The Bandleader Who Walked Away
BRIC JazzFest opens two nights in Brooklyn tonight, and night one puts Arturo O'Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra on a tribute to Randy Weston, born in the borough on April 6, 1926, a hundred years back and a few blocks from the room. Then Mali Obomsawin's "Automatic" out today with six sampled voices in its credits, five rooms from Seattle to New York, Art Blakey's long roll of Jazz Messengers, and the night Artie Shaw walked off the top-drawing bandstand in the country.
LioraTonight Brooklyn marks a hundred years since Randy Weston's birth, blocks from where he grew up. Today's record carries six sampled voices in its credits. Later, five rooms, and a bandleader who walks off his own bandstand in 1939. It's Friday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Friday, October 16th. 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: BRIC JazzFest opens two nights in Brooklyn tonight
LioraTonight in Brooklyn, BRIC JazzFest opens. Two nights, October sixteenth and seventeenth, at BRIC House. Twelfth year, BRIC's release says, three rooms running at once.
The centerpiece of night one is Arturo O'Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, playing a tribute to Randy Weston.
Belongo, the nonprofit O'Farrill founded, dates that set seven o'clock, at 647 Fulton Street.
Then its page says why tonight. Born in Brooklyn on April sixth, 1926, Weston spent seven decades proving that jazz's roots run through Africa. His music was considered dangerous enough to ban in apartheid South Africa. America's African Musical Ambassador, the page calls him. And the invitation reads: one hundred years after Weston's birth, join us blocks from where he grew up.
LioraO'Farrill brings an African Rhythms Alumni Ensemble. BRIC names the four: TK Blue, Frank Lacy, Chief Baba Neil Clark, Alex Blake.
Bilal, Marcus Gilmore, Takuya Kuroda, Sparklmami and Laura Anglade are also on night one.
BRIC prints no ticket price. It prints this instead: a curatorial vision of bringing Radical Joy to life.
Two. Listen to This: Mali Obomsawin's "Automatic" is out today on Out Of Your Head Records
LioraToday's record is Mali Obomsawin's "Automatic," out today on Out Of Your Head Records, catalog number OOYH 051.
The label calls her a multi-instrumentalist, singer and composer of the Abenaki Nation, Odanak.
Eight tracks. She plays upright bass, electric bass and sings, with Adam O'Farrill on trumpet, Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet, Andrew Broder on turntables, Allison Burik on bass clarinet, Magdalena Abrego on guitar.
Now the part to listen for. The page credits six sampled voices, and two of them carry her own name: Marian Obomsawin and William Simon Obomsawin.
Here is the tip. Play "Kojua II." Eight minutes and twenty three seconds, the longest thing on the record. Listen under the band.
LioraOne more. IN+OUT Records has a Randy Weston box, five LPs and three CDs, limited to five hundred copies, with three unreleased live albums inside, recorded in 1985 and 1988.
Now 1939. Artie Shaw leads the top-drawing band in the country, and then he walks off its bandstand. Tonight on The Bridge: what he did with the band next. Silas has the story.
Three. The Bridge: In 1939 Artie Shaw led the top-drawing band in the country
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Silas tells it, I ask the questions. Silas, where are we?
SilasNew York City. The Cafe Rouge, in the Hotel Pennsylvania. Mid-November, 1939. On the stand, Artie Shaw and his clarinet. That week Variety calls his band the top "band of the nation in drawing power." Terry Teachout later wrote that "by 1939 he was one of the most famous men in America." In late September, Michael Mok of the New York Post asked Shaw about jitterbugs, the swing dance crowd. Shaw called them "morons." His biographer Tom Nolan writes that the word "provoked outrage" and irked his radio sponsor.
LioraHe called his own fans morons?
SilasIn print. About seven weeks later, he walks off the stand. In a memoir thirteen years later, Shaw wrote that "any little thing would have been sufficient." Then came a "slight unpleasantness with some idiot on the floor in front of the band." In his words: "I suddenly decided I'd had it. Instead of kicking him in the teeth, I walked off the bandstand." That's his word, long after. Variety, at the time, said only that he walked out "sans announcement." Even the exact night is disputed. Then it gets strange. Word goes out that he's ill. His lawyer and managers try to talk him around. The band keeps playing at the hotel without him. Its radio broadcasts are pulled, with one line: "program scheduled for this time will not be heard."
LioraSo why did he really go?
SilasThere are three answers. One is the man on the dance floor, on Shaw's own word. Two: Variety reported that for months he had "been in an acute state of mental depression." He "pleaded" with his manager, Tommy Rockwell, to let him out of his contract. Rockwell had "only recently offered him a personal guarantee of $100,000 a year, if he would stay in business." Three: in an ad for his magazine article, the Saturday Evening Post quoted him: "Politics, corruption and a system of patronage aren't the only things a musician has to fight." He tells Rockwell he wants to go away and "meditate." And Variety reported he'd arranged to swap "his pretentious limousine for a low-priced roadster to take him to Mexico."
LioraAnd the band? Just left there?
SilasHe gives it away. Variety says Shaw made them "a present of the band's library, worth about $13,000." On November 20th the players vote Tony Pastor their leader. A week later, Pastor is off to start his own band, and tenor man Georgie Auld leads the rest as a cooperative. By mid-January 1940, they've dropped the Artie Shaw name.
LioraAnd Shaw?
SilasHe drives to Mexico, to Acapulco. His biographer Tom Nolan writes that one day on the beach Shaw saw "a teenaged girl being knocked down and pulled out to sea by a wave." Other accounts call her a woman. Shaw rescues the young swimmer, and badly hurts his knee doing it. By late January 1940 he's back in California, leg in a cast, making a deal for a film based on his life. And Rockwell, the man he pleaded with to let him go, is organizing a new band for him. In February he marries Lana Turner. By 1941, Time reports, "jitterbugs by the thousand" are paying to hear him. By our count, he was gone about two months.
LioraHe called them morons, walked away from a hundred thousand a year, and they still paid to hear him. This time, quitting didn't take. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Jazz Alley in Seattle has the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio with Karl Denson at seven thirty
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in Seattle.
Jazz Alley has the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio with special guest Karl Denson. Two sets, seven thirty and nine thirty. Forty seven dollars, and the club says that figure includes a twelve fifty handling fee.
Now the sweep.
In New Orleans, Preservation Hall has the Preservation All-Stars featuring Andrew Baham. Four sets, five, six fifteen, seven thirty, eight forty five. All four sold out.
In Nashville, Rudy's Jazz Room runs three. The Blair Jazz Trio at five thirty, fourteen dollars in advance. The Naama Quartet at eight, twenty three in advance. The Geoff Pfeifer Quartet at eleven, ten at the door.
In Oakland, Yoshi's has Musiq Soulchild, seven thirty and nine thirty. The early show runs eighty four to a hundred forty five dollars. The late one is sold out.
LioraIn New York, the Village Vanguard bills a Ravi Coltrane Centennial Celebration. Tonight it is Coltrane, Johnathan Finlayson, Gadi Lehavi, Scott Colley, Anwar Marshall. The club prints no set time.
Five. One More Note: Art Blakey died on this date in 1990, and the National Endowment for the Arts page on him
LioraArt Blakey died on this date in 1990. The National Endowment for the Arts, which made him a Jazz Master in 1988, keeps the page.
Self-taught, it says. Leading his own dance band by age fourteen.
Then it lists the Jazz Messengers who came through: Donald Byrd, Curtis Fuller, Johnny Griffin, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett, Woody Shaw, Joanne Brackeen, Bobby Watson, James Williams, and three of the Marsalis brothers.
It calls his drumming take-no-prisoners. Then it says he always played for the band.
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 Friday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.