[Dixielandjazz] THE POWER OF EDDIE CONDON

[Stan Brager]

Steve;

If I were in NYC, you'd be able to find me wherever Eddie and the Gang were
playing.

Stan
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Barbone" <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
To: "DJML" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 12:38 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] THE POWER OF EDDIE CONDON


> 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.
>
>
>
>
>