Blues & Jazz

Jazz Parades Funeral

Jan 14, 2010 blues music
Posted by admin

Wanderlust: Ireland Swings

Stepping onto the tarmac at Cork International Airport, after a flight on Ireland’s national carrier Aer Lingus, the first thing we notice is the smell of fresh manure – fresh as only an almost liquid waft of cattle manure can be fresh, and a funkyreminder of the Celtic Tiger’s ancient agrarian roots. But the air has a fresh sea tang to it after a 20-minute drive south through the lush green countryside to postcard-perfect Kinsale. Here in this ancient fishing town our arrival is heralded by a magnificent full-arched Irish rainbow. We return the salute with celebratory pints of Guinness at the Trident Hotel’s Wharf Tavern. 

Elbow River Slim and I are here to take part in the annual Kinsale Fringe Jazz Festival, a three-day blowout featuring Live Music in virtually every local bar, pub and restaurant – all day long and completely free of charge. The freewheeling affair was conceived by Kinsale boosters 15 years ago as an alternative side-show to the prestigious (and pricey) Guinness Jazz Festival, held in the nearby city of Cork. Initially, Corkfest officials were hostile. “We thought we could perhaps snatch a few crumbs off the rich man’s table,” says Kinsale pianoman Billy Crosbie, a driving force.”But they saw it as us going after their their business.” The twin events eventually developed a comfortable symbiosis
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Most of the year, Kinsale, County Cork, Republic of Ireland, is a quiet town whose roughly 2,000 souls work at fishing and some light manufacturing. But its location on the Bandon River estuary on Ireland’s southeastern tip also gives it a place in history. Its St. Multose Church dates from the 12th century. Charles Fort, built by the English in 1677, was burned by Irish nationalists in 1922. Deposed James II, England’s last Catholic king, landed at Kinsale in 1689 intent on regaining his crown. He never did.

In the last 30 years, entrepreneurial Kinsale has made itself into a resort town whose population swells in summer and for a year-round run of special events. Just weeks before our visit for the Fringe Jazz Fest the town overflowed with foodies at the Kinsale Gourmet Festival. Hotels and B&Bs in the old heart of Kinsale shrewdly raise their rates during the October long weekend, but are filled nevertheless. So Slim and I are staying out of town – at the far end of 10 minutes of hair-raising, hedgerow-walled Irish backroads – in a restful cluster of self-catered cottages on blustery Oysterhaven Bay. Our first night, we turn right around and drive into Cork for beers and blues at the The Corner House Pub in Cobourg Street. Tonight it’s The Dizzy Blues Band, led by guitarist Pat Horgan, with tunes in the style of fellow Cork native Rory Gallagher.

The next morning offers a breathtaking ocean view of the Old Head of Kinsale, a fortified promontory off which, in May 1915, the American liner Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sank in just 18 minutes, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 aboard. This is our day to visit County Cork’s most popular tourist attraction: Blarney Castle. But a blue sky in the morning is no promise for an Irish day, and soon the clouds roll in and then a driving rain. Forget kissing the Blarney Stone; instead we hunker down around a peat-burning fireplace at the Muskerry Arms on Blarney Square to enjoy a hearty pub lunch of roast lamb, mashed-potatoes and cabbage and the music of Irish-inflected talk at nearby tables. 

Later, back in Kinsale, rain be damned, the party is starting without us. New York saxman Ron Gozzo began early at Muddy Maher’s Bar, followed by Crazy Chester from Austin, Texas, and The Bad News Blues Band from Tucson, Arizona. Dalton’s Bar around the corner has the Chili Knights from Boston while Urban Stew from Stoke City, UK are across the harbour at The Bulman. Soon music wafts from all directions. Loose Change, a local Commitments-type R&B outfit, rocks out at Hamlet’s and The Blue Haven Hotel lounge next door is hosting Kinsale jazz maven Sharon Crosbie. At Muddy Maher’s, Gentleman Tim and the Contenders, a blues band from London, set up to boogie into the wee hours.

But Slim and I are off to the Trident Hotel, where Vancouver musicians Doc Fingers, Kim Nishikawara and Tom Keenlyside are playing with UK bluesman Ian Briggs and his band The Supervampers. Nishikawara’s and Keenlyside’s saxophone pyrotechnics set the well-lubricated Irish crowd on fire, and Slim and I just barely manage to escape the “craigh” in responsible condition for the following day. I have an afternoon gig at The Whitehouse with piano-man Doc, and Slim is sitting in on “gob-iron” (harmonica). Vancouver’s duelling saxes chip in, and the band kicks serious butt. The place is jammed, with satisfied customers overflowing through the wide-open front door, out onto the narrow sidewalk, and onto the roadway. 

Then, unexpectedly, a funeral procession turns the corner and, coffin aloft, makes a steady, slow march down the centre of Pearse Street towards the nearby Methodist church. Whitehouse barman Steve, dutifully seeking to preserve the solemnity of the situation, steps forward to close and bar the door – not to be reopened until the sad parade is fully past.”Play that song, Doc,” the barman chirps with a grin, nonchalantly resuming his publican duties.”You know the one.” Doc turns and counts us all in: “Hey everybody, let’s have some fun / You only live once, and when you’re dead you’re done / So let the good times roll …”

About the Author

Lindsay Mitchell PhD is a writer, musician and composer. He is also associated with Bluestourism, a travel site with a live music focus, and TEGS, The Electric Guitar Store, an online source for guitars and guitar information.

Jazz Parades: Feet, Don’t Fail Me Now

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Keeping the Beat on the Street: The New Orleans Brass Band Renaissance $17.95 Told in the words of the musicians themselves, Keeping the Beat on the Street celebrates the renewed passion and pageantry among black brass bands in New Orleans. Mick Burns introduces the people who play the music and shares their insights, showing why New Orleans is the place where jazz continues to grow.Uniformed brass bands have been around since the late-nineteenth century, throughout Europe and the United States, but African American brass bands in New Orleans have always played music differently: the way it is lived on the street. Performing in funeral processions and in parades for social clubs, they learned how to play by interacting with their audiences. This spontaneity and feeling became trademarks of jazz. Brass bands waned during the civil rights era but revived around 1970 and then flourished in the 1980s, when the music became cool with the younger generation. In the only book to cover this revival, Burns interviews members from a variety of bands, including the Fairview Baptist Church Brass Band, the Dirty Dozen, Tuba Fats’ Chosen Few, and the Rebirth Brass Band. He captures their thoughts about the music, their careers, audiences, influences from rap and hip-hop, the resurgence of New Orleans social and pleasure clubs and second lines, traditional versus funk style, recording deals, and touring. “My dream is I would love to win a Grammy with a brass band,” confides Philip Frazier III of the Rebirth Brass Band. “But if I had to do it again for no money, I would, because I love doing it.” For anyone who loves jazz and the city where it was born, Keeping the Beat on the Street is a book to savor. About the Author:Mick Burns is the author of The Great Olympia Band and has played jazz professionally in Europe and the United States for forty years. He lives in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, in England.

Keeping the Beat on the Street: The New Orleans Brass Band Renaissance $29.95 Told in the words of the musicians themselves, Keeping the Beat on the Street celebrates the renewed passion and pageantry among black brass bands in New Orleans. Mick Burns introduces the people who play the music and shares their insights, showing why New Orleans is the place where jazz continues to grow.Uniformed brass bands have been around since the late-nineteenth century, throughout Europe and the United States, but African American brass bands in New Orleans have always played music differently: the way it is lived on the street. Performing in funeral processions and in parades for social clubs, they learned how to play by interacting with their audiences. This spontaneity and feeling became trademarks of jazz. Brass bands waned during the civil rights era but revived around 1970 and then flourished in the 1980s, when the music became cool with the younger generation. In the only book to cover this revival, Burns interviews members from a variety of bands, including the Fairview Baptist Church Brass Band, the Dirty Dozen, Tuba Fats’ Chosen Few, and the Rebirth Brass Band. He captures their thoughts about the music, their careers, audiences, influences from rap and hip-hop, the resurgence of New Orleans social and pleasure clubs and second lines, traditional versus funk style, recording deals, and touring. “My dream is I would love to win a Grammy with a brass band,” confides Philip Frazier III of the Rebirth Brass Band. “But if I had to do it again for no money, I would, because I love doing it.” For anyone who loves jazz and the city where it was born, Keeping the Beat on the Street is a book to savor. About the Author:Mick Burns is the author of The Great Olympia Band and has played jazz professionally in Europe and the United States for forty years. He lives in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, in England.

Small Town Baltimore: An Album of Memories $33 Before Harborplace and the Convention Center, Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the Ravens, shopping malls and multiplex movie theaters, Baltimore was a very different city. Most Baltimoreans would agree that, until recently, living here was like living in a small town. For more than 25 years, Gilbert Sandler chronicled this bygone life of streetcars and cinema palaces in his Evening Sun (and later Sun) column, “Baltimore Glimpses.” Now collected, edited, and expanded in Small Town Baltimore, Sandler’s delightful sketches of life in Baltimore from the 1920s through the 1970s take readers back to a time when flagpole-sitting was all the rage, when guests at high society weddings and cotillions were fed by the prominent African American business Hughes Catering and chef David Bruce’s famous chicken croquettes, and when the salt rubdown at Rowland’s Turkish Bath could take all one’s troubles away.This “album of memories” introduces the reader to the people and places—neighborhoods, restaurants, department stores, parks, hotels, night clubs, racetracks, and theaters—that once put the charm in Charm City. Sandler recalls the events that shaped life here, from strikes and demonstrations to baseball games and parades. Through interviews and reminiscences, Sandler catches a double feature at the Valencia; visits Howard Street’s Arabian Tent Club to listen to Cab Calloway; attends the funeral of Chick Webb—”the greatest jazz drummer in the world”—along with such jazz luminaries as Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, and Ella Fitzgerald; listens in on Arthur Godfrey’s audition in the studios of WFBR; eats knockwurst at Schellhase’s, steamed crabs at Bankert’s, and Cantonese cuisine at Jimmy Wu’s; takes the Chesapeake Restaurant up on its offer to “Eat our steak with a fork, else tear up your check and walk out”; and rides the Charles Street double-decker bus with Ms. Reuben Ross Holloway, who fought to make “The Star-Spangled Banner”