The Hazel Scott Show
The MacArthur Foundation names the Philadelphia alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins a 2026 Fellow, an $800,000 award paid in quarterly installments over five years, and the Village Vanguard has his quartet in the room through October 4. Today's record is Cameron Brown's "Remembrance," out September 25 on Sunnyside, which closes with a 21:56 medley named for a form Brown learned in Don Cherry's band.
LioraEight hundred thousand dollars, no strings, landed on a Philadelphia saxophonist yesterday, and tonight he is at the Vanguard. Today's record remembers Don Cherry. Later, a television show and a list. It's Wednesday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Wednesday, September 30th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: The MacArthur Foundation named Immanuel Wilkins a 2026 Fellow yesterday
LioraYesterday the MacArthur Foundation named Immanuel Wilkins a 2026 Fellow. Its own page lists him as saxophonist and composer, twenty nine at the time of the award.
The citation: blending traditional jazz motifs with modern textures in works that reflect on the ongoing reverberations of historical events.
On "Blues Blood," from 2024, the Foundation says the title comes from a quote by one of six young men falsely accused of murder in 1964, and that at several performances of that record a chef cooked a meal on stage while the band played.
The money: eight hundred thousand dollars, paid in quarterly installments over five years. DownBeat reports he is one of twenty fellows this year, and the youngest.
He came up at Philadelphia's Clef Club of Jazz and Performing Arts.
LioraThe Village Vanguard's own page has his quartet in the room from September 29th to October 4th. Micah Thomas, piano. Ryoma Takenaga, bass. Kweku Sumbry, drums.
His own words, from the video he made for the Foundation: I want to create moments for encounter, and I want those encounters to be beautiful.
Two. Listen to This: Cameron Brown's "Remembrance," out September 25 on Sunnyside Records as SSC1800
LioraToday's record is five days old. "Remembrance," by the bassist Cameron Brown, out September 25th on Sunnyside.
Lisa Parrott and Jason Rigby on saxophones, Russ Johnson on trumpet, Tony Jefferson on drums. The label names the two legends he is remembering: Don Cherry and Dannie Richmond. He calls the band Dannie's Calypso.
Here is the tip. Go to the last track and let it run. Twenty one minutes, fifty six seconds, titled "Cocktail Suite." The label also says the band Cherry brought Brown into had perfected his cocktail suite concept. So the longest thing on a new record is a form that band had perfected.
On the release desk: Blue Note's Coltrane centennial record from Branford Marsalis and Dianne Reeves, "Dedicated to You," out September 18th.
LioraLater, on The Bridge: 1950. Hazel Scott has her own television show and a listing in a book called Red Channels, and against her husband's advice, she asks to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Sekou has the story.
Three. The Bridge: 1950. Hazel Scott has her own television show and a listing in a book called Red
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Sekou tells it, I ask the questions. Sekou, where are we?
SekouAt a hearing of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Friday, September 22nd, 1950. The witness is here because she asked to be.
She is Hazel Scott, pianist and singer. Her concert contracts bar segregated audiences. Her husband is Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., which is why the committee lets her testify. As the House's own historians quote the chairman, Representative John S. Wood of Georgia: "We are making an exception in your case in view of the fact you are the wife of one of our colleagues."
Powell told her not to come. Their son, then a small boy, remembered the argument at dinner. His father "thought she was absolutely out of her mind to go before the committee." Her answer, as the son recalled it: "I want to go and clear my name and who are you to say that I shouldn't do something which is right?"
LioraClear her name of what?
SekouOf a listing in a book. Red Channels, published in June, named 151 people in show business. Her entry reads, "Hazel Scott, Pianist, Singer."
It does not call her a Communist. It lists nine organizations, and her part in each. Every date we can read falls between 1941 and 1946. Four of the nine cite this committee's own files, its Appendix Nine.
By then she had her own television show, local in New York since February. The month after the book came out, it went to the DuMont network, three nights a week. It's often called the first network show hosted by a Black woman. According to two modern accounts, her band on the show was Charles Mingus and Max Roach.
LioraSo what does she tell them?
SekouUnder oath, she says she has never been a member of the Communist Party. She confirms that years earlier she supported Benjamin J. Davis, Harlem's Communist candidate for city council. She answers the listings one by one. John Cogley, in a 1956 report on blacklisting, quotes her: "A fourth advertised that I was a guest of honor at a dinner I never went to or even heard of."
SekouBy the account of the House's own historians, Representative Burr Harrison of Virginia doesn't ask whether she was the guest of honor at a 1943 dinner. He asks whether a report of this committee lists her as the guest of honor.
Her answer: "If any committee, an official committee, lists me as having two heads, does that make me have two heads?"
LioraTwo heads. What does the committee say to that?
SekouBy Cogley's account, it says it is only extending her a courtesy, and is not interested in Appendix Nine. Its own files.
Five days after she testified, Variety reported her dropped, in an item that also dealt with Red Channels. "Only new casualty among the performer ranks this week was Hazel Scott, who was dropped by DuMont following the expiration of her contract."
In 1952 the ACLU told the FCC that DuMont canceled her show "probably because of alleged pro-Communist affiliations." DuMont answered that her sponsor had not renewed and its salesmen could not sell the show. Historians since have read it as blacklisting.
She had left for a concert tour of Europe in June 1951, PBS says. By one account, not one episode of her show survives.
LioraShe wouldn't play to a segregated audience, and she wouldn't let a list speak for her. Same nerve, both times.
That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Snug Harbor in New Orleans has Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra at 7:30
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is on Frenchmen Street.
Snug Harbor in New Orleans presents Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra, half past seven and half past nine, fifty two dollars sixty either set. At five, a Happy Hour Concert with two pianists, Sam Kuslan and Lawrence Sieberth.
Now the sweep.
In New York, Birdland runs four bookings on two floors. Half past five, David Ostwald's Louis Armstrong Eternity Band. Seven and half past nine, The Hot Sardines, and the seven is off sale. Half past eight, Frank Vignola's Guitar Night with Pasquale Grasso, and the club's guest tonight is Hirofumi Asaba. Thirty five dollars up, plus a twenty dollar food or drink minimum per person, per set.
In Chicago, the Jazz Showcase page gives eight and ten for the Sabertooth Organ Quartet. Twenty five dollars.
LioraAlso in New York, the Atom String Quartet plays Dizzy's Club at seven and nine, fifty five dollars for the cover, plus a twenty five dollar minimum per person, per set.
In Minneapolis, the Dakota has Vieux Farka Toure at seven, billed a West African guitar master.
Four rooms we read have nothing on tonight.
Five. One More Note: September 30, 1929: Fats Waller took nine men and the Four Wanderers into Liederkranz
LioraSeptember 30th, 1929. Ninety seven years ago today, Fats Waller took nine men and a vocal quartet into Liederkranz Hall in New York.
Two sides came out of it, the two faces of Victor V-38086. "Lookin' good but feelin' bad," and "I need someone like you."
Among the band: Henry Allen, Jack Teagarden, Eddie Condon, Gene Krupa, Waller at the piano, and the Four Wanderers singing. That roster came off a reissue booklet, not a company ledger, and the archive says so.
The library plays both sides for nothing.
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Wednesday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.