Harlem Dancers Leon James and Willa Mae Riker, from The Swing Era, Time-Life.

Nothing gets in the groove like a catchy ‘riff.’ The hot rhythm of a good riff lifts us out of our seats and onto the dance floor. Riffs are one of the building blocks of jazz. They are everywhere—as background figures, parts of jazz solos, and even entire riff tunes.

A riff is a short melody—just a few notes—repeated over and over in a rhythmic manner. The origin of the riff can be traced to early African-American gospel and blues forms where short, repeated, chant-like melodic fragments were typically sung or played as a background figure to support a soloist. The jazz riff evolved out of this call-and-response practice.

With their New York debut at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom in the late 1930s, the great Count Basie Orchestra and their riffing style breathed new life into the Swing Era. It is said that in rehearsal Basie would send each section of the band into a separate room, charged with the task of coming up with their own new riff. These sectional riffs would later be combined to create a shouting call-and-response effect. The result—riff tunes like “One O’clock Jump” with its famous final ‘shout’ chorus.

The Count Basie Orchestra at the Famous Door in New York, late 1940s. Courtesy Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie, Albert Murray.

Louis Armstrong, whose pioneering genius inspired generations of jazz musicians from the 1920s to the present day, often used riffs in his solos to build tension. A good example of Louis’ solo riffing can be heard on his 1929 Okeh recording of  “St. Louis Blues.” As an added attraction to his big-band dance concerts, Benny Goodman often featured small combinations—or combos—of three to six pieces. The later Goodman small combos featuring guitarist Charlie Christian developed many riff-based tunes like the one Goodman named after his daughter, called “Gilly.”

This week on Riverwalk Jazz, The Jim Cullum Jazz Band uses simple, familiar riffs to build entire arrangements and tunes—from originals like “Keep Off the Grass” to standards like “Dinah.” Special guest Bob Barnard joins the band on trumpet.

Louis Armstrong. Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection

Riffs are really very simple, infectious melodic ideas. There’s a ‘chant-like’ background figure in the Band’s interpretation of “Perdido Street Blues” that’s a good example of how the ‘riff’ began to evolve in early jazz. Sitting in on cornet, special guest Bob Barnard helps brings back the hot, riff-based sounds of New York’s 1930s jazz mecca—52nd Street—on “Undecided,” a tune star trumpeter Charlie Shavers wrote for small combos of the day.

Jim Cullum talks about what it was like for a new player joining the Count Basie Band when there were no written musical arrangements of the Band’s repertoire. Trumpeter Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison described the process years ago on one of our Riverwalk radio shows. Shortly after Edison started working for Basie, Sweets complained to him that he wanted to quit because he felt lost on the bandstand. Sweets couldn’t find his place in the Band, meaning he couldn’t find harmony notes on the riffs that weren’t already being played by another player. Basie told Sweets Edison, “If you find a note tonight that works play the same damn note every night.”

Photo credit for Home Page and Recent Radio Broadcast Page: Harlem Dancers Leon James and Willa Mae Riker. Photo courtesy The Swing Era by Time-Life

Irving Berlin. Photo courtesy Encyclopedia Britannica.com

Irving Berlin made a huge contribution to the great canon of interwar American popular song which is widely recognized as a core building block of jazz. He couldn’t read or write music, yet he composed words and melodies to thousands of novelty tunes, dance numbers, love songs and ballads—and almost 300 became Top Ten hits. In addition to individual songs, Berlin composed scores for 17 Hollywood films and 21 Broadway stage productions.

Tin Pan Alley. Photo believed to be in the public domain

Berlin’s pieces like “Easter Parade,” “God Bless America” and “White Christmas” have found a place in the pantheon of American anthems of popular song. His songs “Blue Skies,” “Cheek To Cheek” and “Puttin’ On the Ritz” continue to be performed and recorded today by artists of all flavors, from Willie Nelson to Diana Krall, and The Jim Cullum Jazz Band.

Irving Berlin compositions have endured so well, for so long, they seem destined to withstand the test of time forever. In the 1930s, trumpeter Bunny Berigan and the Crosby Band’s Bob Cats had hits when they updated and transformed tunes Berlin had composed as sedate waltzes in ’3/4 time’ some twenty years earlier.  Among others, they took his popular ballads “Always” and “Marie,” and reinvented them in up-tempo, ’4/4 swing time’ for a new generation.

Rebecca Kilgore. Photo courtesy the artist

Berlin’s knack for keeping his finger squarely on the pulse of mainstream American musical taste surfaced as early as 1911, when he composed his first mega-hit song, ”Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” Over the next fifty years, the song was recorded in a dozen hit versions by Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Connee Boswell and Ray Charles among many others.

Nina Ferro. Photo courtesy the artist

Berlin left the world hundreds of catchy tunes to whistle and hum—and memorable lyrics to sing—for just about any occasion. But Irving Berlin was as much a natural businessman as he was a natural showman and songwriter. Dedicated to protecting the rights of artists, Berlin was co-founder of ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. And he built the Music Box Theater on 45th Street in Manhattan between Broadway and 8th Avenue. It opened in 1921 with his Music Box Revue and continues to be in use today as a venue for Broadway stage plays.

Throughout his life, there seemed to be an endless outpouring of music streaming from Irving Berlin to his appreciative public. The lyrics he penned to “What Can a Songwriter Say?” sum up his attitude toward songwriting:

 

What can a songwriter do?
I wish I could make an appropriate speech
But speech-making is simply out of my reach.
So what can a songwriter do,
What can a songwriter say,
A fiddler can speak with his fiddle,
A singer can sing with his voice.
An actor can speak with his tongue in his cheek
But a songwriter has no choice
Whatever his rights or wrongs
He only can speak with his songs.

 

Photo credit for Home Page and Recent Radio Broadcast Page: The Music Box Theater Program, 1921. Image courtesy American Classics.org

Gerry Mulligan. Photo courtesy allaboutjazz.com.

Jazz musicians, far better known as performers than composers, have turned their talents to writing jazz ballads—guitarist Django Reinhardt, baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, and trumpeter Louis Armstrong, to name only a few.

In jazz, the “ballad” style is intimate, lyrical and melodic. It usually takes the standard 32-bar song form, and is performed at a relaxed tempo. In the best jazz ballad instrumental playing, you can hear a story unfolding even without lyrics being sung. Tenor saxophonist legend Lester Young said that knowing the words to a song helped him “create the right mood” in playing instrumental ballads. And Frank Sinatra said he learned his vocal phrasing by listening to Tommy Dorsey play trombone.

Thelonious Monk. Photo courtesy Duncan Schiedt

Australian cornetist Bob Barnard, a master of the jazz ballad, is our guest. According to Bob—whose style recalls the soaring lyricism of Bobby Hackett—the ballad is “especially challenging because the player is completely exposed, both technically and emotionally.”

Bob Barnard on Cornet. Photo courtesy riverwalkjazz.org

Trombonist Kenny Rupp takes center stage performing Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight.”  Django Reinhart’s “Nuages” is given a reed treatment by clarinetist Ron Hockett. Jim Cullum and Bob Barnard offer their cornet duet on Sidney Bechet’s “Si Tu Vois Ma Mere,” and they perform “Michelle,” a tune cornetist Bobby Hackett composed in honor of his granddaughter.

“If We Never Meet Again” sheet music. Image Courtesy Smithsonian Institution.

Gentle Giants: The Beauty of The Jazz Ballad, on Riverwalk Jazz.

Photo credit for Home Page and Recent Radio Broadcast Page: Gerry Mulligan. Photo courtesy allaboutjazz.com.

Cab Calloway and Doc Cheatham on the road

All-night trips over bumpy roads and hassles with broken-down buses were just part of the job for musicians touring the country in the Swing Era. Jim Crow laws made it tough for black jazz artists traveling the South to find a meal or a place to sleep for the night. But it wasn’t always grim. Doc Cheatham recalls the days when Cab Calloway’s orchestra drew huge crowds playing tobacco barns in Alabama and Georgia. There was so much cash on hand they crammed fistfuls of dollar bills in the band’s empty instrument cases for safekeeping.

This week on Riverwalk Jazz, jazz legends Clark Terry, Milt Hinton, Doc Cheatham and others tell stories of life on the road. And these jazz greats take to the stage with The Jim Cullum Jazz Band in performances recorded live at The Landing.

Swing was big business in the late 1930s and early 40s. At its peak there were hundreds of bands traveling the highways and back roads of America, playing in small town dance halls and big city ballrooms. Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers and Duke Ellington were a handful of the big names in jazz with orchestras on the road almost year-round.

Even the best-paid bands in the Swing Era had to keep up a grueling schedule. They often worked six nights a week and many of them were “one-niters,” which meant traveling hundreds of miles by bus in order to get to the next job after playing until one or two o’clock in the morning.

Don Albert’s tour bus, 1939

Tour buses were rarely heated and none had air conditioning. Max Kaminsky called the one he rode while traveling with the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra “a frigid torture chamber.” But it had to be better than no bus at all. Some bands toured with all the musicians piled into one car and a trailer pulled behind to carry instruments and baggage.

Cab on the road

Milt Hinton played bass with the Cab Calloway Orchestra for fifteen years from 1936 to ’51. When Milt first joined Cab’s band, strict segregation was enforced almost everywhere. Black musicians who made their living on the road developed a network of black families with spare bedrooms, or black rooming houses, where they could stay as they traveled cross-country. Milt tells the story of what happened to him his first night on the road with Cab’s band before he learned the ropes.

In an interview with Dick Cavett, jazz fiddler Joe Venuti tells the story of a practical joke he pulled on Bix Beiderbecke on a train trip through the Southwest. And Clark Terry talks about what it was like to share a room with Count Basie.

Our show this week features recordings from the Riverwalk Jazz archive and audiotape courtesy of National Public Radio.

Photo credit for Home Page and Recent Radio Broadcast Page: Don Albert’s tour bus, 1939.

Songwriters Fred E. Ahlert (L) and Roy Turk  Photo courtesy Fred Ahlert Music

We know about the Gershwins, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin—but who were the hardworking, yet little-known craftsmen of song responsible for penning the vast body of work known as “jazz standards” of the golden age. The lyrics of these songs may be rich with romance, a silly Marx Brothers ditty, or even a “torchy” lament of lost love. But the melodies capture the rhythmic bounce of America in love with its own happy-go-lucky optimism. Most were written in the era of daredevil aviators, English Channel swimmers and the “boop-boop-a-doop” girl. Somewhere along the way, jazz musicians gave these songs new life and they became standards—favorites through the decades.

Inspired by The Unsung Songwriters: America’s Masters of Melody, a book written by the late Warren W. Vaché, Sr., father of cornetist Warren Jr. and former Jim Cullum Jazz Band clarinetist Allan Vaché, Riverwalk Jazz offers a concert tribute to the unsung heroes of popular song.

“After You’ve Gone” sheet music. Image courtesy The Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection.

Fred E. Ahlert (above photo, on left) scored hits that stayed fresh for years—standards like “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home” and “I Don’t Know Why (I Just Do).” With his lyricist partner, Roy Turk (above right), he wrote “I’ll Get By (As Long As I Have You)” and “Mean To Me.” In 1935 Ahlert and lyricist Joe Young wrote a tune most often remembered in the version recorded by Fats Waller and His Rhythm, “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter.”

The black vaudeville song-and-dance team of Creamer and Layton produced a string of hits in the pre-jazz era that continue to be recorded well into the 21st century. The Benny Goodman Trio recorded a celebrated up-tempo version of Creamer and Layton’s “After You’ve Gone” in the 1930s, and “Strut Miss Lizzie,” from their 1922 Broadway vaudeville show of the same name, was one of the last recordings ever made by Bix Beiderbecke in 1930.

Charles N. Daniels, active from 1901 to the late 1930s, composed and published music under several pseudonyms; the best-known is “Neil Moret.”  Several of his songs found their way into the traditional New Orleans jazz repertoire. His “You Tell Me Your Dream” from 1908 is still a favorite at Preservation Hall. And his 1901 “Hiawatha,” a big hit for John Phillip Sousa, started a national craze for Native American themed tunes. Daniels biggest hit is still often recorded today—“He’s Funny That Way.”

Shelton Brooks. Photo courtesy The African American Registry.

Shelton Brooks, another black vaudevillian, placed a song with mega-star Sophie Tucker that eventually became her theme song—“Some of These Days.” His “Darktown Strutters’ Ball” first gained widespread fame through a 1917 recording by the Original Dixieland Jass Band and was a standard in Sophie Tucker’s repertoire.

The team of Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar wrote songs for the Marx Brothers movies, as well as many well-played and recorded standards. “A Kiss to Build a Dream On” is most closely associated with Louis Armstrong, who recorded it several times. The Jim Cullum Jazz Band is inspired by extra-hot recordings of “Who’s Sorry Now?,” waxed by the Bob Crosby Bob Cats and the Rhythmakers, but today’s audiences remember a 1950s’ version by Connie Francis.

“Who’s Sorry Now,” 1923. Image courtesy Waterson Berlin & Snyder Co.

All of the “Unsung Songwriters” featured on Riverwalk Jazz this week were well-established, professional composers with multiple hits to their credit. Tin Pan Alley legend Harry Woods is right up there with huge commercial successes like “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover.” And he wrote Billie Holiday’s “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” and Armstrong’s “Hustlin’ and Bustlin’ for Baby.”

One of his songs, “Try a Little Tenderness,” has had an especially vibrant life in the movies and on the charts, with recordings by Ella Fitzgerald, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Perry Como, Otis Redding and Frank Sinatra. Woods’ “She’s a Great, Great Girl” is remembered today by jazz fans as the debut recording appearance of Jack Teagarden in 1928.

Photo credit for Home Page and Recent Radio Broadcast Page: 1921 Sheet Music, ‘Strut Miss Lizzie,’ introduced by Ziegfeld Follies.   Image courtesy Detroit Public Library, E. Azalia Hackley Collection.

King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band Dodds second from right. Photo courtesy Frank Driggs Collection

Louis Armstrong called him ‘Papa Joe’ and said that no other trumpet player in New Orleans had the fire of Joe Oliver. By the early 1900s, Oliver was “the King” of New Orleans trumpet men. And in 1920s Chicago, he proved himself to be a bandleader of extraordinary vision—and a highly capable composer.

Born upriver from New Orleans in 1885, Joseph Oliver belonged to a first generation of jazzmen that included Kid Ory, Sidney Bechet and Jelly Roll Morton. Even before World War I, these innovators brought the spirited, soulful sound of New Orleans jazz to national audiences in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.

Joe Oliver

If Sidney Bechet was the first great soloist in jazz, and Jelly Roll Morton its first great composer, then the genius of King Oliver lay in his skill at building and inspiring a band that reached the zenith of the art of the improvised jazz ensemble. With outstanding sidemen like clarinetist Johnny Dodds, pianist/arranger Lil Hardin, and later the young prodigy Louis Armstrong, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band played almost entirely in the classic New Orleans ensemble style. The entire group improvised together on tune after tune as a well-coordinated team. In Oliver’s band, solos were limited to brief two-bar breaks—some of them spectacular Oliver-Armstrong cornet duets.

Oliver arrived at his own highly individual cornet style while he was making a name for himself in New Orleans dance halls and nightclubs. He is believed to be the first in jazz to make extensive use of mutes in order to achieve a vocal-like effect in his playing, at times taking on a “sobbing” quality.

Duke Heitger

This week on Riverwalk Jazz, trumpeter and bandleader  Duke Heitger joins The Jim Cullum Jazz Band for Sobbin Blues: Joe Oliver, “The King” of New Orleans Trumpet. Together they perform classic tunes King Oliver first recorded in the early 1920s, including W.C. Handy’s “Aunt Hagar’s Blues” and Oliver’s own compositions “Camp Meeting Blues” and “Working Man Blues.”

Photo credit for Home Page and Recent Radio Broadcast Page: Joe Oliver.

Sidney Bechet & Bob Wilber’s (rt) Wildcats. Photo from Sidney Bechet, The Jazz Wizard

For many Americans, their only experience with the clarinet has been through high school marching and concert bands that often use clarinet sections of up to ten players. Yet in the early half of the 20th Century the clarinet was an essential ingredient in jazz and popular music. Faded tintypes of Buddy Bolden’s historic band taken in 1895 show two clarinetists in his line up. The emotionally ‘hot’ New Orleans clarinet sound was an essential ingredient of jazz from its very beginning.

Benny Goodman Concert Poster. Photo by Hugh Morton

In the classic traditional New Orleans jazz band, the clarinet joins with the cornet and trombone in what has come to be called “collective improvisation,” or ensemble polyphony—“many sounds” or voices. The role of the clarinet in this setting is to provide a detailed, filigreed counter melody, which serves to outline the chords of the tune and thus “flesh out” the harmony of the unfolding musical narrative of the song.

Clarinet Heroes
New Orleans produced the first great soloists of jazz clarinet, among them Johnny Dodds, Jimmie Noone and Sidney Bechet—who also pioneered the related soprano saxophone. King of Swing Benny Goodman cited Dodds and Noone as his musical models while growing up in 1920s’ Chicago.

Clarinetist Pee Wee Russell. Photo courtesy Red Hot Jazz Archive

Goodman and his rival, Artie Shaw, took the basic concept of the traditional New Orleans sound and applied to it the tools of classical technique and sound production. The result was the advancement of the art of swinging jazz clarinet to new heights, seldom—if ever—surpassed to this day. Other players of the era, including Pee Wee Russell and Edmond Hall, built upon New Orleans roots by exploring and extending the blues vocabulary of the instrument.

Both Goodman and Shaw were the most popular big-band leaders of their day and superstars of show business; as a result the jazz clarinet sound today is often identified with the Swing bands of the 1930s and 40s. A decade later, the clarinet had fallen out of style with more modern forms of jazz and the saxophone became the pre-eminent reed instrument of mainstream jazz bands.

Clarinetist Ken Peplowski. Photo courtesy Wikipedia

This week on Riverwalk Jazz
The Jim Cullum Jazz Band offers an exploration of great pre-WWII voices of jazz clarinet with the help of prominent contemporary exponents of the ‘old school.’ Evan Christopher, Bob Wilber, Kenny Davern and Ken Peplowski perform with the Band and talk about their mentors and influences.

Evan Christopher, who studied the origins of the clarinet in early jazz at Tulane University in New Orleans talks with host David Holt about the contribution of Lorenzo Tio, a clarinet master renowned for teaching classical technique to the first generation of New Orleans jazz clarinetists. Evan talks about meeting Tio’s granddaughter, Rose Tio, and plays a tune associated with Lorenzo Tio called, “Red Man Blues.”

Clarinetist Evan Christopher. Photo by Ernest Koeberlein

Bob Wilber was a teenager in the 1940s when he became the star pupil of Sidney Bechet. Bob made records with Bechet and even lived in his household. But like all our guests this week, Benny Goodman looms large in Wilber’s firmament of musical heroes. And Wilber performs his own high-octane composition, a tribute to Goodman called “BG.”

Kenny Davern has been lauded as one of a handful of great clarinetists inspired by older styles. Davern came into his own playing in small combos in Greenwich Village clubs in the 1950s. In an interview recorded in 2005, he talks about his mentor, Pee Wee Russell, a consummate small-group player famous for the growls, squeaks and swoops of his inventive playing style.

“Yellow Dog Blues” sheet music. Photo courtesy Big Band Database nfo.net

Ken Peplowski began his musical career in grade school in Cleveland, playing clarinet in a polka band. Decades later, he was a member of Benny Goodman’s last band featured in the 1985 PBS TV special, Let’s Dance. ‘Peps’ talks about what it was like performing with Goodman and how New Orleanian Barney Bigard influenced his playing.

Photo credit for Home Page and Recent Radio Broadcast Page: JCJB Clarinetist Ron Hockett. Photo by Jennifer Whitney 2009

Jim Cullum with his father, clarinetist Jim Cullum Sr., cir 1960s. Photo courtesy Getzen.com

In the early 1960s cornetist Jim Cullum was a young man in his 20s. He made a pilgrimage to New Orleans to explore the roots of jazz, meet jazz greats and sit in on jam sessions.

This week on our show,  Jim Cullum recalls a jam session with cornetist Johnny Wiggs and Mardi Gras parades when he played with drummer Paul Barbarin and his father Jim Sr. in clarinetist Pete Fountain’s Half Fast Marching Band.

Cornetist Johnny Wiggs, 1948 at New Orleans Jazz Club. Photo courtesy Louisiana State Jazz Museum

A TRIO OF JAZZ PIONEERS
Johnny Wiggs

During the day, John Wigginton Hyman worked incognito teaching high school drafting classes. But nights belonged to his life as a jazzman, playing cornet around New Orleans under his stage name, Johnny Wiggs.

Around 1917  Johnny Wiggs heard King Oliver play at Tulane University dances, and it changed his life. Wiggs was excited by the power and drive of Oliver’s playing—and the subtlety of his muted cornet. He talked about that experience for the rest of his life. Much later on, Wiggs would come under the spell of Bix Beiderbecke and his lyrical style of cornet playing.

Johnny Wiggs and His New Orleans Music performing at St. Charles Cocktail Lounge. Photo courtesy Louisiana State Jazz Museum

For five decades Johnny Wiggs enjoyed a career in music rooted in New Orleans jazz. Wiggs made a key contribution to the fledgling classic jazz revival when he helped launch the New Orleans Jazz Club in 1948. Listeners from the Gulf Coast to Canada heard their live radio broadcasts over station WWL— with traditional jazz legends like ‘Papa’ Celestin and Paul Barbarin. Fans flocked to their Sunday afternoon jam sessions at the Parisian Room on Royal Street.

Drummer Paul Barbarin. Photo courtesy Photo New Orleans Style by Bill Russell; Jazzology Press

Drummer Paul Barbarin
The Barbarin family was “high society” in New Orleans’ brass band dynasty by the time Paul Barbarin was born in the early 1900s. As a young boy in the family kitchen he played the forks and whistled and sang, while his mother and sisters danced to the beat. He graduated to using the spokes of a broken chair he’d whittled into points as drumsticks. Then he took his music to the street corner where he played with other kids—until police on horseback would come along and chase them away.

New Orleans drummer Paul Barbarin. Photo courtesy 2007 GHB Records, Paul Barbarin & His New Orleans Jazz Band

The next step for Paul, at the age of fourteen, was a professional gig drumming with Buddy Petit’s band. A couple of years later, he left for Chicago, where he worked in the stockyards during the day and drummed at night. Before long he was on the bandstand at one of the most popular dance halls on the Southside—backing leaders like King Oliver and Jimmie Noone at the Royal Garden Cafe.

In spite of great success in Chicago and New York, Paul Barbarin returned again and again to his hometown, and by the mid-1950s New Orleans was his base for good. There, Barbarin led a popular traditional jazz band, made outstanding recordings, and revived his father’s Onward Brass Band. Barbarin composed a number of marching band favorites that live on, including—”Bourbon Street Parade” and “The Second Line.”

Oscar ‘Papa’ Celestin, 1946. Photo courtesy Dr. Edmond Souchcon

Oscar ‘Papa’ Celestin
Oscar ‘Papa’ Celestin called the sugar cane plantations of Assumption Parish, Louisiana, home. His father worked as a cane cutter, one of the most backbreaking jobs a man could have, when young Oscar was born in the 1880s. The first time he heard a brass band play, he was a teenager visiting a country fair. On the spot, he decided he’d make his living playing trumpet—though it seemed impossible he’d ever be able to lay his hands on one.

Left to Right: Happy Goldston, ‘Papa’ Celestin, Richard Alexis, Alphonse Picou Photo courtesy American Music Recording Oscar ‘Papa’ Celestin with Adophe Alexander, © 2008

Celestin came to New Orleans when he was 22—a country boy in the big city—and did whatever he had to do to play music. In 1910, appearing at the Tuxedo Dance Hall in his first gig as a bandleader, Celestin decided it might be a profitable gimmick to use tuxedos as band uniforms, which proved successful. He entertained several generations of New Orleans’ elite families—both black and white. Soon, just about every band discarded the military-style jackets that had been standard attire for musicians.

Paddock Bar and Lounge, New Orleans1954 Photo courtesy American Music Recording Oscar ‘Papa’ Celestin with Adophe Alexander, © 2008

Throughout his 50-year career, ‘Papa’ Celestin was one of New Orleans’ best-loved bandleaders and he gave jobs to many of New Orleans’ top musicians. The story goes that young Louis Armstrong was playing in Celestin’s Tuxedo Brass Band the day he received that fateful wire from King Oliver inviting him up to Chicago—and stardom.

This week on Riverwalk Jazz, The Jim Cullum Jazz Band offers a concert of New Orleans traditional jazz classics, including “Tin Roof Blues,” “Come Back Sweet Papa,” and “Flee as a Bird/Over in the Gloryland.”

Photo credit for Home Page and Recent Radio Broadcast Page: Cornetist Johnny Wiggs, 1948 at New Orleans Jazz Club. Photo courtesy Louisiana State Jazz Museum

Pacific Street, 1910. Photo courtesy SF Traditional Jazz Foundation

A century ago, San Francisco’s Barbary Coast was a waterfront hub of loose living, dance-crazy club-goers and wild new music. The Barbary Coast had been notorious for fifty years before the 1906 earthquake, and within hours

Outside Purcell’s, no date given. Photo courtesy SF Museum

of the last trembler its saloons and whorehouses were open for business again. In a town settled by gold-seekers and rogues—where men far outnumbered women—it was ‘sin city’ with a rugged western energy. The Barbary Coast was a sideshow, skid row, and music mecca—all rolled into one. It was here that bandleader and pianist Sid LeProtti made his mark, and traveling jazzmen like King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton came calling.

Sid LeProtti Rare Performance Audio Clips

Click Here

Pianist Sid LeProtti was active on the Barbary Coast in its heyday between 1907 and 1917, leading his band at Lew Purcell’s So Different Cafe. The illegitimate son of an Italian merchant and black woman, Sid inherited his last name from his father, and musical talent from both sides of the family.

Sid LeProtti Band, cir 1923. Photo courtesy Jazz on the Barbary Coast by Tom Stoddard

In the 1950s, Sid Le Protti sat down with San Francisco trombonist and bandleader Turk Murphy to record his memories of the Barbary Coast.

Sid LeProtti, 1953. Photo by Harry Bouden

This week on Riverwalk Jazz we hear rare recordings of Sid LeProtti playing piano and actor Vernel Bagneris bringing LeProtti’s words to life. The Jim Cullum Jazz Band plays classic tunes that might have been danced to in the night spots of Pacific Street.

“He’s tall and chancy, a lady’s fancy”—or at least that’s the way Jelly Roll Morton described himself in his song, “Jelly Roll Blues.”

“Jelly Roll Blues” sheet music, 1915. Image courtesy wikipedia

The Barbary Coast was a ‘way station’ for traveling musicians, and Jelly Roll made it there too. Musicians knew they could always pick up work in a band, or cash, playing pool or in a card game. Jelly Roll Morton wasn’t the only New Orleans jazz legend to visit the Barbary Coast. On tour with his Creole Jazz Band in San Francisco, King Oliver sat in with Le Protti’s group more than once.

More than any other influence, the first New Orleans jazz band to visit the West Coast had a profound influence on Sid LeProtti’s concept of what a jazz band should be. The propulsive beat of Will Johnson’s Original Creole Orchestra gave the music a new kind of excitement and LeProtti wanted that rhythm for his band too.  He found himself a new drummer and added a string bass to his band at Purcell’s because that was “the Louisiana-type thing to do.”

Dancers at Spider Kelly’s, 1913. Photo courtesy Jazz on the Barbary Coast by Tom Stoddard

SF Examiner Editorial Cartoon, 1913. Photo courtesy Jazz on the Barbary Coast by Tom Stoddard

A crusade started up by the Reverend Paul Smith in 1916 was the beginning of the end of the Barbary Coast. When a San Francisco newspaper got on the ‘band wagon,’ the police commissioner decided they had to clean up the district. It took five years to do the job. They cracked down on prostitution first, and put all the sporting houses out of business. They got tough with dance halls, prohibiting dancing anywhere in the Barbary Coast. Finally they put a stop to the music.

Sid LeProtti played his last note on Pacific Street one night in the spring of 1921.

Turk Murphy. Photo courtesy SF Traditional Jazz Foundation

This broadcast is dedicated to the legacy of trombonist Turk Murphy and author Tom Stoddard, whose passion for the history of the Barbary Coast helped create the source materials on which this program is based, in part. Thanks also to Bill Carter of the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation.

Photo credit for Home Page and Recent Radio Broadcast Page: Dancers at Spider Kelly’s, 1913. Photo courtesy Jazz on the Barbary Coast by Tom Stoddard

Dave Bennett & Jim Cullum. Photo courtesy Riverwalk Jazz

Three remarkable “20-something” musicians join The Jim Cullum Jazz Band on stage at The Landing in San Antonio. All share a passion for classic, pre-WWII jazz and make an important contribution to the legacy of the music through their playing.

Firmly rooted in the language of classic jazz, clarinetist Dave Bennett, trumpeter Bria Skonberg and drummer Michael Waskiewicz are highly individual and original in their playing styles.

Clarinetist Dave Bennett hails from Michigan. Fascinated with the music of Benny Goodman since he was 10, Dave started touring nationally at the age of 14. A recent college graduate, Dave stays busy performing at festivals, on jazz cruises and in concert halls around the country. Jim and the Band were knocked out when they first heard Dave play at a jazz festival in California in 2000, when Dave was 16.

When asked about where he sees the music taking him, Bennett said, “When I began to play, I wanted to sound just like Benny Goodman but now that I’ve soaked up so many different types of music and I’ve started writing songs, I want to make a new kind of music. I want to take the clarinet into places it’s never been.”

Bria Skonberg with Jim Cullum at The Landing. Photo courtesy Riverwalk Jazz

Trumpeter/vocalist Bria Skonberg is a native of British Columbia. She began her trumpet studies at age 11 and recently graduated with a degree in Jazz Performance from Capilano College. During the 2007 season, she performed at over 20 traditional jazz festivals in the US and Canada, and won the coveted Kobe Award, presented at the Breda Festival in Holland.

Jim and the Band first heard Bria at Dixieland Monterey in 2006 when she “sat in” with the Band. From that very first encounter, Bria expressed her admiration for Louis Armstrong, “Louis has this joy, this love of life,” she noted. ”As for his sound, his tone is impeccable; it’s like a silver bullet going straight into your heart.”   When asked about her musical origins, Bria gives credit to her high school program and jazz camps sponsored by the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society.

Mike Waskiewicz with Don Mopsick on bass, 2007. Photo courtesy Riverwalk Jazz

San Antonio native Michael Waskiewicz first joined The Jim Cullum Jazz Band as its regular drummer in 2000. He took two years off to work in New Orleans, and then rejoined the Band in 2004. At 27, he is the oldest of our ‘New Generation’ trio featured this week. Mike’s first instruction on the drums came from long-time Cullum Band drummer Ed Torres. Like Bria, Mike says Louis Armstrong is his main musical inspiration, citing “the way he plays, the time and the swing of it.”

Mike describes his first encounter with The Jim Cullum Jazz Band, like this, ”I was fifteen years old and was just kinda hanging out downtown. Walking along the Riverwalk, I saw this place called The Landing. [Pianist]  John Sheridan was playing outside, so I decided to get a cup of coffee. I sat there the rest of the afternoon, and from then on, I showed up every night.”

Clearly, classical forms of jazz continue to appeal to a younger generation of musicians, like these three, who love to ‘swing that music.’

Photo credit for Home Page and Recent Radio Broadcast Page: Dave Bennett and Bria Skonberg.  Photo courtesy Riverwalk Jazz