Spring into Jazz

On Saturday evening it was Spring into Jazz at the Memorial Hall.  This was a jazz band who played music and talked about the history of jazz in between.  They were a 5 piece band which consisted of a banjo player who did most of the talking, a trumpet/cornet player, a clarinet /saxophone player, a keyboard player and a guy who appeared to have a thing about playing really huge musical instruments.  The first thing I noticed as I walked in the hall was the massive white sousaphone which was apparently made with 3 miles of pipes.  He also played a double bass.  I don't really know a lot about jazz and didn't recognise many of the tunes but I still really enjoyed it. Jazz has a seedy background.  In the early days jazz was played in brothels.  They man telling the stories was very considerate of the fact I'd brought my 11 year old son with me.  At the beginning he called them brothels and then changed to saying house of pleasure or unmentionable places.  It's roots were in the recently freed black slaves in New Orleans starting roughly around 1890 and getting really big in the 1920s. They told colourful tales of the jazz musicians. Louis Armstrong was born to a 14 year old mother and never knew his father.  His life changed when he got put into an orphanage at 13 where he learn to play the cornet in their band.  There was a guy called Sydney (I forget his last name, but bear in mind I had never even heard of most of these people before Saturday night) who discovered the alto sax when visiting London, then he got deported for brawling.  King Oliver (he wasn't really a king, he just called himself that) had a band with lots of the big names in jazz, but they all left his band when they realised he was ripping them off.  There were lots of tales of musicians being ripped off by record companies, and many more stories of musicians turning to alcoholism.  There was a big blues singer called Bessie Smith who, when the Klu Klux Klan came along with torches to burn down their blues tent, she went out to challenge then to a fist fight and they all backed away quietly.  My personal favourite was the tale of Mr Moore whose act was to dress as a frog and was shut in a box which he had to escape from and the tune that went with it.  Anyway I'm not doing these tales justice.  The guy from the band told them a lot better.

As well as telling good stores they were very good musicians.  We heard many good sax, clarinet and cornet solos as well as maple leaf rag on the keyboard.  The whole evening inspired an interest in jazz I never knew I had and left me wanting to know more about the musicians and what was happening in the world of jazz in that era, and most importantly I wanted to hear more of the music.