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Street Talk in New Orleans By Audrey Van Dyke, President, PRJC
“It’s hard to practice without my piano.”
“This cornet plays like crap.” (followed by a demonstration of valve action after immersion in water for several days).
“All my arrangements are gone. I made two decisions. Not to mourn anymore, and not to try to replace them.”
“Our lives are downsized.”
“A friend sent me a few of my favorite CDs. I can listen to music again.”
“Someone offered to send me a computer file with all my favorite old jazz records. But my computer is gone too.”
These were fragments of conversations by New Orleans musicians overheard by some of the 33 PRJC members who went to French Quarter Festival in April.
Not to worry - this isn’t going to become another plea for money. Instead it is going to be a plea for something that can address a specific need, at no out of pocket expense, and maybe just a little bit of pain on our parts. What we are going to ask of ourselves as a jazz club is to come up with a pile of CDs to send down to the New Orleans traditional jazz musicians. We’re going return a little music to the people who have given it to us over the years.
There are only two rules for the CD drive. First, we only want CD’s, produced commercially and in good condition. Sorry, this is not a dumping ground for your 178 pounds of cassettes and 8-tracks. A couple of the musicians still like vinyl, so we will also accept good condition LPs. Second, we are only asking for historic/classic/early jazz. Much as we all love our favorite hometown and festival bands, that’s not the point of this mission. Look for 20’s jazz, for Chicago and New York jazz of the 30’s and 40’s, maybe a little of the California revival in the 50’s.
Could you take a few minutes and browse through your CD shelves? Maybe you have two sets of the Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall concert, or several different issues of the same Jelly Roll or Sidney Bechet tunes. Maybe a friend gave you a Jack Teagarden or Joe Sullivan CD you already had, or maybe you have so many CDs of the Eddie Condon gang that you could live happily with a couple less. One musician really misses his Bob Crosby CDs - can any of us help? Don’t deplete your entire CD collection for this effort, but if several of us can come up with a few classic recordings, we’ll have done a good thing.
Dave Sager, a PRJC Board member and musician who once lived in New Orleans, found a great person to be our distribution point. Sue Fischer works in the archives side by side with the music collection at the Old Mint in New Orleans, is a dedicated traditional jazz historian, and recently won a scholarship to an adult jazz camp. She has a list of all the traditional jazz musicians in New Orleans, and what they have lost, and will be delighted to act as our Santa Claus, and see to it that everybody gets several CDs of their choice. Sue has mentioned our plan to a few of the musicians who play at Fritzels, and says they are really excited and pleased that we are doing this. Her email address, for those who want to send a package directly to her, is
loerchen2@aol.com.
Bring any donations you come up with to the New Black Eagle June special, the July crab feast, the August Last Chance special, or a jam session, or call (703) 684-3522 for pickup. If you live out of town, and want to participate, please feel free to email Sue Fischer directly to obtain her address. And if you want to send some CDs but prefer to send them to a buddy of yours in New Orleans, that’s great. The PRJC has no pride of ownership with this CD drive. Anything that promotes the objective is a fine and caring thing to do.
Want to send a short message along with your donation? Write it down and hand it in with your donation or email it to
audrey@callitmusic.com. We will compile them all into one letter to be handed out with the CDs. Something along the lines of “Hope somebody likes Fess Williams and Ted Lewis as much as I do.” Put your name, or not, as you like, and depending on whether you want word to get out of your preference for Fess Williams and Ted Lewis.
There is one exception to our two rules. If anybody has cassettes or recent recordings featuring any of the contemporary New Orleans trad jazz musicians, we would like those as part of our CD effort. It wasn’t just their collections of historic jazz recordings that the musicians lost. Also destroyed in the flood were their recorded musical histories of their own playing.
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Jazz Clarinetist Wally Garner Dies at 77
Local jazz clarinetist Wally Garner, 77, died Wednesday, August 24, 2005, at Inova Fairfax Hospital. He had lung cancer.
Garner was born in Washington, D.C. and in the mid-forties attended Western High School (now the Duke Ellington School of the Arts) with other well-known local jazz musicians such as cornetist “Wild Bill” Whelan; pianists Gary Wilkinson, Charlie Howze and Walt Coombs; reed player Jimmy Hamilton and trombonist Glen Woodmansee. Whelan and Garner formed a band and played private parties before getting their first paying job at North Beach. Appearances at the Charles Hotel in Washington and the Bayou in Georgetown followed. Wally also played with pianist John Eaton at the Mayfair Cafe of All Nations in the Warner Building in downtown Washington, and at Mr. Smith’s in Georgetown.
Garner was a member of the house band at Georgetown’s Blues Alley jazz club along with Charlie Butler or Slide Harris on trombone, Eaton or John Phillips on piano, Bertell Knox on drums, the late Keter Betts or Billy Taylor on bass and Steve Jordan on guitar. For about 10 years, ending in 2002, he was the clarinetist with the Tommy Cecil Trio at the Four Seasons Sunday Jazz Brunch in Georgetown.
In recent years he had been the regular clarinetist with the Not-So-Modern Jazz Quartet playing Thursday nights at St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub in the Del Ray section of Alexandria, VA. He also played frequently with the Federal Jazz Commission at its weekly Tuesday night appearances at Col. Brooks Tavern in the Brookland neighborhood of northeast Washington and was a member of the recently-formed Washington Conservatory of Music Traditional Jazz Ensemble which plays as the house band at monthly PRJC jam sessions at the Calvert House in Riverdale, MD.
In his non-musical life he was a long-time employee of British Aerospace with an office near Dulles Airport. To read his obituary in the Washington Post go to www.washingtonpost.com and search “news” for “obit Wally Garner.”
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Order “Classic Jazz” by Floyd Levin
A recent book by the noted jazz writer Floyd Levin is now available
through PRJC. Titled “Classic Jazz, A Personal View of the Music and the
Musicians,” it is a compendium of Levin essays which have appeared over
the years in a variety of publications, many with only limited
distribution. They form a cross-section of articles about classic jazz written over a
period of fifty years. Most of them put the spotlight on a classic jazz
luminary whom Levin has known or interviewed (or both) -- such as Wild Bill Davison --
or an event he has experienced -- like a memorable Jack Teagarden record
date. The paperback book is generously illustrated and contains a
comprehensive index.
Dan Morgenstern, Director of the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers
University, says “Floyd Levin’s dedicated and unselfish life-long work
for the cause of jazz has illuminated many a corner that would otherwise have
remained in the dark. All who care about the music are in his debt.
‘Classic Jazz,’ like Floyd himself, is a classic.”
The book can be ordered through the free on-line bill-paying service,
PayPal. The cost is $17, postage paid. A portion of the cost is retained by PRJC.
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Order “Bands of the Potomac River Jazz Club” CD
A special PRJC CD featuring many of the club’s top bands has been professionally produced to commemorate our 30th anniversary. They are now available for $10 each, postpaid by mail either online or by mail. Send mail orders to Stu Parcher, 1115 Fallsmead Way, Rockville, MD with a check payable to PRJC.
These are the bands and tunes:
BEALL STREET SEVEN “When”
BIG BERTHA’S RHYTHM KINGS “Drums of Fire”
BROOKS TEGLER BIG BAND “I’ve Heard That Song Before”
BUCK CREEK JAZZ BAND “At the Mississippi Cabaret”
DIXIE POWER TRIO “Limehouse Blues”
DOC SCANTLIN AND HIS IMPERIAL PALMS ORCHESTRA “Old Man Blues”
FALLSTAFF 5 + 2 “Black and Blue”
FEDERAL FOCUS JAZZ BAND “Oriental Strut”
FEDERAL JAZZ COMMISSION “Mabel’s Dream”
LA SALLE DANCE ORCHESTRA “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”
LAST CHANCE JAZZ BAND “Rose of Washington Square”
NEW COLUMBIA SWING ORCHESTRA “Jump Jump’s Here”
NEW TRADITIONAL JAZZ BAND “Blame It on the Blues”
PARAMOUNT JAZZ ORCHESTRA “Deep Hollow”
PEABODY RAGTIME ENSEMBLE “C Jam Blues”
WHITE LIGHTNIN’ WASHBOARD BAND “When the Saints Go Marching In”
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| To receive a free sample copy of
"Tailgate Ramblings"
send an e-mail to PRJC
with "Sample Newsletter"
as the subject line and include your name and address in the text. |
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All That Jazz
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