Now That’s What I Call Jazz!

“When musicians play together, each goes his own way but they meet from time to time.”

– An ancient Cambodian saying

My friend Cavale hated jazz. She told me that repeatedly on our way downtown to catch this jazz show, part of the San Francisco Jazz Festival. The annual festival was unlike any other city event. It ran numerous concerts – big band, swing, be bop, blues, West Coast jazz, etc. – in several different venues throughout the city, spread out in the course of eight months. You had to travel far and wide to get to the next show, but then again you had all the time in the world.

“Did I tell you that I hate jazz?” my friend ribbed me, as we were taking a cab to the venue. Like a broken record, she was.

You see, when it came to jazz, all she thought of were folks like Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, The Andrew Sisters, etc. – her grandfather’s music from the 1940s, the cornball stuff they would play at dances to keep people’s minds off of the war. But Cavale decided to come with me to this show, for the same reason I decided to go: although we have never heard of the band before, we liked its name – The Splatter Trio.

The venue – a conference room near the top of some ritzy hotel – was packed. There were probably 100 hotel chairs on the floor and all were taken. The audience consisted of upper-class couples, dressed to the hilt, drinking white wine and waiting to get their feet a-tappin’, and Cavale and me, a couple of broke bohemians trying to eke out a living in this city.

The Splatter Trio walked onto one side of the room (there was no stage, just a carpeted floor), picked up their instruments, and began performing …

Holy shit! The music equated itself with the traffic from the street below, and each musician played his own specific role in this wonderfully mind-blowing trip. Saxophonist Dave Barrett was the Rahsaan Roland Kirk impersonator, blowing two or three horns at once, even shoving a flute inside the bell of one horn. Guitarist Myles Boisen was the surgeon from Thomas Eakins’ painting “The Gross Clinic,” gutting his double-neck instrument until it squirmed, squealed and screamed for mercy. Drummer Gino Robair was a modern-day Great Wizard of the North, keeping time with random objects he drew out of a bottomless cardboard box next to him; among the objects – a dog’s squeaky toy.

Only guest pianist Myra Melford played the professional, running through jazz and blues chord progressions, struggling to keep the music from completely going off the rails.

By the end of the hour-long show, the crowd dwindled down to seven people. All of us rubberneckers who stayed were glued to our chairs, witnessing this chaos with our eyes, mouths and ears wide open. Cavale was nearly speechless, only muttering over and over, “This is incredible. Oh my god, this is incredible.” Like a broken record, she was.

I myself was hypnotized, wondering where this bumpy ride was going to lead me. Every so often, I was snapped back to reality by the herds of people slamming the exit doors. What, are you kidding me? You guys don’t know what you are missing! I mean, the man is playing a squeaky toy, fer Christ’s sake!

Now that’s what I call jazz! At least the way it should be – a dangerous, breathtaking knife-throwing act in which part of the thrill was that sick thought that someone might get killed.

After that show, I followed plenty of jazz bands throughout San Francisco, seeing what new creations were coming out of their laboratories. This was back in the late 1990s, and my search led me to:

- Mingus Amungus at the top of Coit Tower. The 12-piece ensemble of musicians, singers and dancers blended the music of Charles Mingus and hip-hop into one big bouncing beach ball.

- The nerdy supergroup James T. Kirk at the Up and Down Club. The band, consisting of three guitarists and one drummer, morphed the songs of James Brown (the “James”), Thelonious Monk (the “T”), and Rahsaan Roland Kirk (the “Kirk”). Unfortunately, in order not to get sued by “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, the band later renamed itself to the less-memorable T.J. Kirk.

- The Broun Fellinis at a house party near Pacific Heights. The three members pounded their music in that small living room so ferociously, they looked like they were going to burn the place down after the party.

Those bands and many other jazz groups were unforgettable, but for me, nothing beat The Splatter Trio. It was true to its name. As one of its members called the music: half-Pollock, half-Peckinpah. Damn right.

The members of The Splatter Trio decided to call it quits in 1997 after playing together for nine years. I guess they were sick of watching people leave during the middle of their set. For their final performance, the trio played to a packed house at the quaint Hotel Utah. This time no one walked out. The audience stuck around until the last note was played, and not only gave the band a standing ovation, but screamed out, “Encore!”

The Splatter Trio’s Myspace page: www.myspace.com/splattertrio

Copyright © 2010 Mark Nishimura

All rights reserved

Jesse Winchester

“But I left Tennessee in a hurry, dear/In same way that I’m leaving you/Because love is mainly just memories/And everyone’s got him a few”

– Jesse Winchester, “The Brand New Tennessee Waltz”

“You can hear a pin drop.”

I bet you heard that phrase before. Usually it refers to a quiet room. But let’s say it doesn’t refer to a room but something larger, like a park. And not just any park, but Golden Gate Park. Now that would be something!

Sitting in the middle of Golden Gate Park during the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival one gloomy October afternoon, several hundred folk-music lovers, myself included, were waiting for a songwriters circle to take hold. I’ve always enjoyed a good old-fashioned songwriters circle, also known as a round robin or a guitar pull. The format, which was probably originated in someone’s living room or back porch, is simple: a handful of songwriters pass a lone guitar around, each presenting his or her homegrown creations. For me, it’s the best way to really hear a tune.

The lineup to this particular round robin was impressive, and we were all prepared to hear the fine craftsmanship of Guy Clark, the political rant of Steve Earle and the country stomp of David Olney. But it was the fourth participant, Jesse Winchester, who really got to us.

The crowd was romping, stomping and singing along throughout the first three performers’ sets, having a good ol’ time. But when the spotlight was on Winchester, not a single audience member made a noise. Even the birds in the trees shut their traps. All of us sat there and listened quietly, intently, to this one songwriter, with his delicate guitar picking and his fragile voice, playing songs about lost memories and crushed dreams.

I swear, you can hear a pin drop in that park.

And if you didn’t have a lump in your throat, you probably had your mouth wide open in wonderment.

And all the while I was thinking, who is this guy and why haven’t I heard of him before? Much later I found out the answer.

Winchester was an all-American boy, fresh out of high school, growing up in Mississippi during the mid-1960s. He was spending his summer days playing guitar in several rock bands, until one day, he received his draft notice. Not willing to fight and die in Vietnam, he did what any normal human being would do: he skipped town and crossed the Canadian border.

Alone in Quebec, he began writing heartbreaking ballads about his childhood in the South, which caught the ear of Robbie Robertson. Robertson produced the young man’s debut album, and Winchester began promoting his music throughout Canada. Yet he couldn’t tour his own homeland without the risk of doing jail-time. He had to wait until 1977 – the year President Carter pardoned all draft resisters – when he could step foot in the United States again. He finally moved back for good in 2002 and a year later he appeared on that stage in Golden Gate Park where I first saw him.

Late this summer Winchester will make the rounds promoting his latest set of songs. I’m going to catch him at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica this September. I cannot wait to hear his voice, his guitar, and the sound of that pin dropping.

Jesse Winchester makes Neko Case cry during in a songwriters circle on Sundance Channel’s music program, “Spectacle: Elvis Costello With…”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uKGWpqnS8E

Copyright © 2010 Mark Nishimura

All rights reserved

Blow Sonny Boy, Blow

“…In the golden afternoon, when we sat and listened to Sonny Boy blow, blow his harp…”

– Van Morrison, “Take Me Back”

I’m not even good at playing the harmonica. I picked up the mouth harp when I was a teenager, after watching Bob Dylan play it on TV. While strumming the chords to “The Times They Are A-Changin’”, Dylan worked his way through the harp with the help of a neck rack. Come to think of it, I don’t think he’s that good either.

So I started playing the instrument when I was 15, played it on and off for about 14 years. By the time I hit 30, I was able to make a decent sound. It wasn’t until recently I could bend the notes.

I bring this up because just the other day a friend asked me about harmonica playing. Being musically challenged, he felt that the instrument looked fairly easy and wanted me to recommend a brand for him. I told him to pick up a Hohner chromatic. The beauty of that harmonica is that it could be played in any key. Stevie Wonder plays a chromatic, and Toots Thielemans used it to record the theme song to “Sesame Street.” Yes that’s right, the goddam “Sesame Street” theme! (I bet the melody is stuck in your head right now.)

“Is that what you use?” my friend asked. “A chromatic?”

Me? No. I play a diatonic, which is in one key.

“Suppose you had to play a song in a different key. What would you do?”

Well, I would buy another one, in the right key.

“Then you would have all these harmonicas in different keys?”

Yes, that’s right.

“Well why the hell wouldn’t you just buy a chromatic?”

Because even though I like Stevie and Toots, I didn’t want to play like them. No, I wanted to play like Sonny Boy Williamson, the greatest harp player that ever lived.

Rice Miller was best known as Sonny Boy Williamson II (yes, Virginia, there was a Sonny Boy Williamson I), but he also went as Willie Williamson, Willie Miller, Little Boy Blue, The Goat, and Footsie. He was this tall lanky fellow, a skeleton in a nice suit and a black derby, looking like an owner of a funeral parlor. He wore a scar that ran between his bird-like eyes and had several front teeth knocked out.

He sang in a slurred Southern drawl, the words practically slithered their way out of his mouth. But the harmonica was his true vocal chords. He knew every little crack in that harp; he bent notes up to the breaking point, squeezed out every squeak, muffled the sound with his enormous hands, poked the reeds to make the notes curl, and even puffed on it like a cigar. In fact, smoke practically rose out of it.

From the early 1930s to the mid-1960s, Sonny Boy performed in every type of venues all around the world, from juke joints along the Delta to festivals throughout Europe. He even became a star on the long-running radio show “King Biscuit Time.” His songs have been borrowed by every one under the sun, from Muddy Waters and Mose Allison, to Led Zeppelin and The Who, to Aerosmith and The New York Dolls.

Robbie Robertson once talked about how he and the other members of the rockabilly group The Hawks stopped by a Mississippi bar to see their harp hero. The band stayed up and jammed with him all night long. Sonny Boy would spit into a coffee can beside him between solo breaks; Robertson thought the bluesman was spitting snuff, but he later realized the can was filled with blood.

Sonny Boy Williamson would be dead a few months later, abandoning thousands of great blues harp players, and an average one like myself, who are still trying to figure out his tricks.

Just Sonny Boy Williamson and his harp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELLV-qzSgIo

Copyright © 2010 Mark Nishimura

All rights reserved