[Dixielandjazz] Band reviews

[rwade1947 at comcast.net]

 Gret review Steve.  Congratulations!

Roger Wade
Really Old Records

-------- Original message ----------------------
From: Stephen G Barbone <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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