[Dixielandjazz] The Life & Music of Kenny Davern - Just Four Bars

[Harry Callaghan]

While we're on the subject of Kenny Davern, I was just perusing the
selections available by him on both Amazon and Half.com by EBay.

It might be of interest to his fans that EBay is offering on a "Buy It Now"
basis, as opposed to starting bid,

Kenny Durham's Meyer-Truflex gold clarinet mouthpiece for $8

Because it was relatively inexpensive, I settled on a 1992 CD entitled "My
Inspiration" which had him playing with Bob Haggart, Howard Alden and Bobby
Rosengarden. (that was Amazon)

Tides
HC


On 8/5/10, Ken Mathieson <ken at kenmath.free-online.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Hi Folks,
>
> I love the Mickey Mouse announcement and can just see Kenny doing it. I
> worked with Kenny a lot over the years when he toured in Scotland and
> witnessed both sides of his character as he worked an audience. As Steve
> says, he could get them  the palm of his hand at the beginning of the first
> set, but he was just as likely to estrange them with some pretty blatant
> time-filling during his "requests" routine.
>
> This involved some very lengthy dialogue asking for audience requests,
> painstakingly disecting them before dismissing any he didn't fancy with some
> acid put-downs. It was funny the first couple of times, but when the
> audience has heard it all many times before, they pretty quickly get the
> idea it might be blatant time-wasting at best, or p*ss-taking at worst. As
> one of the guys in the trio, I had heard it umpteen times and could feel the
> vibe coming off the audience, but it didn't seem to bother Kenny, who would
> continue to ignore the irony of seeking requests (perhaps because he
> couldn't think of anything to play himself) and then chiding them for their
> lack of imagination.
>
> On the other hand, he could be fantastically entertaining and informative.
> In 2006, he was working on the Nairn Jazz Festival in the north of Scotland
> (a fantastic festival of world class mainstream & traditional jazz, with
> names over the years like Ray Brown, Junior Mance, Kenny Barron, Harry
> Allen, Scott Hamilton, Jake Hanna etc) and found to his horror that the
> festival organiser had set up a Kenny Davern Clarinet Masterclass with a
> 10:00am start. I heard him protesting to the organiser (I'm paraphrasing
> here) "what will I do? I can show them how to take the horn out of its case,
> how to assemble it and how to pack it away at the end. I can't show anyone
> how to play it because I don't analyse what I do. I just do it and it's
> finished."  Well, neither the organiser nor Kenny was prepared to back down,
> so Kenny insisted that Rosanno Sportiello and I should be booked to
> accompany him in case he ran out of things to say.
>
> He was booked for an hour and, as it turned out, the masterclass lasted at
> least 2 hours and had to be cut short in order to prepare for a concert at
> 1:00pm. Rosanno and I played no more than 3 numbers and Kenny charmed,
> informed and entertained his audience, many of whom were clarinettists, for
> the rest of the time with instructive technical insights and advice,
> hilarious anecdotes and spontaneous charm. He was helped by an intelligent
> first question from an amateur clarinettist who asked about the differences
> between playing Albert and Boehm systems, and the difficulties of switching
> from one to the other. This got him started about his beginnings and his
> switch to Boehm, as compared with Evan Christopher, who (according to Kenny)
> started out on flute (Boehm system) before switching to clarinet and then to
> the Albert. That led on to talk about the stylistic characteristics of the
> New Orleans clarinet greats, who all started on Albert and were mostly
> taught by the same man, Lorenzo Tio Jr. Kenny demonstrated a few phrases
> that were common to the playing of Jimmie Noone, Albert Nicholas, Barney
> Bigard etc, explained how the fingering of these phrases differed between
> Albert and Boehm, and reckoned that they had most probably derived from
> exercises given by Tio as part of their tuition. It wasn't just informative,
> it was an insight into the history of the music, and it was fun too. He
> could have had a career as an educationalist if he had chosen.
>
> I haven't seen the book yet, but would be interested to know if the
> discography includes any of the sessions done at concerts in Scotland. They
> were all private recordings and I've got copies (mainly on tape or casette,
> but some have been converted to CD) of some of the gigs I was on, including
> one in Inverness where the band was Kenny, pianist Stan Greig (ex Lyttelton
> etc) and me on drums. Before the gig Kenny said "there's only three of us,
> so everyone has to solo on everything." That was fine until he called Mood
> Indigo at a tempo so slow it was almost becalmed, and then demanded a
> 2-chorus drum solo! While I struggled to play something meaningful and
> musical at approx 45bpm, Kenny made encouraging gestures from the wings
> while laughing himself silly. It wasn't fun for me at the time, but I sure
> miss him now he's gone.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ken Mathieson
> www.classicjazzorchestra.org.uk
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-- 
Some men see things as they are and say why....I dream things that never
were and say why not            -
                        -George Bernard Shaw