[Dixielandjazz] FW:Jazz history in Queens, New York

[Stan Brager]

Thanks for sharing this article, Bill. There should be, and, perhaps, there
are other articles featuring other cities which will highlight the history
of the jazz people who have helped and continue to put jazz on the map.
Next, step is to provide these articles and the music created by a city's
jazz musicians to the schools. Make it a kind of continuing education
program covering many grades. Maybe, just, maybe a couple of kids may catch
the jazz bug.

Stan
Stan Brager
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Haesler" <bhaesler at bigpond.net.au>
To: "dixieland jazz mail list" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 1:45 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] FW:Jazz history in Queens, New York


> Dear friends,
> This one of interest from my mate Denis King, moderator of the Australian
> Dance Bands list.
> Kind regards,
> Bill.
>
> *******************************************************
> Jazz's History Is Living in Queens
>
> by Nat Hentoff
> Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2007
>
> No book on jazz history that I've seen includes the deeply rooted,
> living history of this music in the borough of Queens in New York
> City. Years ago, I interviewed Lester Young ("president of the tenor
> saxophone") in his home there; and I've visited the Louis Armstrong
> Home (a National Landmark, administered by Queens College) and the
> Armstrong Archives at Queens College. But until recently, I had no
> idea of the scores of jazz makers who have lived in Queens, and
> those who have died there.
>
> The list is longer than this article, but among them: Count Basie;
> Bix Beiderbecke; Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong (close
> neighbors and friends); Ella Fitzgerald; John Coltrane; Woody
> Herman; Jimmy Rushing; Julian "Cannonball" Adderley; "Fats" Waller;
> James P. Johnson; Jimmy Heath; and Tony Spargo (he was a member of
> the white New Orleans Original Jazz Band that, in 1917, made the
> first jazz recording).
>
> The fount of this research finally aligning Queens with New Orleans,
> Chicago, Manhattan and other storied centers of jazz is the Flushing
> Council on Culture and the Arts in Flushing Town Hall. Its regular
> tours of "The Queens Jazz Trail" include a large illustrated map of
> the icons and their addresses over the years. The lively map is the
> creation of Marc Miller, who has written a 22-page guide that is
> further animated by tour conductor Toby Knight (a singer with the
> Chords, a doo-wop band).
>
> Mr. Miller tells of John Coltrane tutoring children and teenagers in
> his St. Albans, Queens, neighborhood who showed musical promise. And
> he tells of a pivotal 1930s evening in jazz history when Benny
> Goodman first jammed with pianist Teddy Wilson at a party in the
> Forest Hills, Queens, home of Red Norvo and Mildred Bailey. The
> Goodman trio was birthed that night -- one of the first, and the
> most historic, racially integrated groups to play in public. (There
> had been integrated after-hours jamming for years before.)
>
> Mr. Miller has found that the first jazz community in Queens was
> formed by Clarence Williams -- a successful record producer, music
> publisher and entrepreneur who in 1923 bought a home in Jamaica
> where "he planned to create a community of black musicians.... At a
> time when there were few hotels for African-Americans, many out-of-
> town musicians stayed with the Williams family; among them
> Willie 'the Lion' Smith, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Louis Armstrong
> probably got his first exposure to Queens visiting Williams."
>
> The word got around of how welcoming Queens was becoming -- and
> remained -- for black musicians. Armstrong wrote, not long before
> his death, about how much he treasured the home his wife, Lucille,
> had bought for him in Corona in 1943: "Just think -- through the 29
> years that we've lived in this house we have seen just about three
> generations come up on this particular block.... Lots of them have
> grown up, married, had children, and they still come back and visit
> Aunt Lucille and Uncle Louis." And many of them went to the Louis
> Armstrong Elementary School and the Louis Armstrong Intermediate
> School in Queens.
>
> Another Queens resident at the time, trumpet player Clark Terry,
> told me that Armstrong would occasionally invite Terry and other
> musicians to his home "to tell us the history of jazz."
>
> The greatly respected bassist Milt Hinton ("the Judge," his fellow
> musicians called him) spoke for many in that community of black jazz
> creators about the effect being together in Queens had on their
> lives. "When I look back on it now, I realize what that house really
> meant to us. For the first time, Mona and I had something that was
> ours. It was our security and some new roots."
>
> The roots continue to be fruitful. At the Flushing Council on
> Culture and the Arts -- the curator of the past, and the generator
> of the future, of Queens jazz -- producer Clyde Bullard has, for the
> past eight years, produced concerts with, among other jazz
> performers, Barry Harris, Marian McPartland, Dr. Billy Taylor and
> Randy Weston.
>
> His father, C.B. Bullard -- for 27 years head of the jazz department
> at Atlantic Records -- founded the jazz program at the Flushing
> Council, along with Jo-Ann Jones and Cobi Narita. Recently, Clyde
> Bullard applied for a National Endowment for the Arts grant to allow
> the creation of an 18-member resident Town Hall Jazz Orchestra to be
> directed by Jimmy Heath, known to his peers as "the complete
> Jazzman." The mission of this prospective orchestra, says Clyde
> Bullard, "will be to revitalize and rejuvenate the jazz heritage of
> Queens through concerts, lectures and performances of music created
> by the great legends that once resided here."
>
> Among those who still do live in Queens is composer-saxophonist
> Heath. And of those who have died, buried in Queens cemeteries are
> Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Johnny Hodges, Charlie Shavers and
> Jimmy Rushing. And another seminal figure in American music, Scott
> Joplin, the master composer of the graces of ragtime, is buried in
> the borough's St. Michael's Cemetery.
>
> The Queens Jazz Trails tour takes place the first Saturday of every
> month. (For information: 718-463-7700, extension 222.) Copies of the
> accompanying map can be obtained from Mr. Miller at Ephemera Press (
> http://www.ephemerapress.com/ ). There, too, is his celebrated
> illustrated map of the Harlem Renaissance that cites cultural
> historian Alaine Locke's 1919 first chorus to the abiding importance
> of Harlem: "Harlem is the precious fruit of the Garden of Eden, the
> big apple."
>
> A story that climaxed in the Queens jazz community was told to me by
> alto saxophonist Phil Woods, designated this year a Jazz Master by
> the National Endowment for the Arts:
>
> "Many years ago, at a club in New York, I was down. I was
> saying, 'I'm not going anywhere. I'm a white guy in this music.'
> Hearing me whining and crying the blues, Art Blakey and Dizzy
> Gillespie kidnapped me. They put me in a cab and took me to Dizzy's
> place in Queens.
>
> "Dizzy sat me down and said to me about Charlie Parker, 'Bird gave
> it to everybody. To all races. If you can hear it, you can play it.'"
>
> In countries all over the world, musicians of all blends of races
> are playing music created on the Queens Jazz Trail.
>
> --- End forwarded message ---
>
>
>