[Dixielandjazz] Kenny Davern & Evan Christopher

[Ken Mathieson]

Robert Calder wrote:
"Fond and amusing memory of Evan Christopher, after he had given his Bechet lecture-recital and was sitting while another member of the band soloed? . .? and into the venue in George Square, Edinburgh, steps Kenny Davern? ...  Ostentatious signs of panic on the Christopher face, and mock hustle to hide the soprano saxophone he had been playing very well using the elements of Bechet in his playing. Kenny was much amused, the eyes twinkled and the 'tache crinkled with the upward smiling movement of the mouth."

Hi Robert et al,
 
The gig Robert refers to was a lunch-time concert in the Spiegeltent as part of the Edinburgh Jazz Festival a few years ago. Evan's Bechet tribute concert preceded Kenny's concert with the Tom Finlay Trio. I was on drums for Kenny's concert, which was a memorably mellow and enjoyable gig. At that point I hadn't met, or even heard, Evan, but it was obvious that Kenny had a real respect and affection for him. We repaired to the bar to listen to the rest of Evan's set and Kenny talked a bit about his experience of playing the Albert. He said he had found it so much harder to articulate his ideas on it and that he took his hat off to guys like Evan, who persevered with it, because it has a unique tonal quality. That was what drew Kenny to the Albert in the first place, but he found the Boehm fingering more logical and enabled him to to articulate his thoughts more fluently. The next time I see Evan, I must ask him about his experience, for I'm sure I read somewhere that he started as a flute-player, so presumably he was accustomed to Boehm fingering and had to start again on the Albert.

I recall doing a gig years ago with Mike Hart's band in Edinburgh. He had hired a Glasgow-based clarinettist/saxophonist Maurice Rose (he is an eccentric but enormously talented player about whom a book should be written, as the stories involving him are hilarious), but due to a cash-crisis, Maurice's Boehm was in the temporary custody of his local pawnbroker, so Mike borrowed a clarinet from a local New Orleans-style clarinettist. It turned out to be an Albert and of course Maurice had never played one before. The first half-hour sounded like something going wrong in an abbatoir (or In Kenny Davern's memorable description: like a fire in a pet shop), but eventually Maurice got the hang of the fingering and started to sound like his usual unpredictable, but hugely musical self, but with a tone the size of a house.

Kenny had a great fondness and respect for the playing of Jimmy Noone and, in a solo would occasionally find himself playing one of Jimmy's stock phrases. Benny Goodman was another who, even late in life, would find his improvisations leading him into Noone territory. My old pal, trumpeter John McLevy, played a lot wih BG in both big-band and small group settings, and he used to talk about a gig where Benny got off a Noone lick and at the end of the solo, when John said "Jimmy Noone" to Benny, BG growled back "how do you know about Jimmy Noone?" He tried to convince John that he didn't copy anyone, everything was pure BG, but John knew his jazz and Benny knew that John knew where he'd got it. 

Incidentally, throughout my long friendship with John McLevy, he used to tell me that his father, a drummer in a local dance band in his home town of Dundee, Scotland, had played with Louis Armstrong. I never believed him. Fast forward to about 10 years after John's death and another friend sent me a clipping from a Dundee newspaper of the early 1930s, detailing Armstrong's week-long appearance with a local band in a Dundee dancehall. This was at the time when Louis ran to Europe to escape the gangsters who were vying to control his career, so it turned out that John's dad did indeed do the gig we'd all give our eye teeth for.

Cheers,

Ken Mathieson
www.classicjazzorchestra.org.uk