Continued: Jazz in the Heartland

Back to School: Two guitarists are out with new teaching regimens which they say will serve those interested in all genres of jazz including traditional. Mark Elf has established an online, interactive conservatory which, says a press release, "offers students (an) affordable, practical approach to learning jazz guitar with video lessons, narrated tutorials, music PDF and MIDI-files, critiques by Elf and much more." You can get a detailed overview from Elf at www.markelfconservatory.com or from his publicist, the redoubtable Ann Braithwaite at ann@bkmusicpr.com. Meantime, Ken Hatfield has just released a book and CD, 24 Etudes for Solo Guitar in 24 Keys which, he says, "are designed to help all guitarists understand all 12 major and all 12 minor keys of the harmonic system that forms of the basis of all Western music. This is particularly important to jazz guitarists because not only do they need to be able to play standards and improvise in all 24 keys, but jazz traditionally utilizes the interrelationships among the 24 keys more than any other music", www.kenhatfield.com; jenbayjazz@earthlink.net

Several projects in Minnesota which I thought you might like to know about:

• The MarNan Collection of Illustrated song slides which date back over 100 years when song pluggers used them to, uh, you know. It's been the long-time project of Minneapolis resident Margaret Bergh (the very first Rag subscriber!) and her sister, Nancy Berg, who died several years ago. They purchased 25,00 slides from the collection of John W. Ripley of Topeka, Kans. in 1978 and added more from Duluth, Minn. resident Max ("Living a Ragtime Life") Morath in 1991. Many of the slides are being shown on the Minnesota Centennial Showboat at the University of Minnesota through the Fall. Further details: Margaret Bergh, (612) 825-1854 or publicist Georgia Gould-Lyle, GeorgiaGL or (763) 546-8715.
  
  
• The on-going collaboration of internationally renowned film collector and archivist Bob DeFlores and Normandale Community College, both of Bloomington, Minn., has yielded one program on big band jazz, Big Band Treasures which was shown on Minnesota Public TV May 4, www.tpt.org, with the promise of more to come. Important funding came from Minnesota's Dr. Mark Migliori and the college's foundation. The program also is being used in the classroom at Normandale. It includes DeFlores' clips of Armstrong, Basie, Calloway, Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Goodman, Helen Humes, Harry James, Kenton and more, www.normandale.edu. (For more on DeFlores, check Dick Parker's cover story in the July RAG.)
  
  
• Also from Dick Parker: The Challenge Jazz Band and Challenge Orchestra at Murray Junior High School, St. Paul, will perform at various concert venues in New York City in May. The eighth-grade ensembles will add their names to the list of student bands from other Minnesota schools that have performed in recent years at the Rose (Bowl) Parade, presidential inaugurations and a Super Bowl halftime show.

Of course, the Murray group will have to pay its own way. Vicci Johnson, the school's band director, estimates that the trip will cost a little more than $47,000. For starters, she has organized a mid-September (date TBA) sale of food items such as pizza, cookie dough, candy and cheesecake. Then, the Pig's Eye Jass Band will play a benefit concert Sept. 18. The Pig's Eye band was founded in 1961 at Sperry Univac by physicist Jim Torok and is one of the oldest continuously operating traditional-jazz bands in Minnesota. (Other venerable groups would be the Hall Brothers, who played continuously from 1959 to 1991, the Barbary Coast Dixieland Show Band, formed in 1967 as a banjo band and still very active, and Les Fields' Turkey River All-Stars, who have been gobbling since 1968).

Torok plays cornet, clarinet and soprano and bass sax; he's somewhat of a stickler for tradition in his band's jazz styles, and he's passionate about educating young musicians in the New Orleans roots of America's popular music. For several years he and clarinetist/banjoist Kerry Ashmore have been volunteer teachers of elective classes in jazz improvisation in Minneapolis high schools. Pig's Eye trombonist Joy Judge came from one of those classes. Torok also has given recent presentations on jazz history for Black History Month and adult-education programs. The Sept. 18 concert is billed as a taste of Louis Armstrong and King Oliver styles. No doubt others will be represented.

The band's repertoire includes Kid Ory, Sidney Bechet, early Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, etc., as well as blues artists Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith rendered by Torok's wife, Nancy Hite. Other band members are Ashmore, clarinet; Judge and Duey Cady, trombones; Bill Johnson, piano; Garry Peterson, banjo; Dick Parker, guitar; Jim Field, tuba, and Gordon Myers, drums. Tickets for the benefit concert are $10 at the door. It starts at 7 p.m. at the school auditorium, 2200 Buford Ave., three blocks west of the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus. FFI, call Vicci Johnson at 651-636-1087.

Here is the Fall concert series for the Madison, Wisc., Jazz Society: Sept. 21, Bob Kase's Dixieland Band; Oct. 26, Reuben Ristrom's Bourbon Street Boys; Nov. 23, 2nd Edition of Jazz Stars of the Future. All concerts are 2-5 p.m. at the Coliseum Bar, 232 E Olin Ave, Madison. FFI, www.madisonjazz.com or 608-850-5400.

A host of New Orleans musicians played a "Friends of New Orleans" benefit concert Sept. 1 at First Avenue club, Minneapolis, during the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities, just as they had the previous week at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. And several bands performing at the Artists Quarter during the RNC adopted political themes. Meanwhile, Minnesotan Bill Evans' New Orleans Jazz Band played for the national convention of Veterans for Peace (of which I am a member) in Bloomington, Minn. just before the RNC.

Minnesota vocalist-pianist Jeanne Arland Peterson and members of her musical family celebrated her 87th birthday at the AQ Aug. 22-23. I've known her since 1958 when she was in the house band at WCCO Radio, Minnesota's premier AM station, and I worked in the newsroom. She just keeps getting better! (I don't).

Media Matters: I absolutely insist you read the profile of legendary New York City jazz broadcaster Phil Schaap by David Remnick, www.NewYorker.com, May 19. Schaap's memory and penchant for detail are unmatched and his taste runs from Bix to Bird with hundreds if not thousands more, stylistically, in between and beyond.

The August issue of the newsletter of the Catfish (Iowa-Illinois) Jazz Society mourned the death of Rich Johnson (see obit, August RAG) and previewed the club's annual picnic Sept. 14, catfish jazz@yahoo.com.

I need your news by the fifth of the month preceding publication: Will Shapira, 5644 Morgan Av. S., Minneapolis MN 55419; wshapira@aol.com. No attachments. Thanks, later.

September 2008 issue | © 2008 The Mississippi Rag

P.O. Box 19068, Minneapolis, MN 55419.