spanish knights

It’s funny how we tend to think of jazz in the USA and UK as unsurpassable paradigms of excellence. Or maybe that’s just me, but my collection of jazz albums is almost exclusively from one or the other. As a youth about the only non-U band I regularly enjoyed was the Dutch Swing College Band. I quite liked Mboto Mahari Ktumo and His Cotton Club Hot Six but they were from Uganda so can’t count as non-U.

Spain has never seemed a source of great music that isn’t flamenco, classical or Eurovision. Yet I’ve just discovered a rousing-tub-thumping-swinging-foot-tapping group which has been around for over 40 years – La Portenta Jazz Band, I think based in Barcelona. Fletcher Henderson lives on in the guise of a chubby senor.

They have several clips posted on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWxO3VQIWpo for example from 2008. Another clip portrays them about 40 years ago, when dark predominated rather than the team members’ current silver. The band was brilliant then; they’ve lost nothing with passage of time.

Once again I have to acknowledge my dismal ignorance. I’ve lived through over 50 years of jazz absorption, and still I’ve only scratched the shellac surface with so many bands yet to be discovered.

By the way, I’m still on the look out for an old-fashioned record player capable of 78rpm. If it has a vast bell-shaped horn a la Nipper and a crank handle - so much the better.

i'll sit right down and write myself a letter

Here is my Grande Opus V which I’ve entitled “The Rape of Suffolk.” I’m quite pleased with the name. It’s an alliterative acrylic abstract allegory.

A close examination reveals a slightly milky blue East Anglian sky suspended over a field of efflorescent rape seed. Thus literally it’s the rape of Suffolk. But allegories need a moralistic edge, so the subject is more complex than that. (N.B. I ignore the fact that my dearest friend Alf thought the painting was a seascape, thus effectively indicting my artistic abilities).

For Sleepy in China I’ll explain that Suffolk is a division of England and rapeseed is rapidly becoming the area’s main cash crop. Apparently we’ll save the planet by planting rape, although scientific opinion is split on the issue. I don’t care because I won’t live so long and I happen to feel that extinguishment of the sun is a far more pressing issue. But people are getting excited about a by-product of rapeseed (bio-fuel) and everywhere sickly swathes of yellow are replacing the mellow beige of barley. Good for the car industry; not so for brewers. I think this could be a cynical ploy by a coalition of dark forces i.e. government and farmers. Rapeseed is in high demand so prices and duties rise. Barley is in short supply so prices and duties rise.

Another thing Suff-folk are getting excited about is electricity, or more precisely, the transfer of the stuff from one side of the county to the other. Electricity companies want to build a network of pylons and the locals want to stop them. Residents claim these pylons will ruin the landscape. “This is nothing short of rape of the countryside,” one probably protested allegorically, allowing me to set a theme for the painting and this blog entry.

Notice the picture depicts a pylon sort of lurking watchfully in the corner, as if it harbours sinister intentions of starting the march imminently. If I’d have thought about the subject a little longer I’d have brought the pylon in from the left – hence reinforcing the allusion to the sinister. But it didn’t occur to me until too late and I can’t be bothered to change the painting now, although it’s not yet finished.

That’s a weakness I have. I’m not bad at starting things but finishing….? I’m a sprinter rather than a marathon runner. Stamina fades. I’m too busy wanting to start something new to expend energy completing what I’ve already commenced. So I’m quite pleased with the symbolism within the title but the painting itself is rubbish and undoubtedly will remain so.

However – and here’s the point of this posting – I’ve just acquired a Johnny Dodds LP. There’s no digital re-mastering here. It crackles, coughs, chokes and clicks just the way jazz used to when I was a youth. When I put the album on the turntable, drop the stylus, close my eyes and press against my temples, I can spirit my mind back to West Hill Drive and perpetual re-tuning of the Grundig in an attempt to locate and hold a signal from Luxembourg. “Salty Dog”, “Bohunkus Blues” and “There’ll Come A Day” seep reedily out of the speakers. Mrs Dodman calls it Mickey Mouse music because it reminds her of Steamboat Willie, but she lacks a sympathetic syncopated ear.

What has Johnny Dodds to do with Suffolk? I once knew a man who lived in Suffolk and was a great Johnny Dodds fan. He was an electrical engineer but I bet he’s writing angry letters at this very moment.

at the jazz band ball

After all my negativity about the way jazz is going, I have finally discovered my Utopia. The discovery was made during an idle trawl of YouTube, looking for anything to alleviate the ennui I appear to be sliding inexorably towards. I searched on Chris Barber, who for some reason is my band of the moment.

I found a few videos, in particular a superb live rendition of “Ice Cream” in true New Orleans parade style, lead by Barber himself but more than matched by Sunshine and Halcox. But more importantly, I stumbled over a man named Clive who posts prolifically to YouTube under the soubriquet of MoleDfigg.

His YouTube ID is apt, a play on the term “mouldy fig” which used to mean anyone objecting to a saxophone in the Dixieland line-up. Mouldy figs were (probably still are) traditionalists. For them, jazz ceased to be jazz when

• The LP was invented, allowing recordings to exceed the hallowed 3 minutes
• Jazz moved into the concert hall
• Charlie Parker stopped dancing in its tracks
• Arty-farty bohemians grasped the music and claimed it for their own in the name of art

Mouldy figs are fundamentalists. They are radical reactionaries. The women carry parasols in case they feel the need to dance around the fringes of village halls; the men wear beards, usually goatees. They speak lovingly of Lil Hardin, Ken Colyer and George Webb (who crossed the floor last week to join a new type of band). If they are under 80 they are also revivalists. They either have silver hair or use Grecian 2000. They are, in short, the type of people I’d like to meet in Heaven, or would do if I believed in an afterlife.

I’m not strictly a mouldy fig. My record collection contains too many Mingus, Mulligan and Blakey et al for me to lay claim to the epithet. The three mentioned are modern jazz and I’m an avid listener, but I make no apology for asserting yet again that New Orleans style is the only TRUE jazz, the only genre genuinely entitled to be jazz without a prefix.

What I would give for the opportunity to leaf through Clive’s prodigious record collection! He’s posted over 100 tracks, all lifted from those delightfully scratchy 10 inch records I’ve started drooling over, all taken from his vast library of original recordings on labels such as Parlophone and Decca. And he knows his stuff. He lists performers and recording dates, essential data for any self respecting fan. His notes and comments are informed and interesting, unlike my waffle and rant. He has followers.

Keep posting Clive. I’ve already been on e-bay and bought a few ancient 78s as a result of your inspiration - George Webb’s “South” for example, but I can’t play it because my record player operates only at 33 or 45 rpm. (Mrs Dodman thinks I’ve finally lost my marbles) but I’ll take immense pleasure in looking at the record, holding it in my hands, while listening to Clive’s YouTube posting of the track.

And, Clive, thank you for being so positive about your music.

i shall never forget

Acker Bilk told a joke. It went thus: an elderly couple were on a beach and the wife turned to the husband and said “I’d love an ice cream. Can you buy me one? With a chocolate flake, nuts and maple syrup, please.” The husband mumbled away and was gone for two hours, then returned with two meat pies. He handed them to his wife, who snorted “I knew you’d forget the chips.”

A subtle joke, I think, but none the less poignantly topical. On Friday morning Grantham Theatre telephoned to offer me two tickets for the concert that evening. I was so busy congratulating myself on such good fortune that I forgot to take my precious LP with me (see previous posting). I was past the critical point of no return before I realised.

We had good seats in the balcony. I looked down on the pate of Chris Barber standing by the entrance dolling out autographs as if purposely to taunt me for my failing memory. Without a programme, or even my vital note book, I had nothing for him to sign. The ice cream tub was plasticated so that wouldn’t have worked. I’ll just have to wait for another ten years to elapse and catch him next time round.

Mrs Dodman and I watched the three Bs: Barber, Bilk and Ball, in that order, on the same stage but not all at the same time. Any comment I make must be placed in a temporal context - these legends of British traditional jazz are all within a few months of their 80th birthday. And I’d be disingenuous if I didn’t admit that at times their ages showed. Hero worship is a healthy quality only if it also recognises blemishes.

Chris Barber’s band was crammed with reeds. He played mainly Cotton Club Ellingtonians with a sprinkling of his favourite spirituals and a couple of essential standards. With him was a second trombone. Barber always experimented with jazz styles and instrumentation and that’s why I’ve spent most of HIS career listening to him. I could have listened to this band all night – exquisite.

Acker Bilk was next on. He both plays the clarinet and walks across the stage as if he has to think carefully about what he’s going to do next. His jokes were brilliant; his music almost purist New Orleans except for a solitary diversion into schmaltz with his inseparable “Stranger on the Shore.” For me, his trombonist was the star of the night. Mrs Dodman and I applauded the entire set loudly and sincerely.

Kenny Ball’s band was more commercial and a little more slickly professional. He brought along a second trumpet, openly confessing that he was struggling to reach the top notes because of ill-health. But he held centre stage and deserved the limelight as the band munched through the truffles: “Midnight in Moscow” and “Sukiyaki.” No doubt Ball had a good reason for finishing on “All You Need Is Love.” Much of the audience seemed to enjoy the number but it was past our bedtime and I turn grumpy when tired.

I know I can sometimes be overly critical. It’s a privilege of age as far as I’m concerned – or maybe it’s nature’s compensation for dwindling faculties. But this was honest jazz (mainly) with all the wrinkles and warts undisguised. And that’s what real jazz is about. When it turns polished and lubricated it loses some of its verve; the friction and the frisson evaporate. This bunch kept the excitement alive. We wouldn’t have missed the concert in exchange for a whole cart load of ice cream and chips.

Thank you to the young lady at Meres in Grantham who kept in mind that we wanted tickets and bothered to telephone. When the chips are down, she has a memory to envy and admire. I wish I could remember her name.

can't think of a name for it

We’ve just returned from a visit to Devon and Dorset. On the way down, we stopped off in Bristol for a day’s retail respite. A little dispirited with the homogenised city centre, we found our way to Clifton, a sort of Blackheath Village of the West Country.

There, in a charity shop, I found a Chris Barber double-LP. The album consists of concert recordings, with Barber’s band accompanied by Ray Nance (the Ellington trumpeter) and Alex Bradford, the professor of gospel music. Quote: recorded live at the Funkhaus Hannover 28th September 1974 unquote.

Barber is famous for extending his music beyond the boundaries of British Trad. That’s why he has endured and is adored by such a wide appreciative audience. The album was irresistible. I paid the requisite 99p (generously I donated the 1p change from a pound) and bore the album home.

I would have bought the album anyway, but my appetite was filliped when I saw three signatures on the inside cover, all obviously scribed in the same blue biro. The first was of Russell Procope and was underscored 1976. The second was Chris Barber himself. And the third was virtually illegible, but looks as if it could have been somebody named Ned Bill Dove.

That last one puzzled me. Jazz aficionados with greater knowledge will be ahead of me here, but I couldn’t imagine any self-respecting jazz musician retaining the name Ned Dove. I turned to the internet.

Now – Google seems to be taking a lot of flack lately. I’m not sure why because I think that what they’ve achieved is nothing short of genius. But humans are foresters by nature. We plant, grow and nurture – then chop down as soon as it suits us. I Googled “Chris Barber Russell Procope 1976” and in less than a second up popped the answer – Wild Bill Davis (organ and piano). If I turn the page sideways, squint and use the benefit of hindsight, the signature is obvious. Google triumphs again!

Both Davis and Procope were on tour with Barber in 1976. Over thirty-three years ago, an anonymous jazz lover had taken this album to a concert and managed to persuade the three great jazzmen to autograph the inside cover. I’m trying to buy tickets for Barber’s band in Grantham for Friday night, but needless to say the concert is sold out. That’s a shame, because I’d like to take the album with me to see if I can have some signatures added.

Perhaps I’m a sad elderly sot, but the thought of the provenance of this old LP excites me. By adding signatures, the yellowed cover has acquired a unique, if hidden, history which I wish I could unravel. How did it end up in an Oxfam shop in Clifton? What happened to it after that wonderful jazz evening all those years ago?

Google couldn’t help on that. Perhaps I over-rate them.

there i've said it again

Philip Larkin hit the news last week when an eponymous society made an appeal for funds to raise a statue of him in Hull. For my international following (Sleepy in China), I’ll explain that Philip Larkin is a famous English poet of the middle 20th century.

He wrote such classic lines as “They Fuck You Up, Your Mum and Dad” and “Why should I let the toad work squat on my life?” Needless to say, members of the Philip Larkin Society claim their man to be the best poet ever. In my view he was good, but for me his laureateship was earned as a jazz critic – an honest one for whom flummery and pontification were anathemas.

Honest jazz critics have almost died out. Now all jazz musicians, every jazz genre, everything with ‘jazz’ in the title, are regarded as great by those lucky enough to be paid to write about the music. I don’t know whether this is because modern critics fear being sued, or whether they simply want an easy ride, but harsh truths as in “this band is crap” are very hard to find. Just read Clive Davis in the Times if you doubt me.

I know I harp on about good and bad jazz. Sometimes I feel I’m a lone voice in a wilderness of heretics and vested interest. Misuse of the word ‘jazz’ is rife and endemic in today’s warped society. Yet Philip Larkin’s views on jazz accord with mine. If I could have one wish, apart from winning the lottery, having my time over again and maybe a few other secret desires involving Felicity Kendall, it would be to invite Philip Larkin to supper and have the opportunity to discuss jazz with him.

But he’s long dead. For me, his lasting legacy is a fine compilation of reprints of his erstwhile regular column in the Daily Telegraph, 1961 to 1971. They are bound together in a dog-eared old book entitled “All What Jazz.” A copy sits proudly on my bookshelf.

This is not the first time my blog has mentioned Larkin. I might mention him again. The man certainly features in the top half of my personal list of 3000 people to toast over supper. What I especially liked about him was his genuine criticism of many performers, yet later he wrote that he’d wished he’d been a little more forthright. How I wish today’s reviewers and critics would display such sincerity and humility.

I sometimes doubt my own opinions because the views of so many published commentators appear to be at variance with mine. But then I pick up “All What Jazz” to dip into the pages and find instant reaffirmation. I’m right; the rest (bar Larkin and maybe his pal Amis) are wrong.

This, then, is a bit of an appeal, silent though it may be. The statue’s design has been selected. It will depict Larkin hurrying for the train. I don’t know why. For perpetuity he will be portrayed as trying to avoid being late. Or is he striding to escape Hull? Whatever the conceptual aspirations of the sculptor, I hope that when Larkin’s statue is eventually ready to be erected in the city centre, the words “and genuine jazz lover” can be read after the inevitable inscription “poet.” I like to think he would have appreciated the ambiguity.

Thank you.

one word - in 684 of them

Recently the Maestros paid an overnight visit to Victoria Street. At supper, the conversation inevitably turned to the subject of music. Mr Maestro is a classical conductor (a sort of formal Günther Schuller); Mrs Maestro plays one of those funny instruments tucked under the chin and played with cat’s intestines (Joe Venuti played something similar).

With us were the Teachers. Mr Teacher plays a brass horn where the hand is stuck down the bowl (per Julius Watkins) and Mrs Teacher sings in choirs (she’s a sort of diminutive pastoral Bessie Smith). All four guests are deeply immersed in classical music, not necessarily to the exclusion of all other genres but they’ll physically wince if Arlo Guthrie comes on the radio singing “City of New Orleans” and they share the opinion that Chris Barber should be an example of nominative determinism.

During the rhubarb crumble, Mr Maestro used the words “a piece of music.” In my usual simplistic way, I asked if he knew of a single word to replace the phrase “a piece of music.” Now - the Maestros are erudite. They have a vocabulary which would be respected by Samuel Johnson. Yet The Maestro’s response surprised. “There is no word for it,” he asseverated.

In this vast lexicon of linguistic delight known as the English language surely we must afford ourselves the brevity of a single word, I pondered. The answer seems to be no. I ventured several possibilities, but each was politely declined for one reason or another – too specific; too general; also covering other branches of the liberal arts. My favourite was “composition” but that could equally apply to verbal essays, art and digital photography. Next came “opus” but apparently any artisan can lay claim to the word. “Melody” was greeted with derision; “Tune” with disdain.

Later, I flicked through Roget’s with no success and vainly perused lists in the Reader’s Digest Reverse Dictionary (1st Edition – 1989 - £6.50 Oxfam – inscribed with pencil “in print @ £24.95”). Even after surfing the net (is that an obsolete term now – surfing the net?) I remain ignorant of any singular verbal counter-point to “piece of music.”

The search is on. I need a single word meaning “a piece of music.”

While mulling over the problem, I found a Fats Waller album in my favourite charity shop in Boston (Lincolnshire). I’ve never been a fan of Waller. Everything I heard of him as a youth seemed to be novelty music and I could never quite take him seriously. My aversion was compounded by the fact that the piece of music entitled “Sheik of Araby” became my bête noir of jazz. I hated it then and I hate it now.

I noticed with an instinctive chill down my spine that the first track on the album was the black beast. However, I decided extempore that now is the time to give old Fats a second chance. My tastes are changing. I’m older now and perhaps even a little more mature, so… who knows? I bought the album: The Real Fats Waller – RCA Camden – Mono CDN-131, with unusually readable and pragmatic liner notes by Peter Clayton, 1959. Tracks were recorded between 1929 and 1943.

These recording details are given in full because somebody out there has the actual LP. Inside the Waller sleeve I found a pristine copy of Django – HMV – CLP 1249. I mean of course Reinhardt, not the mystifying Bates. I’m not bereft, because the pieces of music are electrifying, but I have them already on CD. They are not what I wanted, but I’m happy enough. At least it’s not Klaus Wunderlich or The Sound of Music.

Presumably someone has my Waller album enclosed in a Django Reinhardt sleeve. I’d like to repatriate the LP with the correct sleeve. Perhaps we can do a swap, either the album or the sleeve; which one matters not. But I think how nice it would be to reunite mother with daughter, especially if at the same time I can solve the problem of finding a single word for “piece of music.” All comments welcome, even in Chinese.