Viewpoints
We certainly enjoyed seeing your new online Mississippi Rag. We used to be subscribers and were very sorry to see it [the print RAG] disappear. We're pretty sure your new endeavour will be a success. We are hoping strongly for an equally successful cancer battle.
We feel that we will be able to contribute to your success by using the convenience of buying your advertisers' CDs online. Very convenient, considering how hard it is to find good OKOM [Our Kind of Music].
Good luck all around. Please put us on your mailing list.
Thanks.
Gardena, Calif.
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I'd like to belatedly join the readers/subscribers congratulating you on the RAG's beautiful new form. I've saved all my print copies over the years and now, thanks to CD-ROMS and DVDs, I'm saving the digital RAGs, because you've never stinted on giving all the space necessary for expert writers to cover items of jazz and ragtime history in great detail. Your work over the years adds up to an encyclopedia.
A letter in the February "Rag Bag" prompts me to chime in with a second-hand Sinatra memory. My uncle, the late Eric Damkoehler, was an apparently strait-laced Chicago businessman (great deadpan) who raised five kids, among them two gifted musicians. His younger sons loved practical jokes. Once the boys happened to encounter Ernie Banks, and one of them said, "How about an autograph, Mr. Banks?"
As the Cubs superstar reached for his pen, Dave Damkoehler whipped out a piece of paper, signed it and handed it to a stunned Banks. Eric thought this was hilarious and remembered it some time later when he happened to be outside a nightclub as Frank Sinatra was leaving. The 60-something Eric approached Sinatra and asked him, "How about an autograph, Mr. Sinatra?"
The Chairman of the Board smiled and started to reach for his pen, and Eric whipped out a sheet of paper, signed it and tried to hand it to him. Sinatra's bodyguards grabbed him by both arms and roughly hustled him away.
Roseville, Minn.
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Jazz is alive and well on the West Coast -- on the shores of the Pacific Ocean -- as well as here in the Coachella Valley, Palm Springs, Calif., and its environs. Within earshot of my condo, Palm Desert, Sunday afternoon, Feb. 25, I heard the combo led by one of the dwindling, legendary drummers of the big band era, Frank Capp, of Juggernaut fame, at a private party at the Bermuda Dunes Country Club. Capp, who resides at Bermuda Dunes, the country club once the home of Fred Waring and Conte Condoli, featured Scott Whitfield, trombone/vocals, who is bi-coastal. Whitfield not only leads a fine band here on the West Coast but he has another on the East Coast, started when living in NYC, and where Whitfield performed in many Broadway shows.
Capp chose one of L.A.'s finest bassists to round out the rhythm section, Chuck Berghofer, a member of Pete Jolly's trio for 40 years until Pete's death in 2004. Studio recording artist Llew Matthews, who has performed on over 400 movie soundtracks, was on keyboard/piano. In 1987 Mathews became musical director and pianist for song stylist Nancy Wilson, a position he still holds. I never tire of Nancy's recording of "I Thought About You," although it has been many years since "I took a trip on a train." Perhaps the Sante Fe? Boarded at my home town, Topeka, Kansas?
Great mainstream jazz emanates every Sunday afternoon from LaQuinta, where veteran drummer Allen Goodman leads his Desert Cities Jazz Band at Vicki's of Sante Fe. Goodman's plethora of musical credits includes his backup for such entertainers as Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Vicki Carr, Bobby Troupe, Johnny Mathis, Peggy Lee, Red Norvo, Al Hirt, and Margaret Whiting. Moving to the Coachella Valley in 2005 to semi-retire, Goodman formed his band with some of his musician friends, including Harpo's multi-talented son, Bill Marx, pianist/composer, along with bassist Bill Saitta, handling the rhythm section. Don Shelton plays saxophone and clarinet, with actor/producer Hal Linden occasionally stopping by to sit in on clarinet. Kent McGarity, who played and recorded with Woody Herman as well as with the Artie Shaw Orchestra under Dick Johnson, is Goodman's trombonist.
Had I not been attending the Bermuda Dunes event the same weekend as the Capp affair, I would have traveled westward a couple of hours for the annual San Diego Jazz Party. My sources tells me that the Dick Hyman/John Sheridan piano duet renditions were a highlight of the party. It would have been bittersweet for me though --- even with the likes of Joe Newman, Jake Hanna, Dick Hyman, and Warren Vache performing -- not to see or hear, a la Bill Basie -- just "one more time" -- other alumni of the Gibson Colorado Jazz Parties whom I heard so often from 1967 to 1991 at Vail, Colorado Springs, or Denver. They were the incomparable Harry "Sweets" Edison, Bobby Haggart, Peanuts Hucko, Cutty Cutshall, Lou McGarity, Clancy Hayes, Billy Butterfield, Morey Feld, Jay McShann, Flip Phillips, Kenny Davern, Gus Johnson, Jr., Vic Dickenson, Trummy Young, Doc Cheatham, and Milt "Judge" Hinton -- always with his incredible wife, Mona, with whom Maddie Gibson still keeps in touch from her home in Denver. I'm sure I've forgotten a legend or two. Dick Gibson would be the first to correct me. He never missed a beat!
Palm Desert, Calif.
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Posted on the RAG's Bulletin Board
RAG Mystery Photo #1 from Randy's Scrapbook:
Left to right, Lebert, Guy, Carmen, Victor Lombardo.
Here's another photo with the Lombardo Brothers:
http://www.nfo.net/usa/4lombard.jpg
Golden Valley, Minn.
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Georgia, of course, is correct.
Sadly, the Lombardo Museum in London, Ontario is scheduled for closing, due to the lack of visitors in recent years - 2 or 3 per day is the average, according to newspaper reports. There are some very rare memorabilia to be seen there, but I guess fans are thinning out.
Kingston, Ont., Canada
March 2008 issue | © 2008 The Mississippi Rag
P.O. Box 19068, Minneapolis, MN 55419.