Spring into Jazz (part 2)

After enjoying it so much last year, I was very pleased to get tickets for this years Spring into Jazz.  This time they did a set called Tin Pan Alley in which they played songs and told the stories behind the music.  Tin Pan Alley is a street where all the jazz publishers were in the olden days (I don't rightly remember the exact era its from.  Probably somewhere around the 1920s.  Good job I'm not being tested). After the amount of stories about musicians, publishers and songwriters they told last year, I was surprised that they had any more to tell this time but there was hardly any repetition of stories and not much repetition of tunes either.  The fact I actually remember what they repeated from the previous year says a lot about how good it was as my memory is rubbish.

The band consisted of a singer who also played banjo, a trumpet/ cornet player, a saxophone/ clarinet player, a pianist and a euphonium player who had the most huge instrument ever.  Just lifting it up was a feat in itself, let alone playing it.  Apparently he used to have a metal one which was even heavier, but now he's moved onto a plastic one.  They were all very accomplished musicians.

This time they didn't have a bar, it was bring your own drinks and a fish and chip supper was ordered in from Georges.

Writers Block

I've been having a bit of writers block lately and, although there have been things to write about I haven't been motivated or able to think of an interesting slant on it.  But as living things die if you don't feed them, blogs die if you don't write in them, so I'm going to write something and hope it flows.

Today was the May Fayre in the Memorial Hall.  It was run by the church.  They had several stalls, the usual village fair type things, plants, bric a brac, homemade cakes, tombola etc.  I picked up a few bits which I was pleased about and a carrot cake which was very tasty.  They did a ploughmans lunch, which consisted of some salad, but the diet went out of the window when you saw what went with it.  There was a choice of some large wedges of pork pie, huge hunks of cheese or massive slices of pizza, (and from what I could tell you could have more than one of those choices too) followed by a choice of puddings with cream.  No-one could say the folks at the church aren't generous.  The hall was full of people and there was a good atmosphere.  Hopefully they made lots of money.

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.