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Stamping, Cheering For Jazzmen

By Rob Laking.

At the Town Hall, Wellington, March 18. Condon (gt. and leader). Buck Clayton (tpt). Pee Wee Russell (clt), Vic Dickenson (trom). Bud Freeman (ten), Dick Cary (p and mellophone), Jack Lesberg (b). Cliff Leeman (d).

An American I met during the holidays who had lived, worked played with and at odd times supported sundry Chicago jazzmen in the 1920s told me that many of his contemporaries believed that jazz, whatever the history books say, is essentially a European music.

As a novice critic, I still haven't worked up the gall required to contradict someone who has actually blown with such mammoth folk-heroes as Beiderbecke, Russell and Freeman—I still remember Condon's appraisal of Panassie ("We don't go over there and tell them how to jump on a grape, do we?")—but this man's view is typical of the reactionary independence of the Chicago men.

They have their own legends and their own credos apparently untarnished by the wholesale removal of Condon's court to New York many years ago. And Condon's Town Hall meeting shows that the music as played by the best of them—Russell Freeman etc, al.—has through its frank and joyous simplicity an easily understood warmth and penetration that quickly reaches its audience.

An example at the Town Hall was Vic Dickenson's wonderfully witty pastiche of sly growls and slurs embellishing his choruses of Basin Street Blues: the audience's polite if generous applause for previous numbers turned into a stamping, cheering tumult—a quite heartwarming and genuine tribute to a trombonist of whom we hear far too little. As Condon said at the end of the concert, the audience's reaction was appreciated because it was not exhibitionism.

Altogether the evening was an emotional experience for someone who has come to love these men through their recordings. For me the high spot was Russell's Mariooch—a blues he wrote for his wife. This shy, homely man with his kindly bloodhound face and long sensitive hands caressed and held each note as if it would break.

That phrase has been used before to describe Russell, but it is apt for this solo, full of humour and warmth, his inimitable mixture of spit and breath in the chalumeau and the queer, gawky mixtures of chimes and walls. Why he has been classified in the past as a funny-hat Dixielander one can only guess. Pee Wee is this age's greatest clarinetist and a unique poet.

The dapper tenor of Bud Freeman was like a voice out of the past—a Ben Webster in embryo. Like Webster and the Hawk. Freeman's phrasing is charged and punctuated with a vibrato that underscores an intense rhythm. As the evening wore on Freeman's style loosened up and on his last solo—for Royal Garden Blues—he seemed to be striding into swing; it was like watching a history of the tenor.

Together with Freeman the straightforward trumpet of Buck Clayton provided the basis of the riffs and the drive for the ensembles, Clayton's clear tone and immaculate phrasing never strayed far from the material—in vivid contrast to Russell's wryer solos, which skirted around the key for several bars before sliding on to it at the end of a long wail—but his take-outs, particularly on St. Louis Blues, were a soaring joy, a trademark of this sort of jazz.

Dick Cary provided some well-mannered, if hardly energetic piano and was entertaining on the mellophone, Cliff Leeman is an expensive, Krupa-style drummer without as much use of bass and tom-tom—making him sound fiat and pinched behind a group with so much honest swing. He provided one spot of humour with a loud bomb to encourage Bud Freeman into a new chorus. Jack Lesberg's suave manner was seen mainly in the background.

Condon spent a good deal of his time wandering around the stage keeping up a running commentary of quips, insults and exhortations, but when actually heard to play, his guitar appeared a useful melodic anchor and prod for the soloists.

James Rushing, Esquire, looking like an amiable midget blimp, wound his well-oiled voice around three tired standards, and a nostalgic blues medley, but without undue enthusiasm.

Comparisons with Armstrong are inevitable. From Condon the Town Hall had two well-rounded hours of good, sometimes top-notch, jazz, covering about 25 numbers. Armstrong's circus seasoned a mighty thin soup of antics and clowning with about three choruses of honest soloing.