How To Get Through A Long Winter

February 24^th was one of those days this winter with which we Minnesotans became so familiar. It spent a few hours below zero, and the rest of the day not much warmer; mostly single digits above zero. The Aces were in the studio that night recording “Winter Weather” among other things. It’s a 1941 tune that’s been recorded by folks including Fats Waller, Peggy Lee and Jo Stafford. Fats has my favorite. The first line of the vocal starts, “I love the winter weather…” I remember laughing at the rest of the guys on account of the cognitive dissonance they were experiencing. None of them were loving the winter weather at the moment.

Listen to what Fats was talking about:

Winter Weather

It’s been a doozy of a winter so far. But that’s not a complaint. I’m a winter man. Of this there is no doubt. Snow and cold give me a thrill. I actually don’t remember a year in which I have once stated the common refrain, “I’m so ready for this winter to be over!” I don’t ski or skate, so it’s not about the athletics of the season. In fact, I abhor having anything beneath my feet that has blades or wheels. I’ll leave that to you adventurous types. No, there’s something about the solitude and introspection that gets me. It sparks my creativity. The amount of music I learn and arrangements I put to paper generally increases dramatically during late autumn and winter. Then, around this time of year, I get a little perverse and sadistic. You know those six-inch snowfalls that come after two weeks of spring weather has raised the hopes of the populace? I get downright gleeful. In the last couple of weeks I’ve been saying things like, “It’s too bad we couldn’t hold out for another ten days of below zero so we could break the all-time record.” I wanted that record. I’m probably lucky people have other things to do, or I might find myself the victim of a grisly murder brought on by my hibernal cheerfulness. “How do you like winter now?!” shouts the mob as they dump my pummeled earthly remains into a snowbank. 

So now you can see how for me “Winter Weather” is a theme song of sorts. Nine days later we were in the studio again to have Steve sing his vocal. I know it was a struggle for him to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. He cracked us up when he sang “I love the winter,” through his gritted teeth. But what are we talking about, really? It IS a song of love. But Fats loves the winter weather for ulterior motives. What with the cold temperatures he can pull his honey closer so they can both warm up! Mother Nature as wingman. 

He and his band recorded it the day after Christmas, 1941, in New York, along with a few other sides. He ostensibly urged America to apply themselves to the WWII scrap drives in “Cash For Your Trash.” But if you listen closely, and remember Fats’ history of naughtiness, you can’t be certain that “Cash For Your Trash” might not be a euphemism for the oldest profession. It is a debate that rages to this day. At any rate, in “Don’t Give Me That Jive,” he admonished the object of his missive to basically hush up and “come on with the come on.” And my favorite title of the day, “Your Socks Don’t Match, “ wherein Fats proves to be somewhat of a perfectionist in regards to his women. “Winter Weather” is easily the sweetest, warmest song of the session. Although I can’t resist the cleverness of “Your Socks Don’t Match.”

Fats was so very playful. He had enough twinkles in his eye for eleven men. Imagine him and his band gathering in the studio after Christmas to put down that great, just-a-little-bit-naughty music. That’s what I’m thinking of tonight when I reminisce back all those three weeks ago to when six Southside Aces assembled at a mere four degrees Fahrenheit to make sweet winter music. 

Get some more Fats in your diet:

Your Socks Don’t Match

Cash For Your Trash

Don’t Give Me That Jive

Janssen's Temptation

In terms of jazz content, the following story has to be the most oblique rambling I’ve submitted to you thus far. It would be like writing about the Oscar Meyer hotdog factory in your baseball blog. Your ears would have to stick out as far as Bix’s to find the jazz herein. That being said, this is a subject of too great importance to be ignored.

No wonder he heard things no one else could!

My wife and I were invited to attend a Scandinavian potluck the other night. Erik Jacobson, a.k.a. “Santaphone,” a.k.a. “The Swedish Mink,” co-hosted. After a few minutes on the W3—I think that’s what some of the kids call the World Wide Web—Claudia stumbled upon something called “Janssen’s Temptation.” The first word is pronounced “yahn-sens.” The second word is pronounced “temp-tay-shun.” The name alone should be enough to make a person want to stick a fork in it! I hadn’t been this intrigued by a Swedish dish since Ingrid Bergman. For some reason I pictured Jackie Mason when I wrote that last sentence. Who is this Janssen, and what happened to him when he succumbed to his Temptation? 

As it turned out, it’s basically a casserole made with potatoes, onions, cream and tinned anchovies. Not just any anchovies, but “Swedish anchovies,” which are apparently treated like a traditional pickled herring. When cooked in the casserole, they give the potatoes the salt they need, plus that unique pickled sweetness that I normally associate with herring. It really ended up quite delicious. Tempting, some might say. But before I could stick my fork in it, I had to rustle up the ingredients. 

When faced with a purchase involving any sort of Norse edibles, our house always first thinks of Ingebretsen’s. This is a shop right in the neighborhood over on 17^th and Lake. They’ve been serving Northern European food and gifts in this town since 1921, so they know a little bit about what they’re doing. When I had to buy a raffle prize for our feature on the Hall Brother’s Jazz Band last year, I went there. I figured with a Minnesotan band playing New Orleans jazz, what better than to procure a prize from one of the most distinctly Minnesotan stores we have? On that occasion, I found Cajun herring. Perfect! Herring for the Minnesota, Cajun for the New Orleans. The guy behind the counter said that day, “I don’t know why we even call it that. You’d think Cajun food would have some spice, right?” He may have been disparaging the nearly non-existent spice levels in the cuisine of cultures of the northern climes, but let me tell you something. If you want herring, you really should try overwhelming yourself with the choices at Ingebretsen’s.

Anyway, I made my way over there last Saturday. People were streaming in and out. Being the gentleman I don’t have to tell you I am, I ended up holding open the door for about fourteen people. I stood there long enough I was almost arrested for loitering. Finally, I entered into Scandinavian Heaven. It must have been heaven, because there were three young girls, teen angels, standing in a row wearing full white robes. Each held before them silver trays filled with ginger snaps, all the while singing Scandinavian carols. I knew I was still on Earth, however, because if it was heaven I don’t think a man would have to take a number to buy some tinned fish. I found that my forty-six years of Minnesota living had given me enough social preparation to be able to handle the Scandiheavenly Host without any fear, so I waded through the throng in back, where stands the meat counter, grabbed up number 84 and began my vigil.

While waiting, I overheard this exchange. A customer, a lady of seven decades or thereabouts was speaking to a similarly aged man working behind the meat counter. He was dressed in a blue sweater with a yellow shirt beneath, the colors of the Swedish flag.

Imagine a blonde man’s head poking out from the top of this:

The woman said, “I don’t know if I can trust you.” Another guy behind the counter laughed and pointed at Blue Sweater, “He’s actually Norwegian. Can’t you tell?” The woman didn’t laugh, so I’m really not sure she was joking when she said, “I don’t want to talk to a Swede.” 

I decided to mind my own business. I resumed staring at about twenty-eight different kinds of canned fish, many without English language labels. An apron-clad Ingebretsen’s man was next to me neatening the shelves in the cooler. “Say,” I inquired, “Where do you keep your Swedish anchovies?” This made it sound as if I were knowledgeable on the subject. “Do you mean anchovy-flavored herring?” he asked. It only took him that one question to destroy the flimsy camouflage I had constructed around my ignorance. “Well,” I stammered, “it’s for some sort of potato dish.” I pointed at my list of ingredients as if it were the list’s fault. Like flashcards, a series of expressions passed across his countenance. First, there was a kind of disdain for my idiocy. Next, the look of resignation upon remembering that it’s his job to cope with the Scanda-challenged. Finally, he softened somewhat into pity. Pity for a man attempting to function in the world without a complete knowledge of canned fish from the Baltic Sea. He looked me in the eye. “Are you making Janssen’s Temptation?” “Yes!” I answered, in surprise and excitement. Before the sibilance of my “Yes!” finished traveling through the air, his arm swung in an arc with his index finger leading the way, and landed without hesitation on a specific pile of cans. This unhesitating action made superfluous any further speaking on his part. The whitening of the distal joint of his index finger as he pressed his fingertip down on the cans indicated our conversation had finished. I thanked him with what I thought was a proper amount of humility.

When my number was called, I took my two cans up to the counter. I set them down, and another Ingebretsen’s man looked at them and stated in the manner of a jovial, confident Swedish detective, “Somebody’s making Janssen’s Temptation!”  

I’m determined to contrive future Eagles Club raffles in order that they consist of goods from that wonderful shop. I never did look up Janssen to find out how he’s doing. And I wonder. Is he only tempted around Christmastime? That casserole is Balluff’s Temptation now. Don’t tell Ingebretsen’s that a German/Polish man said that!

The Potted Palm Job?

A bleary-eyed but smiling man in a black suit, white shirt and yellow tie with matching socks, could be seen strolling into the Dakota earlier this morning. He was certain he appeared bleary because he didn’t want to hold more than one eye open at a time. Whiskey is a good agent for warming the bones after spending time playing a clarinet outside on an unnaturally frigid May wedding night, but it’s not a good beauty tip for your morning-after eyes. True story. And I’m the hero.

The Southside Aces played at the Dakota on this Brunchtide, a Mother’s Day shindig:

—By the way, check out what I got to put in my pie-hole:

Family Style First Course
deviled eggs, apple+manchego scones, house baked mini muffins & breads, pickled green beans, fried green tomato, apricot jam

Sweet Creamed Grits –blueberry doughnut toast, roasted cippolini onion, glazed yam, crème fraîche, blueberry jelly

Banana Cream Tart
toasted meringue, peach butter, strawberry+tarragon salad—

(Are you kidding me?!)

Ahem. Back to my story. The aforementioned “strolling” of the man in the black suit was an affectation to cover up what was more of a shamble. I was smiling out of that sense of security that comes with having made it to your destination. Once I was able to sit down peacefully in the green room backstage, I worked on forming connecting thoughts, so important when you’re playing jazz! After a half hour of that, however, I found out I’d only written down four songs on a piece of paper. At that rate, had I persisted, I wouldn’t have finished the set lists until it was time to leave. “I could go for some deep, untroubled sleep right about now,” I said out loud. 

But the other men began to arrive, and I perked up. Matt Peterson came in with his string bass in place of Erik and his brass bass. The rest of the band was made up of the usual suspects—The French Tickler, Psycho Stevie, Mr. Class, The Moral Compass and myself. Zack, Steve, Robert and Dave all seemed equable, despite the somewhat distressing hour of 10:00 a.m. Matt, on the other hand, actually went beyond that into a sort of eagerness. I didn’t trust it. Who was this man so hale and hardy of a Sunday morning? I would have to keep that one eye I had open on him. 

Dakota soundman Craig Eichhorn had instructed me of my brunchly duties. “You’re background, but not really background. A little bit more than background. But it’s not a performance either.” We understood each other. I think he wanted to make sure I wasn’t shooting off pyrotechnics and waving flags in attention-grabbing semaphore. The Moms just want to eat their brunch and maybe hear a couple of good tunes! 

Just for a second or twelve, if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a little sidetrack right now. I like to call background/ambience type work the “Potted Palm,” as in, “Yeah, tonight I’m on a Potted Palm job.” You know, where your music makes things a little nicer without a person necessarily being able to pin down why. The other end of the spectrum would be a showcase or feature concert. I like to call those shows “The Big Shoe,” a loose reference to the funny pronunciation Ed Sullivan sometimes had when he introduced his “really big show.” For instance, I might say, “I can’t wait for the Big Shoe tonight.” Of course, when I’ve used this phrase, generally the only person I don’t confuse is myself. Maybe it’s because I have big feet, so people think I’m literally talking about a shoe. Or maybe these days Ed Sullivan is too far beyond the ken. I don’t care; I’m sticking to it! But what about this morning?  A show that falls between the two designations? I don’t yet have one for that. Maybe I could say I’m “Chopping Parsley.” You know, it’s definitely a flavor you’ll use in a dish, but it’s never the main flavor. Hey! Climb off! It was my first attempt!

At any rate, we did some fine work. The boys kept it subdued for most of the first set. This was good for everyone’s health, as it both served to slowly introduce the idea of a jazz band to the nervous systems of the diners, and to prevent we men in the jazz band from pulling a jazz muscle right out of the gate. We did, however, heat it up several times throughout the day with numbers like “Diga Diga Doo” and “Tootie Ma Is A Big Fine Thing.” You say you don’t really remember those songs being in the Mother’s Day cannon, but I want to point out how it actually says the word “Ma” in the latter tune. My favorite moments, though, were the sweet ones. A Louis Armstrong-inspired “Red Sails In The Sunset.” Evan Christopher’s achingly beautiful composition for a dearly departed friend, “Waltz For All Souls.” But perhaps my absolute favorite was “All Through The Day.” It registers high on the Sweet-O-Meter, with Oscar Hammerstein’s story all about thinking and dreaming of your loved one the livelong day until you can get home to that kiss. We didn’t give it the Frank Sinatra treatment—just instrumental. But Jerome Kern’s melody tells that same story all by itself. I especially love when it comes out of the bridge, changing keys for just three bars, restating the main phrase in the new key. It’s as if your heart needed more room to hold all that love and yearning, and only by changing keys would you be able to keep it all together! Oh boy, I’m a sucker for the sweets!

I think I’ll leave off with that. I want you to hear Frank’s version of the tune. He really does it some justice, I think. And next time you’re around this bleary-eyed, smiling man, go ahead and inquire about hearing a jazz band play it. Happy Mother’s Day!

P.S. I'm also welcoming suggestions for what to call it when it's not background, but it's not performance. I may not be going with "Chopping Parsley"...

"All Through The Day"

A Big Fine Thing

“Quietly we waited for the playback. When it came, pounding out through the big speaker, we listened stiffly for a moment. We had never been an audience for ourselves. Then Joe’s piano chorus started and smiles began to sprout. MacParland, Tesch, Bud, Lannigan—as each heard himself he relaxed. At the finish we were all laughing and pounding each other on the back…When we walked out of the studio that day and headed for the Three Deuces we weren’t even close to the sidewalk: everybody wanted to buy the first drink. ‘Wait until the records come out and people hear them,’ we kept telling each other. We were convinced that if the public were given a chance to hear our music it would like it and understand what we were trying to do. We were young, very young.”

This is from Eddie Condon’s book We Called It Music. Condon told this story about recording with Okeh Records early in his career. Even at the green age of twenty-two he was one of the oldest in a band that included the then 18-year-old Gene Krupa on drums. The McKenzie-Condon Chicagoans recorded four sides in December of 1927: “China Boy,” “Sugar,” “Nobody’s Sweetheart,” and “Liza.” This was the first time for these guys to hear themselves on record and, per usual, Condon delivers a perfect description of the musician’s common condition. 

Today I’m experiencing some of that levitation Eddie talked about. On Thursday night the Southside Aces had the extreme pleasure of releasing our third recording, entitled A Big Fine Thing. It’s been nearly five years since the last time we created some musical posterity, and eighteen months since we started hammering away on this project. I had no idea how heavy a long anticipation could be on the metaphysical shoulders. A five-year gestation could drive anyone a little kooky. But when I held the real thing in my hands, and began listening, all of that went away. I smiled until I hurt my face. “I swear,” I told Erik Jacobson later, “the finished CD sounds even better!” He vigorously nodded in agreement, practically shouting, “I know!” You’d think it was the first time either of us had been on a record, the way we giggled like schoolgirls. Well, pretty manly-sounding schoolgirls, but we did giggle. It is technically impossible for our duplicated disks to sound better than the master disk to which we’d been listening for several months, but the music on a master is still somewhat theoretical in terms of its existence. A Big Fine Thing is now a tangible record, available to the whole world. That IS better.

We unleashed the disks at the Eagles Aerie #34 in South Minneapolis. How is it that I can at once feel so at home at the Eagles while still being caught up in the excitement of visiting a strange new land? The Aces have been performing there several months in a row now, but when I leave my house in Phillips to drive the five minutes to that squat little building I feel an adventurous tingle. Refer to my previous treatise on the Eagles for a fleshed out picture. My wife, Claudia, and I arrived early to set up. She was done up for the affair, what Cab Calloway might call “togged to the bricks,” including silver Devil Doll bangs sitting atop a short black and yellow dress that was within shouting distance of high black boots. She stepped out of the ballroom to get a drink at the bar. She returned with tales of drink-buying offers from several of the gentlemen attached to their stools. “I still got it with the middle-aged barflies!” she reported. Erik ate his $7 steak dinner special while Duke Ellington small band recordings warmed up the assemblage, which was, well, beginning to assemble. Ahh, the Eagles. Finally all six Aces sat on the stage, ready to go. I took a deep breath, and at 8:15 counted off the first tune of the night, incidentally the first tune of the album, Lil Hardin Armstrong’s “Perdido Street Blues.”

Three tunes later and I already knew it was going to be a great night. This may sound like I'm a Boasting Barney, but as Don Meredith once said, “If you can do it, it ain’t braging.” The band was “in the pocket,” as we like to say when things are swinging loose but with swagger, with the fire in the belly. The swinging was easy and powerful, as if the Eagles was the batter’s box, the Aces were Harmon Killebrew, and the jazz was the Louisville Slugger on his shoulder. And the crowd made me giddy. Jazzhounds, dancehounds, boozehounds, and blood relatives. We had them all, in various combinations. I commented several times, “Imagine this many people coming to see a jazz band in the year 2011!”

Over two hundred people nested in the Aerie that night. One of my favorite musical moments was when Rick Rexroth reprised his debut recording from A Big Fine Thing, joining the band to sing “His Eye Is On The Sparrow.” It afforded me the opportunity to tell the crowd my original tip to Rick on how to sing it. Rick has pipes, let me tell you, but he occupies himself as a history teacher, husband and brand new father, not as a singer. So he asked me how we wanted it done. Knowing he was more of a singer than I am, and a smart soul to boot, I gave him these vague instructions, “Somewhere between a New Orleans front porch and the St. Olaf Choir.” He stepped into the studio a week later and dropped all of our jaws. Your GPS couldn’t have found the center between those two points better than Rick! 

A mob like that, and a night of swinging such as the one the Aces provided for that mob, will tend to imbue a man with overwhelming optimism about the future of the music. Some may pronounce my optimism unrealistic. But just like Condon, perhaps my naivete comes from being so young…ahem...I am twice the age he was in 1927, but I still share that sense of idealism about an art I love so much. Condon’s records did end up selling pretty well, but as his eye-rolling about his own youth suggests, the world didn’t exactly figure out the McKenzie Condon Chicagoans. Here it is almost eighty-four years later, however, and I think I understand perfectly what they were trying to do. 

Listen to tunes from A Big Fine Thing here

Showmanship, or Would You Shut-up And Play Another Song

I’ve promised you shenanigans, so this counts as my first foray into the goofing side of my music world. I spent part of this meltingly beautiful day as a Button with Patty and the Buttons down at the Aster Café. After many of you shed tears of freedom upon being temporarily released from winter’s harsh incarceration, you wiped your eyes dry and made your way down to meet us. Thank you!

Keith Boyles has been doing most of the fastening of the lowest Button on these Sundays by playing his string bass. On account of how he almost always orders the sausage sampler breakfast, we’ve taken to calling him “Meat Plate.” He told me once that he wouldn’t mind if it got around. I hope he remembers telling me that. The sun, especially bright on the bandstand, caused Keith to don shades. He told us, “I’m wearing my sunglasses today, so I guess that makes me ‘Mystery Meat Plate.’” 

                                                 

A person should know that Patty and the Buttons are definitely not above hokum, and even hilarity. We do draw some lines, but none of us draw very well, so the lines aren’t that straight. Today we pulled off premeditated high hokum with an accomplice even. We’d arranged beforehand with Chris, today’s Aster baristo, to wait all the way until we’d finished the song “Dinah” to shout the question, “What’s the name of that song?” We promptly launched into a super quick reprise with all of us singing the famous repeated line, “The name of that song is Di-nah! The name of that song is Di-nah!” and so on. Several people laughed despite their better judgment regarding encouraging us. After the tumultuous response quieted some, Button Mark Kreitzer went off-script, “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Branson, Missouri!” Patrick added, “You’re steamed peas will be out shortly!” After a few more songs the second set ended with Patrick telling the crowd, “We’re going to take a break from this hot sun up here. It’s like an Easy Bake Oven for jazz players. So if you like blueberry muffins...” He wasn’t sure where to go with that one so he let it die a merciful death. 

So what does all of that have to do with jazz? Well, technically nothing. We don’t have to provide antics or great nicknames in order to play good music. I’m sure some people might prefer that we never embark on the train to Zany Town. But I have a firm belief in a healthy mixture of humor and musicianship. Louis Armstrong throughout the last half of his career was often dismissed as a musician because of his “mugging and clowning.” But he replied to such criticism, “showmanship does not mean you’re not serious.” And he had this to say about his own seriousness, “When I pick up the horn that’s all. The world’s behind me, and I don’t concentrate on nothin’ but IT.” Here is a good example of this man perfectly combining both the showmanship and the serious. Listen and watch these two minutes of live playing from the Colgate Comedy Hour:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcyup878Li4

Now, I’m not trying to get all high and mighty, what with an apparent comparison to Louis Armstrong. We’re just Patty and the Buttons having fun at a brunch. But I take that Louis approach to heart. When it comes to playing the music, you’re going to get your money’s worth out of us. We just have to stop laughing long enough start a song. 

Speaking of which, there was the incident in the third set. We’re in the middle of playing the song “Swing 41” when Patrick signals Meat Plate to take a solo by simply looking at him and calling out, “Bass!” After a great bass solo Patrick called out to me, “Fours!” To the uninitiated, this means that soloists play through a song taking four measures each, trading back and forth. I thought he had shouted, “Chorus!” so I started at the top with the melody until I realized my mistake and righted the ship. When we finished I said to Patrick, “I’m sorry. When you said ‘Fours!’ I thought you said ‘Chorus!’” Meat Plate chimed in, “That’s all right. When he said ‘Bass!’ I thought he said ‘Asshole!’” Sometimes the band is laughing at things we can’t repeat to the crowd. But don’t worry. We NEVER forget that you’re out there. The next tune will come soon, and a lot of times we’ll even let you in on the joke.