[Dixielandjazz] THE POWER OF EDDIE CONDON

[Steve Barbone]

Here is a 1989 NY TIMES jazz review that illustrates the hold Eddie Condon
still had on New York City and his media friends there.

The mention of Brunies reminded me again of seeing him before he left Condon
to go to Chicago. He was a character as well as a giant of a player.

I don't think he ever learned to read music.

On the advice of a numerologist he changed his name from George Brunies to
Georg Brunis thinking it would increase his good luck.

He would often enter loft cutting contests with other trombone players and
beat them all while playing the slide with his foot.

He would often lie on the floor and invite the largest person in the
audience to sit on his chest while he played his trombone without an
lessening of volume and technique.

He played with very high volume.

That's when jazz was visceral and not yet "art". Where have all the
entertainers gone? :-) VBG.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone



Condon Gang Upholds A Tradition

NY TIMES - By JOHN S. WILSON - March 3, 1989

The jazz club Eddie Condon's has been torn down twice since the jazz
guitarist opened his original room on West Third Street in 1945. But its
spirit, if not its structure, seems invincible.

There has been no Eddie Condon's in Manhattan since the third club bearing
that name - the one on West 54th Street - was lost to the wrecker's ball
almost four years ago. But the Eddie Condon Gang - musicians who played at
Condon's - has been reassembled by the trumpeter Ed Polcer and the bassist
Red Balaban, who owned and played in the last Condon club, to play Tuesdays
and Wednesdays at Alfredo's, a restaurant in the Citicorp Center, Lexington
Avenue at 53d Street.

The personnel of the Condon Gang change from night to night, but Mr. Polcer
and Mr. Balaban are always on hand to maintain the Condon flavor. On Tuesday
evening, when the group included Tom Artin on trombone, Sam Margolis on
clarinet, Red Richards, piano, and Gian-Paolo Biagi, drums, the Condon
tradition was upheld in various ways.

''Blue Again,'' a tune that the cornetist Wild Bill Davison frequently
played at Condon's, became a feature for Mr. Polcer, who kept it fresh by
dancing lightly around the melody instead of attempting to emulate the
personal style of Mr. Davison, who punched it out with energetic ferocity.

Mr. Artin's trombone playing was a reminder of the great individualists of
Condon's past who defied or exaggerated convention, musicians like Pee Wee
Russell, who drew remarkably musical rasps and squawks from his clarinet, or
George Brunis, who played his trombone with his foot. Mr. Artin used his
hands, but he produced growls, groans and ominously slippery descents into
nether regions that added distinctive flavor to his solos.

Old tunes - ''It's the Talk of the Town,'' an essentially woeful song played
with jubilation, ''Dinah'' and ''After You've Gone'' - were also part of the
Condon tradition, and this edition of the Condon Gang is keeping them ever
green. Alfredo's is a lighter and airier room than any of the Condon clubs,
and the music is still Condonesque.