Greg Hester Jazz

Healdsburg Jazz Festival Just Around the Corner:

On June 1 and for the  following ten nights, the stars will be out and the jazz-savvy little town of Healdsburg will once again become the Northern California jazz community’s center of gravity  -  jumpin’ and jivin’ to the beat of some of the greatest jazz players in our universe, all courtesy of the 8th Annual Healdsburg Jazz Festival.

 Any musical event that can showcase - in the same series of performances - headliners and glittering stars with the stature of a McCoy Tyner, a Charlie Haden, a Mark Murphy and the senior statesmen of jazz, the Heath brothers, is sure to be regarded by jazz fans and critics alike as one of THE major music happenings of this or any other year. And deservedly so. McCoy Tyner is possibly the number one innovator and interpreter of modern jazz living today;Charlie Haden has long been recognized by many as jazzdom’s premier bassist and all-around musical genius; Mark Murphy is the artist over whom critic Rex Reed once gushed…..’arguably the best male singer in the business’; and the beloved and incredible Heath Brothers, everybody’s favorite who have been ensconced comfortably atop the jazz hierarchy for over a half century! Talk about an all-star lineup! These are the best of the best!

 Windsor's Furth Center will be the venue for the kick-off fund-raising event to benefit Sonoma County children’s music education with an auction and gala dinner.  The Musicians’ Warehouse Big Band, a magnificent 20 piece jazz/swing aggregation,  featuring the great Louie Bellson will perform in concert with a dance to follow.                                                                                                                      (Photo right: Louie Bellson)

On Friday, June 2, you may want to drop by the Barndiva restaurant in Healdsburg and catch the fabulous Bruce Forman trio with his special guest, saxophonist, Noel Jewkes. The perfect musical backdrop for a luscious Barndiva snack and a glass of Geyser Peak wine.

 (Photos top; Bruce Forman;  bottom:Marc Cary)

Marc Cary and his Focus Trio return to Barndiva for an encore performance on Saturday, June 3. Having completely knocked out jazz audiences here last year, it’s only natural that we bring him back, and this time he has exciting fresh material to go with his always ‘outside-the-box’ approach.

 

Sunday’s ‘Jazz Night at the Movies’ on June 4 gives jazz fans a chance to see some of their favorite stars, past and present, doing their things in film clips culled from the voluminous archives of jazz historian, Mark Cantor.

 (Photo left: Eddie Duran & Mad)

Jazz and wine dinners at the fabulous Dry Creek Kitchen will be on the menu as the
StephanieOzer and Mad and Eddie Duran trios will perform for lucky diners on Monday, June 5 and Wednesday, June 7 respectively. Sandwiched in between .these two events, on Tuesday, June 6, Latin jazz star Rebeca Mauleon and sextet will present a concert and host a party in the Healdsburg Plaza. You bring the picnic and she’ll provide the musical ‘hot sauce’.

 

(Photo left: Shea Breaux Wells)                               (Photo right: Rebeca Mauleon)

Classic jazz interpreter, songstress Shea Breaux Wells, in a quintet format will be at the Flying Goat Café on Center Street Here’s a chance for fans to experience some of the real jazz music that real jazz musicians like to play.

In a week of many highlights, the Heath Brothers’ tribute to Percy in Film and Music is certainly one of the more attractive. This presentation on Friday, June 9 at the North Street Raven Theater, will showcase the brothers’ indelible mark on jazz from bepob’s early years up to and including the present. It’s an absolute ‘must see’ for any serious jazz buff.

 (Photo left: John Heard)    (Photo right: The Heath Brothers)

Healdsburg favorite, bassist John Heard and trio will be holding forth in the Hotel Healdsburg Lobby on Friday and Saturday (June 9, 10) with surprise guest artists dropping by to sit in.

 

 

Also on June 10, magnificent jazz vocalist, Mark Murphy performs at Quivira Vineyards. Whether singing ballads, blues or bebop, Murphy possesses one of the most incredible jazz voices ever to hold a microphone. This show is simply not to be missed.

     (Photo left: Mark Murphy)

Co-headlining this year’s Festival, also on Saturday, June 10, the Charlie Haden Quartet West, comes in with world renown bassist and all-around maestro, Charlie Haden with an all-star trio which includes Alan Broadbent, Ernie Watts and Billy Hart.

 (Photo left: McCoy Tyner)                                         (Photo right: Charlie Haden)

As Grand Finale, Sunday, June 11, the outdoor amphitheater at the Rodney Strong Vineyards will fairly rock to the sounds and rhythms of the universally acclaimed McCoy Tyner Trio. The opening act of this curtain-raiser will be the fabulous Billy Hart Trio, featuring Santi Debriano and Santa Rosa’s own Julian Lage

More information can be found on the Healdsburg Jazz Festival's website or you can just keep checking in here, because we'll be posting more on it during the month of May.

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The humor of Zoot Sims

This is a verbatim steal from a blog that I haven't been able to identify, but deserves I think, all the readership we can give it. Even if you've never heard of Zoot Sims, this stuff should give you a good chuckle:

'One of the most innovative, lyrical and swinging jazz musicians of any time was none other than John Haley Zoot Sims. I feel blessed and among the few fortunate having had the privilege and joy to have seen him play on countless occasions and in a variety of contexts. From Jazz at the Philharmonic, Stan Kenton and more relaxed and lyrical with his long time compadre, Al Cohn, seeing Zoot perform was never a disappointment. No matter what, I'd always go home after a club set or concert with something wonderful passed to me by this warm and exquisite Jazz Musician.

Zoot, coming off of the Lester Young branch soon came into his own with a wonderful identifiable sound that didn't take a classically trained ear to quickly identify. On a Gershwin lyric he had the poise and respect for that line with his tenor or soprano sax as much as Frank Sinatra would using his voice. If it was time to swing hard, Zoot did it easily without having to push any envelope to prove something. He just did it and it went down.

In every respect when we lost Zoot we truly lost an original jazz icon. Someone that won't be easily replaced by the clean cut crop of technical wizards coming out of jazz universities by the barrel loads today. Zoot was jazz and his attitude, demeanor and style were jazz you could dance to, close your eyes to or just tap your feet to. He was one hell of an original.

While The Jazz Zine cannot replicate any of Zoot's wonderful music short of having our readers download hours of Quicktime or .WAV files, there is something we all can share that was truly Zoot's: His incomparable sense of humor. I went and did some rummaging on the web and have come up with a bunch of quips and remarks of his gathered from published works by Bill Crow, Ira Gitler, Jeff Hamilton and Whitney Balliett. So without any further introductions read on and enjoy an original and irreplaceable sense of humor that helped shape the Zoot Sims many jazz fans have come to love and revere.

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Zoot Sims did his first tour of duty with Benny Goodman in 1943. It was during that year, at a recording session, that Zoot, age seventeen, brought an apple with him which he placed on his music stand. As Sims began his solo, Goodman picked up the apple and started eating it. Goodman signaled him to take another chorus and then another and another. It turned out to be the longest solo Goodman ever gave Sims; long enough. at least, for Benny to finish the apple.

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While still in his young teens, he worked in Ken Baker's Los Angeles area band. Baker would put nicknames on the front of his music stands. John Haley Sims ended up behind the "Zoot" stand, and as Zoot put it, "It stuck." The name became a household word to all except one musician, or so it seems. One morning, probably a bit too early, Zoot called trumpet player Nick Travis and identified himself to his sleepy voiced colleague. "Zoot who?" was the befuddled reply. .

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Zoot was drafted into the air force in World War II. The year was 1944. Having served in places like Huntsville, Alabama; Valdosta, Georgia and Biloxi, Mississippi, Zoot proudly affirmed that he fought in the famous Battle Of The South.

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Stan Getz, through much of his career, was known to be one of the more unpredictable personalities in the jazz world. Asked to describe his sometime rival, Zoot remarked, "Stan Getz is a nice bunch of guys

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Al Cohn and Zoot shared a more than casual interest in alcohol consumption on the bandstand. During one of their long stays at New York's Half Note. it became evident that the two tenor men handled their drinking very differently. Zoot would be in a partying mood and Al would continue standing like a statue and playing as wonderfully as ever. At the end of a set one night, Zoot hopped off the bandstand, caromed from one table to the next, carrying on with the customers. He nearly lost his balance a couple of times, but regained it in the nick of time. He tried to negotiate two steps to the next table level but didn't quite make it. He tripped, and as a result, turned what should have been a fall into a nearly graceful vaudeville time step. A customer, noting Zoot's tour of the room said, "Boy, that Zoot can really drink a lot of booze." Al Cohn turned to bassist Bill Crow, and in his typical dry manner, said "Yes, but he doesn't drink WELL.

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Zoot was rarely at a loss for words. When asked by a fan how he could play so well when he was loaded, he replied, "I practice when I'm loaded.

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Zoot was standing out in the alley back of a club between sets where he was playing when a bum came up and  said, " I only need seventy five cents more to buy a drink." Zoot reached in his pocket and gave him the money. After the bum walked away up the alley, Zoot ran after him, stopped him and said,"Wait a minute. How do I know you're not going to go around the corner and buy a bowl of soup?"

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Early one evening Zoot had just finished a recording session and was joined by guitarist Jim Hall and his wife Jane. Zoot complained of his tiring schedule -- recording all day followed by an appearance at The Half Note that night. Jane mentioned that if Zoot wanted, she had a Dexedrine. "I don't think they're good for you, they're pretty strong. I usually open one up and pour some out." "Pour some out?" said Zoot. "Are you crazy? Don't you know there are people SLEEPING in Europe?

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On a tour of Europe with Chet Baker, Chet wanted Zoot to meet the son of Benito Mussolini, who happened to be Italy’s best jazz artist. Chet prompted Zoot to please say something nice when being introduced to him. While shaking the hand of the infamous leader's son Zoot said, "Sorry to hear about your Dad."

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Zoot Sims: One of the Four Brothers

Album Title: Zoot Suite
Artist(s)  Zoot Sims, Stan Getz, Roy Eldridge, Woody Herman Orchestra (1947-50)
Release Label: Jazz Archives No. 191
Recording Dates:  1947 - 1950

Woody Herman's various 'Herd' ensembles are probably best remembered, even within casual jazz circles, for his amazing reed sections during the late forties and early fifties. With each succeeding  re-assembling of these great bands, and there were several, the personnel changed as did the reeds, which had come to be known as the 'Four Brothers'. What fantastic aggregations these Woody Herman bands were! 

Woody began to shape the 'Woody Herman Orchestra' sound in 1943, pre-dating the bebop era, at least by a couple of years. Up to that time, his bands had gotten the rep as 'The band that plays the blues', but  with early modern jazz vocalist, Mary Ann McCall, and some of the others listed below, what had been a  distinctively Dixieland inflected sound gradually evolved into something suspiciously similar to the new music that  Diz, Bird and Monk had begun to toy around with in the mid to late forties. Herman rarely gets credit for being one of the first - if not THE first - big band leaders to pioneer the revolutionary genre in jazz that we know today as bepop.

(Photo: Woody Herman Orchestra of today) 

If anyone ever tries to stump you by asking you to name the original Four Brothers of jazz music, here's your answer, and it's readily apparent on the second track of this album, 'Four Brothers'. The makeup of the sax section on this, the first recording of the piece that's now a jazz classic, was: Woody Herman who played both clarinet and alto sax, but, for purposes of this trivia answer, was not considered to be one of the 'Brothers'. The original 'Four Brothers' were all saxophones: Herbie Steward on alto and tenor, Stan Getz, tenor, Zoot Sims, tenor and Serge Chaloff on bari. Getz later characterized the group as 'four drug addicts and a clean man', leaving future generations to sort them out.

As an added  trivia bonus, you can throw in the tid-bit that alto player, Sam Marowitz  was also in that section but, for whatever reason, also was not included in the 'Brothers' group. It's possible that he was the 'clean' one to whom Getz referred, and therefore, an 'outcast'.

And if they're not completely stunned by now, you can add  one more: Neither Ralph Burns , piano player, writer and Herman arranger, nor Neal Hefti, as is commonly assumed, wrote Four Brothers'  That distinction belongs to jazz clarinetist, Jimmy Giuffre.

There were many other notables playing in that band as well as the bands that followed- too many to name them all - but to list a few: Trumpet player, writer and arranger extraordinaire, Neal Hefti, Ernie Royal, Shorty Rogers, Al Cohn,  Brew Moore, Roy Eldridge, Conte Condoli, Bill Harris, Walter Bishop, Gerry Mulligan,  Allen Eager, and one of my all-time favorite drummers, Don Lamond. On this Zoot Suite album there are cuts from all of them and more.
(Photo, Left: Zoot Sims)

Of course there are other re-mastered tracks on this historic collection, with Zoot Sims starring in all of them. By listening to them, any jazz fan can immediately understand why Sims, even at the age of 15 when he 'turned pro'  right up to the time of his untimely death in 1985, John Haley 'Zoot' Sims was considered by his peers and his fans alike to be something very special.

Since all of the tenor saxophone players showcased on this album are from the Lester Young 'School
of Cool', it might be a bit of a challenge to distinguish in their solo work, exactly where one leaves off and the other begins. Zoot Sims, Stan Getz, Al Cohn, Allen Eager, Herbie Steward and Brew Moore - such great players. The best listening approach might be to just kick back and enjoy the music, whomever is playing it, because it's all wonderful.

For those whose interest in modern jazz music places a high regard on being in at the very beginnings -  those who feel an urge to hear those true artists who helped get us to where we are today, this album is an essential part in the progression of its history during what are probably the most important years in its nearly three-quarters of a century of evolution. This album is an absolute 'must have'.       (Photos Left: Stan Getz, Right, Al Cohn)