[Dixielandjazz] Unabashed Commercial

[Steve barbone]

If you are in the Philadelphia - Wilmington area, Friday Night, May 5, come
join Barbone Street and the College Kids at a Speakeasy Themed Swing Dance.
University of Delaware, Kent Dining Hall, 9 PM to Midnight, $10.

Newspaper Hype below:

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

An old pro finds appreciative new crowd

The Wilmington News Journal - By KENT STEINRIEDE - 04/30/2006

For Steve Barbone, it's deja vu -- or maybe deja blew. More than half a
century after he played his first swing dance in New York, the clarinet
player is playing many of the same tunes that got the bobby soxers hopping
in the 1940s.

On Friday the Barbone Street Jazz Band will play a swing dance at University
of Delaware, sponsored by the college's swing dance club.

Barbone, 72, grew up in New York and started playing the clarinet in the
city's jazz and dance scene in the late 1940s. He played jazz with
Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Pee Wee Erwin and several
dance bands in halls throughout the region, including the Savoy Ballroom.

"That was the mecca of swing dancing until it was torn down in 1958,"
Barbone says.

As jazz became more "modern" it also became less danceable, Barbone says.
"When they took away the dancing, interest dropped drastically."

The gigs vanished too. In 1962 Barbone laid down his clarinet and got
"serious," working as a lawyer/executive in the auto parts industry until
1995, when he retired. On his wife's urging, Barbone picked up the clarinet
again and got back in the jazz scene.

"I sat in everywhere," he says.

In 1990, he formed his own band with a handful of players mostly from his
generation. At about the same time, swing dancing became popular among young
people in California. The swing revival came east in the mid-1990s, which
meant more work for Barbone and his band the Barbone Street Jazz Band, which
features Glenn Dodson, former principal trombonist for the Philadelphia
Orchestra; guitarist Sonny Troy, who backed Peggy Lee after playing with
Louis Prima; trumpeter Paul Grant, who is well-known on the swing and casino
circuits; Wilmington drummer Joe Mongillo; and bassist Ace Tesone, who
played with Lester Young, Max Roach Ben Webster and Clifford Brown.


Tesone plays on Clifford Brown's last recording, at a Philadelphia jam
session , available on the album, "The Beginning and the End" (Columbia).

Swing dances and the other 150-plus gigs each year give Barbone and his men
a chance to return to their human juke box days. The band knows about 1,500
songs, Barbone says. "The kids are keeping us young."

Depending on the theme of the swing dance the music varies. For classic
swing they'll pull out Louis Jordan, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson and
Chick Webb. Saturday's dance has a speakeasy theme, so the band will be
doing more traditional jazz from the 1920s and 1930s, including tunes such
as "Sweet Georgia Brown," "Fidgety Feet," and "Ain't She Sweet."

Barbone, whose band plays 5 or 6 swing dances at Universities in the
Philadelphia - Wilmington area each year, says he is encouraged that the
young dancers know and appreciate the great music he grew up with. But he's
not really surprised. Kids will like any music, he says, "as long as the
tunes have a beat and the band swings"

The Barbone Street Jazz Band plays the University of Delaware Swing Club
Dance, Friday 9 p.m.-midnight, Kent Dining Hall, between the South Central
Green and the Perkins Student Center, University of Delaware, Newark. $10.
1920s attire encouraged, but not required. 302-738-7172.

The band also will play the Brandywine Hundred Library on May 21; Wilmington
Riverfront at lunchtime on June 14; Tubman-Garrett Park on July 4; and
Sydney's Jazz Club in Rehoboth Beach on Aug. 4 and 5.

A complete schedule is available at http://www.barbonestreet.com.