Throughout modern history, jazz clubs have been notorious for their intolerable conditions: Whether it’s because of waiters hustling customers for drink orders or drunken patrons screaming out requests for “Feelings,” most performers would rather submit to 25 hours of oral surgery than do a week of club dates.
But there are exceptions to that rule, and a prominent local one has long been F. Scott’s Restaurant and Jazz Bar in Green Hills. The atmosphere nicely blends comfortable decor and excellent acoustics, with the musicians close to the audience yet far enough away to enable patrons freedom of movement without disturbing the players. Plus, there’s no cover charge, which gives the venue an atmosphere of ease and informality—customers feel free to pay attention to the music or to their companions.
Obviously, it’s hard to capture the feel of live performance on record, even when it’s a concert recording. But a new release on Landlocked Records, The Music of F. Scott’s Restaurant and Jazz Bar, does offer listeners who’ve never been to F. Scott’s a chance to hear some of the venue’s featured artists. The compilation CD include contributions from vocalists Connye Florance and April Barrows, tenor saxophonist Dana Robbins, the intriguing Afro-Latin combo Trio San Rafael, the Gene Haffner Trio, Bruce Dudley, John Michael Zov, and the groups MonkTrane and Bob Sabellico & Groove Station.
Half the tunes are culled from previously released discs, while Trio San Rafael’s “Spain in My Heart” and Sheldon Bermont’s “Rainin’ Blues” are among the five newly released cuts. Dennis Cronin, a co-owner of Landlocked with Mike Purcell and a trumpeter in the group Lambchop, produced the compilation. The disc is currently available at several local outlets and offers a good sampling of music, though nothing beats hearing these people in person.
—Ron Wynn
Woodstock or bust
Most bands play their first road dates at chicken-wire dives, backwater beer halls, or frat houses. Ex-Spoonful frontman Will Hoge and his band are playing theirs for an intimate audience of more than 200,000 ticketholders. This weekend, Hoge and bandmates Dan Baird, Tres Sasser, and Kirk Yoquelet are piling into a passenger van and traveling to Rome, N.Y., where they’ll play at the three-day Woodstock ’99 festival. The event celebrates the 30th anniversary of the original Woodstock concert.
The group is playing the festival’s “Emerging Artists Stage,” sponsored by online music service AMP3.Com, whose Web site will carry live coverage over the Net. They’ll be in good company: Other acts on the bill include Ben Lee, the Supersuckers, the Gigolo Aunts, 2 Skinnee J’s—and one fellow Nashvillian, femme-qui-rocks Moe Loughran. The main stages, meanwhile, will be filled with performers ranging from Elvis Costello, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, and Al Green to Limp Bizkit, Korn, Everlast, and DMX.
“Even the small stage is bigger than what we’re used to,” says bassist Sasser, formerly of the Vegas Cocks. But the stage isn’t the only thing that’s bigger—the cover charge for Woodstock ’99 is a mere $150. If you’ve got the cash, the time, and a sleeping bag, the show starts Friday.
—Jim Ridley
Banjos and jazzbos
There’s not much audience crossover between jazz and bluegrass—a reflection of polarized cultural times and tastes. That’s a shame, because at their best, these two sounds have more in common than not: Both emphasize dazzling musical skills, and both require supreme ensemble work and equally dynamic individual talents.
The link is especially apparent in the work of banjoist Bela Fleck—something that holds true on his latest Warner Bros. release, The Bluegrass Sessions—Tales From the Acoustic Planet Vol. 2. While this is obviously a bluegrass record from the standpoint of production values and content, it could just as easily fit into the jazz universe in terms of playing approach and musical dexterity.
The assembled cast includes violinist Vassar Clements, another genre-shattering giant, as well as multi-instrumentalist Sam Bush and fellow string masters Jerry Douglas, John Hartford, Tony Rice, Tim O’Brien, and bassist Mark Schatz. As with such past classics as Clements’ Hillbilly Jazz, Fleck’s new record obliterates the stylistic constraints that so often keep music lovers apart rather than unite them.
—Ron Wynn
We're a winner
Down Beat magazine has been conducting critics’ polls for 47 years, and a good portion of the participants appear to have been taking part every year since its inception—judging from some of the choices that pop up year after year. But at least these critics do recognize some contemporary artists: Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and Lucinda Williams are among the winners in the current poll, the results of which are featured in the magazine’s August edition.
The Flecktones won as electric jazz group in the Talent Deserving Wider Recognition category, while Victor Wooten was a repeat winner in the same category for electric bass. Williams tied with Lauryn Hill in the Beyond Album category (whatever that means), finishing ahead of Bob Dylan.
It will be interesting to see how the jazz hardcore reacts to the presence of “pop” artists at the top of the poll, especially ones with no real link to the improvising tradition regularly covered in Down Beat. This cadre screamed bloody murder when Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa were elected to the Down Beat Hall of Fame, and they were in outright mutiny last year when Bill Frisell’s Nashville won Album of the Year honors.
—Ron Wynn
Tune in tonight
WFSK-881.FM recently expanded its programming schedule and is now airing 24 hours a day. Area listeners can tune in any time to hear the station’s mix of classic and contemporary gospel, modern and vintage jazz, blues, international sounds, and spirited public affairs/commentary programs.
The latest entry to the WFSK public-affairs lineup is “Street Soldiers,” cohosted by Dr. Joe Marshall and Margaret Norris. A blend of commentary, interviews, and phone-in questions from listeners, the show airs Sundays from 8-11 p.m. and spotlights problems affecting young people while offering advice and suggestions to parents. WFSK also recently aired a two-hour-plus live mayoral forum featuring candidates Richard Frank, Richard Fulton, Bill Purcell, and Jay West.
With its recent power upgrade and schedule additions, WFSK’s profile in the Nashville radio lineup should improve considerably.
—Ron Wynn
Setting the record straight
When legendary swing band leader Cab Calloway fired trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie from his orchestra in the ’30s for allegedly firing spitballs, most observers felt Gillespie’s antics cost him a chance at immortality. Instead, Gillespie eventually helped create bebop, a style that forever changed jazz and American music. An additional irony was that Gillespie didn’t actually throw anything; some of the other band members were lobbing paper airplanes, one of which hit Calloway.
The story of this incident has been told in a 21-minute film by Jean Bach. “The Spitball Story” includes remembrances from bassist Milt Hinton, trumpeter Jonah Jones, and Gillespie, and offers a glimpse at the egos, conflicts, and personalities that comprised Calloway’s orchestra. The film is part of a video package that also includes an expanded version of A Great Day in Harlem, Bach’s Oscar-nominated documentary about the assemblage of 30 jazz immortals for an Esquire magazine photo shoot in 1958.
The films are available on DVD as well as videocassette from BWE Video.
—Ron Wynn
Elliptical dispatches: When we mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Billy Block’s Western Beat Roots Revival is now broadcasting Monday nights at 8 on Lebanon’s WANT-98.9FM, some folks worried that Christi Ray’s “Buried Treasure” show had been bumped off the air. Ray’s show is just fine, thank you, in its new time slot Mondays from 6 to 8 p.m., just before the Roots Revival. Since 1995, “Buried Treasure” has been airing music and interviews with an impressive lineup of country and Americana artists, from Paul Burch and Mandy Barnett to Johnny Paycheck and Connie Smith; this week’s guest is Kate Campbell, playing tunes off her new Rosaryville CD. Dig “Buried Treasure” Monday evenings at 6....
After a publishing hiatus of, we dunno, a decade, the amazing Detroit-based ’zine Motorbooty returns snarkier than ever with “The Graphic Violence Issue,” packed with vicious comic-book takes on subjects as diverse as Insane Clown Posse and Ira Louvin. (The Louvin piece draws material from MTSU professor Charles Wolfe’s book In Close Harmony.) The baseball cards for wack white rappers are great, but the piece most calculated to offend (other than the pitiful drawing of Emmylou Harris) is a list of “The 100 Worst Albums of the 20th Century”—starting with the Beach Boys’ sacred Pet Sounds! Yikes! Pick up a copy at Tower Books, in the ’zine section right next to the new Shock Cinema...
