[Dixielandjazz] One last Woody post

[Bob Loomis]

    By sheer serendipity, Steven Winn, San
Francisco Chronicle arts and culture critic, had
this article in the Dec. 25 Chron. A good friend
pointed it out, and noted that it addresses a
number of topics discussed on this list
previously in a very aware manner. Despite, or
better, because of the prior debate here, I
thought it a worthwhile read. Herewith:

Bob Loomis
Concord CA


By Steven Winn
San Francisco Chronicle Arts and Culture Critic
   He launched his singular show business career
over a half century ago by writing comic material
for Sid Caesar and "The Ed Sullivan Show." He's
made scores of films, written books and plays,
been adored and scorned by the press, embraced
and ignored by audiences, weathered scandal and
persevered. For a great long stretch of the Woody
Allen story, a few things have remained constant.
One is the public's steady fascination with him,
as both an artist and elusive personality. The
other is the clarinet, which he has famously
played on regular Monday night gigs in New York
with an ensemble of musicians devoted to classic
New Orleans jazz.
   Over the weekend, those two threads came
together in the Bay Area. On Friday, Allen and
his New Orleans Jazz Band played the 142
Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley. On Saturday,
the venue was the Napa Valley Opera House.
Tickets for both shows went for $150, testimony
to the drawing power of a 71-year-old amateur
clarinetist who happens to be a major film star
and director.
   Seeing and hearing Allen play music live is a
curious experience, a kind of living exhibit of
Allen's multilayered nature. Seated downstage
between banjo player and bandleader Eddy Davis
and trumpeter Simon Wettenhall in Napa, Allen was
fully absorbed in the rhythms, melodies,
improvisations and musical interplay of the
buoyant New Orleans sound of the early 20th
century. A devotee of such woodwind legends as
George Lewis and Sidney Bechet, Allen spun out
sinewy riffs, vaulting arpeggios and huffy tongue
staccatos with evident pleasure.
   It wasn't all technically expert, especially
in the lower register, but Allen's playing had an
ingratiating, raw-boned drive and eagerness. He
tossed melodies and variations back and forth
with his comrades. His left foot vigorously
thumped the stage. A confided remark to
Wettenhall midway though a song got the trumpeter
laughing broadly. One number charged headlong
into the next over the applause, with Allen often
in the lead, as if he couldn't wait to get on
with making more music.
   But when it comes to forging any kind of live
connection to the listeners on the other side of
the footlights, Allen is all business to the
point of almost perverse self-enclosure. In 90
minutes, he rarely lifted his gaze from the floor
in front of him. He played with his eyes shut for
most of the time, showed only the most fleeting
whisper of a smile from time to time and declined
to sing or even lip-sync along with the song
lyrics as the other players in the band did.
   "There's nothing between you and the pure
feeling of playing," Allen once said of his
music. "There's no cerebral part to it." If he is
finding some emotional bliss state when he plays,
it does appear to take some near spartan,
self-effacing effort of will to do so. When Allen
didn't have the clarinet in his mouth, he kept it
propped straight up on his right knee and stared
at his feet. He might have been an overgrown
schoolboy, getting dressed down by the junior
high bandleader. He wore brown corduroys, a white
shirt and a pullover sweater. Two songs in, he
shed the sweater and rolled up his sleeves to the
elbows.
   "This is something that we like to do," Allen
said, in one of several brief remarks to the
audience. "When an audience turns out to hear us,
we're thrilled." He ended modestly: "We'll give
it our best shot for the next little while."
   Allen has said in interviews -- and his band
members back him up -- that he wants to keep his
own celebrity as far away as possible from his
music. It's also his celebrity, of course, that
allows the band to tour once a year and charge
$150 for a ticket. A 1997 documentary film, "Wild
Man Blues," tracked the band on a '96 European
tour. Now when it comes to any publicity for his
music, the band speaks for him.
   "Woody got to hear the classic players of the
1940s when he was growing up," said drummer John
Gill in the Napa Valley Opera House green room
before the show. "He knows how this music is
supposed to sound."
   Davis, who has known Allen since his comedy
writing days in the '60s, was asked what skills
and gifts Allen possessed as a musician. "All
that he needs," he said, then went on to clarify
that his friend "doesn't play like Benny Goodman
or Artie Shaw. That's not what we're after."
   With strains of ragtime, blues, bebop,
spirituals and marches, the music that Allen and
his band favor is all of those things and none of
them exactly. It's a transparently quilted sound
of balanced phrases, borrowed tunes and flowing
but clearly structured invention that emerged in
the Louisiana Delta late in the 19th century and
then, like all popular music, quickly began to
evolve and change. "It's social music for friends
and occasions," offered Gill. "This was music for
store openings and birthday parties, for funerals
and a parade to advertise something. This isn't
specifically nightlife music. It's music for
life." Allen mentioned brothels in his onstage
remarks.
   Some of the selections on Saturday night were
familiar. The band took off on Duke Ellington's
playfully raunchy "The Georgia Grind" and worked
some fluid, stately variations on "Down by the
Riverside." They turned sweetly nostalgic on "Did
I Remember?" -- the Harold Adamson and Walter
Donaldson ballad recorded by Billie Holiday in
1936. A workmanlike "Abba Dabba Honeymoon" was
one of the encores.
   For much of the way, Saturday's concert was a
cheerful if somewhat redundant foray into a
musical past that most listeners only dimly
apprehend. The bright musical textures tended to
run together. Hearing a few song titles and a
little historical context might have enhanced the
audience's enjoyment.
   But for Allen, a live audience seems at once a
necessary and somewhat superfluous part of the
equation. Even his farewell comments revealed the
wistful ambivalence. "I can't promise we'll meet
again," he said, after the band had played the
"We'll Meet Again" tune. "I do hope we do. It's
been great." And then, a little after 9:30, Allen
and the band waved goodbye.
   E-mail Steven Winn at swinn at sfchronicle.com. 

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