Here at the Jazz Repertory Company we like to tie in our themed shows to anniversaries (in the misguided assumption that it might interest the media in what we’re doing).
Oddly, none of our shows in 2015 revolve around significant anniversaries but our May 9th Ray Charles and Nina Simone show at Cadogan Hall has connections with events of 50 years ago.
The civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama took place in 1965 (celebrated in the excellent recent movie “Selma”) and Nina Simone was one of the many show business names who took part in the third of the historic marches.
Ray Charles had long been a friend of Martin Luther King’s but the start of 1965 was not the best of times for Ray as he had been arrested again for heroin possession – he avoided jail by going into rehab and finally managed to kick the habit for good later the same year.
Ray’s great album of 1965 was Live In Concert – it captured a late ’64 appearance in Los Angeles where Ray was backed by a 16 piece big band and his Raelettes. The same size band and instrumentation will be featured backing Jeremy Sassoon in our upcoming concert so listen here to get a flavour of what we have in store.
Music Director & 100 Years Of Jazz In 99 Minutes Concert Producer Richard Pite Takes Us On A Whirlwind Tour Of Jazz History.
2000 – 2015:
Jazz
has never been more varied or diverse.So many different styles come under the jazz heading that listeners
often wonder where the boundaries are.What started off as a music that grew out of the melting pot of New
Orleans at the turn of the century has now turned into a music of the world and
because almost all the musicians who play it and the audiences who listen to it
have access to everything on YouTube and Spotify every style is thrown into the
mix and the barriers and boundaries have come down.The big names include the Scandinavian trio
EST, Americans Bad Plus and Diane Krall and from the UK Polar Bear and JamieCullum.
The 100 Years Of Jazz In 99 Minutes Band - Less Georgina Jackson
At the
start of the 80’s many of jazz’s great names from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s are
still performing but by 2000 many have gone and a new generation replaces them
and radically changes the music once again.At the forefront of the new wave are jazz rappers and hip hoppers like
Gang Starr and A Tribe Called Quest.Continuing
the more recognisably jazzy styles are new stars Joshua Redman, Roy Hargrove
and Christian McBride and championing the jazz legacy of Duke Ellington and
Louis Armstrong is the trumpeter, bandleader and composer Wynton Marsalis.In the UK at the start of the 80’s there is a
jazz revival with musicians Courtney Pine and Loose Tubes leading the way.
1960–1979:
Work Song (1961) - from 100 Years Of Jazz In 99 Minutes
Performed By The Jazz Repertory Company at Boisdale Of Canary Wharf
The
beginning of the 1960s heralds the jazz of Ornette Coleman - a radically new
approach which delights the young hipsters and horrifies the rest!Then the 60’s get ever more radical –
particularly the musicians who are caught up in the civil rights campaign in
America and the more extreme revolutionary black politics -musicians such as JohnColtrane, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and Max Roach encapsulate this
era.Miles Davis launches the jazz-rock
of the 70’s with his album Bitches Brew.Over the next decade Herbie Hancock, Weather Report, Donald Byrd,
Freddie Hubbard bring the music popularity with rhythms borrowed from dance
clubs mixed with the rhythms of the world.In the UK jazz musicians such as Stan Tracey and Tubby Hayes become
international stars.
1940-1959:
It Don't Mean A Thing (1931) - from 100 Years Of Jazz In 99 Minutes
Performed By The Jazz Repertory Company at Boisdale Of Canary Wharf
WWII - During the war whilst the dancers in America and the UK are still jiving to the big bands a new music is developing in the clubs of New York.It’s called Be-Bop and its three biggest names are Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk.The music is difficult to play and doesn’t appeal to dancers but its importance in jazz history is immense.After the popularity of swing the audience declines for the new jazz and rhythm and blues and later rock ‘n’ roll takes up the slack and brings the dancers back on to the floor.In the 1950’s there is cool jazz from Chet Baker, jazz in strange time such as Take 5 by Dave Brubeck and an increasing influence of Latin American rhythms on modern jazz.
1920-1939:
Cake Walkin' Baby (1924) - from 100 Years Of Jazz In 99 Minutes
Performed By The Jazz Repertory Company at Boisdale Of Canary Wharf
The Roaring 20s and the emergence of the first
big stars in jazz and the greatest of them all, Louis Armstrong.Other important names from the 1920s are
Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Sidney Bechet and Bix Beiderbecke – the
first white jazz star who played in the most successful band of the 1920’s, the
Paul Whiteman Orchestra.The 1930s saw
the emergence of the Swing Era when jazz was at its most commercially
successful – many thousands of dancers would go and see the greatest names of
the day, Artie Shaw, Jimmy Lunceford, Glenn Miller and Cab Calloway.The music business was still racially
segregated but the King of Swing, Benny Goodman, began to change all that when
he featured both black and white musicians on stage together for the first
time.
1900-1919:
The Original Dixiland Jazz Band
At the turn of the century Ragtime was the new
sensation in America and it soon spread throughout Europe too.The most famous Ragtime composer was ScottJoplin but the biggest Ragtime hit came in 1911 with Irving Berlin’sAlexander’s Ragtime Band.New Orleans
was the birthplace of jazz – the unschooled black musicians would take popular
songs, opera, polkas, ragtime and other styles and play them by ear and play
around with the melodies.Both black and
white bands existed from the earliest days but they were strictly segregated –
the most legendary name in this era was the black trumpeter Buddy Bolden but he
never made a record.The first jazz
record was made by a white band called The Original Dixieland Jazz Band and it
was released in 1917.
Back in 2009 when I put on the Krupa centenary concert at Cadogan Hall we wanted to reproduce this scene so in rehearsal I got out the matchbox and proceeded to play it with two matchsticks (this is actually more difficult than you’d think because of modern matchboxes having no rough striking surfaces so sandpaper had to be attached).
Gene Krupa Centenary Concert At Cadogan Hall
The Jazz Repertory Company
Within seconds one of the hall’s staff appeared and said that there was no way he was going to allow us to do this. I explained that the two matches would be lit for about two seconds and then blown out by me, but he wasn’t having any of it.
Gene Krupa On Drums
This made me whine on to him for much too long about how in the history of British cinema up until 40 years ago a large percentage of the audience would have been happily puffing away and in all that time not one cinema burned down. (I was possibly wrong about this – does anybody know of any instances where cigarettes caused a cinema to go up in smoke?).
Richard Pite On Drums
Pete Long suggested an excellent compromise. We introduce the number, issue a health and safety warning and explain we couldn’t exactly reproduce the scene in the film and then I donned hard hat, safety glasses, orange visibility jacket and waved two torches around during the feature. I’m pleased to say it got a laugh (and also allowed me to rant on in pubs for a long while after about “elf and safety gone mad” – an essential part of the conversational repertoire of a grumpy old git).
Richard Pite On Drums
The post script was that at the Purcell Room the following year we did actually get grudging permission to go ahead and do the routine with the matchbox but I was so nervous about setting the esteemed venue on fire I couldn’t get the bloody matches to light. A list of our www.jazzrep.co.uk concerts can be found here and our showreel is below.
In October 1939 ASCAP (the American Society of Composers
Authors and Publishers) celebrated its 25th anniversary with a week of concerts
at New York's Carnegie Hall. On the 6th of October the bill comprised four
bands - those of Paul Whiteman, Fred Waring, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller.Waring's contribution featured his enormous
choir and Whiteman's music was a potpourri of light music with little jazz
content. What the younger element of the audience had come to see was the two
biggest swing bands of 1939 slugging it out with Goodman going first and Miller
winding up the evening.
Keith Nichols' Paul Whiteman Orchestra. JRC Concert Production
Benny Goodman's Orchestra had made its famous debut at
Carnegie Hall in January 1938 and that evening has become one of the most
celebrated in jazz thanks to the double album of the music being released in
1951 and becoming a million seller. Goodman returned to Carnegie Hall three
times in 1939 - firstly as a guest of the classical violinist Joseph Szigeti in
the debut performance of Bartok's Contrasts, then with his orchestra for the
ASCAP evening and finally on Christmas Eve with his sextet for John Hammond's
second "From Spirituals to Swing" concert.
Benny Goodman's Famous Carnegie Hall Concert, 1938
A couple of weeks before Benny's Carnegie Hall debut Glenn Miller
disbanded his orchestra and was disconsolate about his failure to achieve
enough success to pay his musicians. It's not very often that Hollywood biopics
about musicians have much truth to them but the story of Miller going off in
search of a unique sound was right on the button. He found it with his unique
voicings for four saxes and a clarinet (played by the highly distinctive Wilbur Schwartz).
Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller At Carnegie Hall, 1939. JRC Concert Production
At Goodman’s Carnegie Hall debut in 1938 the band was
nervous playing in such a grand venue and one can feel the tension in the first
couple of choruses of that year’s opening number - Don’t Be That Way.Eighteen months later and Goodman’s Orchestra was back with
all guns blazing as Benny wanted to showthe new kids on the block justwho was the King of Swing.For
this concert he once again started with the same opener but this time it was
brasher, faster and full of confidence and set the tone for the rest of his
set.Goodman followed this up with a
jokey version of T’aint What You Do (a massive hit for Jimmie Lunceford in
’39) in which he poked fun at the so called “Mickey Mouse” bands of the day
such as Kai Kaiser and Guy Lombardo-
names that mean precious little today.So rather than repeat the gags we’ve done the hip version by Lunceford
with Enrico Tomasso taking the vocals. One O’Clock Jump was up next and the
fact that Miller had also programmed it didn’t bother Benny(he also stole Miller’s current hit Sunrise Serenade and played that before Miller got a chance to do his own versiona little later in the evening – Benny was
playing dirty!).
Enrico Tomasso - T'aint What You Do
JRC's Goodman & Miller 1939 Concert at The Radlett Centre
The 1939 version of Sing Sing Sing is shorter and much
faster than the famous version of the year before and in Gene Krupa’s place the
band was driven by the irrepressible Lionel Hampton and boy does he go at a
lick!
Richard Pite - Sing, Sing, Sing
JRC's Goodman & Miller 1939 Concert at The Radlett Centre
The Goodman Miller concert was notable too for the inclusion
of the pioneer of the electric guitar in jazz – Charlie Christian.Dave Chamberlain captures the Christian magic
superbly in the Goodman Sextet’s Flying Home.
1939 was the year Miller’s orchestra broke through and
became a million selling band and they were on cracking form on this evening
with the hits keeping on coming.They
weren’t scared off by Sing, Sing, Sing either and retaliated with a closer that
went even faster – the manic Bugle Call Rag.Besides the Goodman and Miller selections we’ve also added
Louis Armstrong’s What Is This Thing Called Swing (Louis appeared earlier in
the ASCAP week at Carnegie – the evening over ran so badly he only had time to
do two songs and this was one of them).
Benny Goodman's Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert - Sing, Sing, Sing
The Jazz Repertory Company at Cadogan Hall, London
Pete Long has been directing and fronting a recreation of
the 1938 Carnegie Hall concert for quite a few years now and there had been
talk about a possible follow up show. The answer was pretty obvious - go
forward a year, stay in the same esteemed venue, and add the most successful
name in the history of swing music to the bill and, voilà , a hit show.
All bar one
track on the CD was recorded on a Sunday afternoon in September 2014 at London's
Cadogan Hall. My Jazz Repertory Company has presented a dozen or so shows at
this venue and I like it because of its intimacy (900 seats) and its fairly
lively acoustic is perfect for our largely acoustic performances.
Jazz At The Philharmonic 70th Anniversary Tribute Concert
at Cadogan Hall, London. Part I
We try to celebrate anniversaries at the Jazz Repertory Company (in the
misguided belief that this will interest the media in running an article about
what we do) and 2014 marked the 70th
anniversary of Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic.The reason it’s so called was that he used
The Philharmonic Hall in Los Angeles for the first concert in 1944 - on a Sunday
afternoon when the symphony players and staff, who would have recoiled in
horror at the noise emanating from the hallowed venue, were a safe distance
away.
70th Anniversary JATP Concert At Cadogan Hall, London
Jazz At The Philharmonic 70th Anniversary Tribute Concert
at Cadogan Hall, London. Part II
The concerts
mixed the stars of the swing era with the modernists and Granz was keen to get
his musicians to play to the gallery and produce the kind of excitement that
could be had when a couple of heavyweights would take each other on - louder,
faster and higher!I remember hearing,
as a kid, the recording of Gene Krupa's drum battle with Buddy Rich (recorded
in 1952 at Carnegie Hall) and thinking that the crowd was reacting as if they
were watching Rocky Marciano slugging it out with Jersey Joe Walcott.As Les Paul wrote about being on stage at
the very first concert "I looked into the audience and I saw them standing
on their seats. I said wow!... when it reached a climax I saw hats up in the
air - they were screaming and shouting." In these days of more esoteric,
cerebral modern jazz a response like that would be unthinkable!
Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich - Drum Battle
At Cadogan
Hall the audience definitely were with Les Paul as you can hear.However don't fret about the lack of
audience response on Sweet Georgia Brown - that's the one studio track on the
album , recorded at Angel Studios in Islington, North London on the evening of
October 20th. This was added togive us the chance to feature some players who weren't present at our
concert - James Pearson on piano, Tony Barnard on guitar, Alex Garnett and
Sammy Mayne on saxophones and the bravura trumpet playing of Ryan Quigley
battling in the last choruses with George Hogg.Perhaps they should be introduced as
"In the left corner, the Glasgow bruiser Rucking Ryan - in the right
corner Pretty Boy Hogg - the Boy Wonder".
Georgina Jackson - He's Funny That Way
70th Anniversary JATP Concert At Cadogan Hall, London
There were
many great moments at the concert - I was able to watch from the front stalls
whilst Elliott Henshaw pounded his Slingerlands and I loved the three tenors
wailing on Rifftide – Tom Walsh's solo on I Can't Get Started was superb and
let's not forget our two ladies amongst that sea of testosterone. - Georgina Jackson and Nicola Emmanuelle paying respective tributes to Billie Holiday and
Ella Fitzgerald.
70th Anniversary JATP Concert At Cadogan Hall, London
Pete Long and
I now wish to use the JATP formula to try and entice a younger audience to come
and experience the excitement that jazz can offer. Watch out for us in the
coming years and we hope the age of our audience will be as diverse as that of
the talent on stage.
Here at the Jazz Repertory Company we like to tie in our themed shows to anniversaries (in the misguided assumption that it might interest the media in what we’re doing).
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