGCTJF Jazz Band is the latest vision
of a youth jazz band, originally implemented by my father, Arthur Hovey,
under different versions and names so many years ago. They have come a long
way at The Great CT Traditional Jazz Festival from a few years ago when an
earlier edition played at a small “welcome” tent near the entrance of the
festival grounds for people to hear as they arrived. (I remember one man –
not a band parent – saying with great delight, “These are the best years of
their lives!”)
The best has gotten better, and the Sugarfoot band are
now fully-fledged participants at the festival, hospitality tent and all.
At least one member, Molly Sayles, is drumming for another, older festival
band, Sarah Spencer’s Transatlantic Band. These kids (still in high school)
are not your grim idea of a school orchestra with misplaced notes played a
beat too fast and correctly-placed notes played two beats too slowly. They
play the jazz tunes the way they were written, or played, in traditional
times.
I sat by the pool in the evening of the jazz festival,
just outside the pavilion in which the Sugarfoot were playing, because I
wanted to listen to them out-of-sight. I heard a pleasant version of “The
Entertainer” as a warm-up (a great soothing starting choice under the stars,
by the pool, at the end of a long day), led by Robert Young on piano. Then
on to the most popular jazz picks. Several included vocals (they don’t
just play! they sing too!) by Alannah Burke, with an understated, but
kittenish voice, on “Everybody Loves My Baby” and “All of Me.”
The brass section sounded and looked like a team, four
out of five of them keeping to a uniform of hats (pork-pies, trilbies, and
one flat “jazz cap”). I had seen them wandering around the festival earlier
today, and if you didn’t guess that they were band members because of their
youth, the hats gave them away.
To follow in another article: a more closely studied
review of the Sugarfoot Jazz Band’s cd, “Alive and Cookin’”, since, as I
mentioned before, not being an intellectual listener, I listened to the band
and not the facts of the songs played and who played them. But the
Sugarfoot Jazz Band sounded as professional as a recorded cd. They are a
great introduction to jazz for anyone, young or old, who needs a springboard
to know the most popular tunes of jazz. Why not start with the youngest best
players?
Going back a few hours, to when I first arrived at the
festival that day: The Bluelights. If you look up “fun” in a thesaurus,
there should be a mention of the Bluelights. I try to see at least one of
their sets every year at the festival. There is no brass in this band
(unless you count the voice of the lovely diamond-watts smiling Cynthia
Fabian). They are not traditional jazz but they are jazz, if you consider
“jazz” in the verbal sense, to “jazz you up.” They are another great
introduction to the jazz festival if you don’t know jazz but want to step in
feet first. Be careful, because they will wind you up almost too tightly,
but you will find yourself unwinding as you will find your feet tapping away
to the beat of the metal (not to mention mettle) of this band.
I was first drawn to this band for the variety of
instruments, including, but not limited to the washboard (my appeal for this
instrument must go back to a subliminal sense of mother, who used to play
the part) played with special silver-tipped black gloves; the washtub bass;
banjos, slide guitars, kazoos, and an accordion (who as a child has not been
curious about an accordion – likewise the bagpipes). I wish there were more
school-aged children at the festival, because the Bluelights are a real
introduction to the variety of instruments whose curiosity and fascination
may never leave a child – at least, they haven’t yet left me. I never tire
of watching these instruments; to me, they are like fascinating puppets,
with the real talent – the puppeteers – behind them and equally fascinating
to watch).
As far as sound goes, who can resist the
chitty-chitty-bang-bang, scrape, scrape, clackity-clack of these
instruments? If they don’t move you, physically as well as aurally, then
you must be a vegetable. (And, I think this music would even physically
move a vegetable.)
The Bluelights played old tunes and new tunes,
including “Squeezebox,” which is fairly new (only about 30 years) and with
an actual squeezebox (accordion to be technically correct) played by Brooks
Barnett. You don’t have to even know “Who” to enjoy this tune. Going
further back in time, Cynthia Fabian performed a spot-on Betty Boop with “I
Just Want to Be Loved by You,” before segueing in to “You Gotta See Your
Mama Every Night” which was more fitting to her as a singer.
These were followed by a string of blues tunes, and
while I am not partial to blues as a genre, I still enjoyed watching the
slide guitar by Mat Kastner (and the sound vibrates out beyond the blues as
well).
Back to older days, or “Strange Things Are Happening
Every Day,” another useful display of Cynthia’s voice. Meanwhile I was also
focusing on the background, or rhythm beats, as was my wont, and you almost
have to watch it so as not to miss listening to it: the string (literally)
bass and the jug, played by Howard Horn. The jug is another instrument you
have to see played to believe it is played.
The sessions by the Bluelights contain no gaps or dead
spaces, nowhere where one, unawares, might drift off into a daze during an
accomplished but prolonged solo. You follow every single clickety note and
do not miss a one.
Cornet Chop Suey are one of the reasons I keep coming
back to the GCTJF each year. They missed a festival a couple of years ago,
and I was so glad that not only did they return last year, but they followed
the festival this year to its new location in Wallingford, CT. I have to
admit that they are my favorite band (save for the Galvanized Jazz Band,
about whom I cannot claim objectivity, being blood-related) at the festival,
and I shamelessly watched three out of four of their sessions on Saturday.
These guys are dynamic. Like the Bluelights, they pull
you in with the first note, not only with the sound but with the SOUND!
They are loud! But whereas some bands might play loudly to distract from
their lack of capability, Cornet Chop Suey play loud because they can.
Front and center are a
two-handed trumpet played by Tommy Tucker (who has a smile alone which reaches out over the audience
and brings them in like a net) and a one-handed cornet played by the
impressive-looking Brian Casserly (with his derby, black horn-rimmed glasses,
and triangle beard, he looks unlike anyone I’ve seen in all these other
bands). Front and left and right are the trombone and sax (Brett Stamps and
Jerry Epperson respectively). Al Sherman plays a skinny upright string bass
that joins my mental collection of fascinating-to-look-at instruments.
Because Cornet Chop Suey is my favorite band at the
festival, which means I listen to the Music deeply and nothing else, I
cannot for the most part recite the names of the songs they played at the
festival. A couple of exceptions: session 2 during which they played their
“most frequently requested song,” “Over the Rainbow.” Oh, their version
overshadows July Garland any day --- picture the brass literally soaring
over the rainbow and showering down like a shaken pot of gold, all around
you – the brass players leaving the stage and slowly strolling up and down
the aisles to the back of the pavilion. You are so used to facing stage
front that you do not realize that they are standing right behind you or
beside you until those “somewhere….” notes bloom in your ear. They continue
to wrap the song around you, working their way back to the stage, Brian
Casserly gently shaking hands in the audience like pressing a blessing.
The 2nd I’ll-always-remember exception is
session 3, Cornet Chop Suey’s tribute to Louis Armstrong. Think of seeing a
segment of Ken Burns’ “Jazz” live on stage. This history lesson includes
spoken word by Brian Casserly, while Paul Reid provides background piano
narration on piano (as well as a feels-like-Satchmo-is-alive-and-present
impression of his singing voice). The set so accurately puts one in the
clubs of New Orleans, in time and place, that one quivers between a
breath-taking feeling of time travel and a poignant regret that Armstrong is
no longer alive and present.
After reciting due recognition to King Oliver, Lil
Hardin, and the phenomenon of “Hello Dolly,” Brian Casserly respectfully
removes his hat (the only time you will see him without it) and ends the set
with “What a Wonderful World.” Not sung in Louis’ trademark voice (this
done with extreme capability by Paul Reid, as I mention earlier) but in his
own. And so I must add to the talents of Cornet Chop Suey, Brian
Casserly in
particular, that the man can sing. He has a beautiful tenor which ranges
all the way to the ceiling (again, he sings LOUDLY, but the notes are all
intact). I appreciate the way Cornet Chop Suey has taken this song and
made it their own, and it works.
Cornet Chop Suey had one more set that evening, which I
did not see, my excuse being that I had to drive back to Milford that night
and it was getting late, but the truth is that I wanted to leave with
session 3 last in my mind. For me, what better way to end a day of jazz,
people-spotting, and sunshine with “What a Wonderful World”?
8/14/09
Lyrica French
