[Dixielandjazz] Band reviews

[Stephen G Barbone]

Every once in a while a performance goes just right and you get  
reviewed. Here's what worked for us at the end of this summer. Paid  
attendance was about 700,  what I would call a general audience that  
included about 100 trad jazz fans. The rest varied from families to  
other music lovers The Ocean City Music Pier has presented Music for  
about 80 years, but not much jazz.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband


Barbone Street Jazz brings New Orleans to Ocean City

By Bud Wismer - Ocean City Sentinel Critic

OCEAN CITY NJ - Sunday night found the Music Pier filled with the  
joyous sounds of New Orleans style jazz, or what some call Dixieland.

Whatever you call it, Sunday night's music was of another era but that  
kind of jazz continues to fascinate a growing number of fans. Band  
leader and master clarinetist Steve Barbone says that the music has  
caught on with a growing number of college students who apparently  
have come to the conclusion that rap and even some of the extreme jazz  
forms are a dead end street.

A wide demographic made up Sunday night's large audience at the Music  
Pier that showed up to hear the Barbone Street Jazz Band. It was a  
most unusual night on the pier. Ordinarily the Ocean City Pops would  
be holding forth a nice mix of light classics, show tunes, operatic  
arias and a variety of soloists, but the Pops had the night off.  
Instead the sextet of Jazz geniuses that made up the Barbone Street  
Jazz Band had the stage to itself, giving the crowd what they came for  
in good measure. The unusual show was a fundraiser for the Pops and  
the size of the audience and CD sales indicated the effort was  
successful to a gratifying extent.

The name of the Barbone Street Jazz Band makes it sound like it was  
meant to be a variation on New Orleans's Bourbon Street. Well, it is,  
but the name is inspired more directly by the leader and founder of  
the band, Steve Barbone, a jazz clarinetist who was sidetracked for 30  
years by the need to earn a living to support (as he put it) his high  
maintenance wife. Having accomplished that, he felt the call of his  
music again and, with the urging of his wife, put the band together.  
Now that band is booked solid all year round and with good reason.

Barbone recruited the best available jazz musicians he could and one  
can hear the results. The band is authentic to the core. Leader Steve  
Barbone does his Sidney Bechet thing on his clarinet. He is joined by  
Paul Grant on trumpet, guitarist Sonny Troy, Mike Piper on drums, Ace  
Tesone on acoustic base and a cute red-haired trombone player named  
Cindy Leiby, who is also an excellent jazz singer. The band is a  
veritable potpourri of ethnicity, gender and age from Tesone's 78 to  
University of the Arts grad Leiby's 30, but they are all on the same  
page when they play.

The Barbone Street Jazz Band opened with a Louis Armstrong favorite,  
"Back Home Again in Indiana". The true Satchmo sound was updated by  
Grant on trumpet with all of the energy and screaming high notes of  
the master. Grant sings quite capably too, but never as a mere bad  
imitation of Armstrong's style. Grant had the superb phrasing that was  
Armstrong's hallmark.

Barbone kept up a running commentary between the numbers that was  
actually an amusing and earthy history of the jazz genre. He reminded  
the audience that Armstrong was married four times to, as Barbone put  
it, a series of high maintenance women and it kept him very busy.

Grant also updated the Bix sound down when he played "Wolverine  
Blues," reflecting Armstrong;s move north. The Dixieland classics kept  
pouring out one after another much to the crowd's delight. "Bourbon  
Street Parade" and "Sweet Georgia Brown" got enthusiastic responses as  
did "Royal Garden Blues", "Do You Know What It Means To Miss New  
Orleans" and "Struttin' With Some Barbecue." As Barbone pointed out,  
the authorship of 'Struttin' was claimed by both Armstrong and second  
wife Lil Hardin. She held the copyright but Armstrong said he wrote it  
and she merely copied it down.

The Barbone Street Jazz Band didn't confine itself to just classic  
Dixieland. The band played "I Want a Little Girl" which Barbone sang  
with humor. It was a favorite of Steve Allen. Then Cindy Leiby did a  
fine vocal on "They Can't Take That Away From Me." Duke Ellington was  
represented by "In A Mellow Tone" bringing even more variety to the  
show.

The concert ended with what else but "When The Saints Go Marching  
In".  It was a terrific evening that will long be fondly remembered.