[Dixielandjazz] Marty Grosz

[Stephen G Barbone]

The Grosz Clinic is a play on words for the Gross Clinic, a newly  
restored legendary Thomas Eakins painting now on display at the Phila  
Museum of Art.

Marty is legendary too, as this article points out.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband



The Grosz Clinic
A quick master class on Philly's hot jazz giant Marty Grosz.
by A.D. Amorosi - Published: Dec 8, 2010 - The City Paper

BRING THE HEAT: Marty Grosz doesn't care much for "egghead" jazz. He  
wants you to dance.
Jazz has more than a few legends whose credits are shrouded by  
personal hubris, foible and sadness. Marty Grosz — scholar, crooner,  
virtuoso of the chordal acoustic guitar — is a different story. So  
much of his career has been riddled with joy. His brand of happy  
dancing hot jazz has long run in opposition to popular artists "coming  
out of jazz school playing egghead music that most people don't relate  
to and is not much fun to hear," as he puts it.

"I don't want to listen to college kids turning themselves inside-out  
playing 45-minute versions of 'All the Things You Are' with endless  
saxophone solos," laughed Grosz on the phone from Munich last week  
during a brief tour of his birthplace. "It's tedious, man, bad form."

Grosz moved to Philly several years ago to be close to his son who  
helped take care of Grosz' wife, who was felled by Alzheimer's. Though  
steady jazz gigs in the States are rarer than he'd like (hence the  
showcases abroad), Grosz is cheerfully ready for his third act. "I'm  
old enough that this is more like a fifth act, maybe."

The first few acts weren't bad.

Grosz moved around a bit since his father, George Grosz — the German  
Expressionist icon — brought his family to the States in 1933. The  
guitarist doesn't include the legendary painter at the top of his bio,  
nor does he hide the fact. "My father was immensely proud and  
supportive, but he understood my reasons," says Grosz. "What if his  
father had been Stravinsky?"

Though he recorded first in the 1950s with New Orleans veterans like  
Pops Foster, Grosz went mostly unheralded until playing with Bob  
Wilber and Kenny Davern in Soprano Summit, '75-'79. Sessions with  
players like Vince Giordano, whose Nighthawks are in HBO's Boardwalk  
Empire, and other re-discoveries of the "hot" idiom, have made him an  
even more valued commodity. Last year saw the release ofMarty Grosz  
and Hot Winds: The Classic Sessions, while 2008 witnessed Acoustic  
Heat, duets with Django-ologist Mike Peters. Another CD's worth of  
material of the non-piano pop music of James P. Johnson, is due on  
Arbors records in 2011, to add to his 20-plus effusive recordings.

"If you told Louis Armstrong or Jack Teagarden in 1935 that they'd be  
hired to play a jazz concert, they'd look at you like you were nuts,"  
laughs Grosz. "They played for dancing — get the beat going, play the  
tune and improvise." That's the spirit of his collaborations with  
fellow fluttering guitarist Barry Wahrhaftig's Hot Club of Philadelphia.

"Jazz came into prominence as bluegrass did — a folk music, if you  
will, that was often played wrong but with a sense of fun. Bluegrass  
makes people feel good and is still going on as such with people  
plucking and strumming. Jazz doesn't do that anymore. It should."

(a_amorosi at citypaper.net)
:The Hot Club of Philadelphia CD release party with Marty Grosz, Fri.,  
Dec. 10, 8 p.m., $15-$20, The Mermaid Inn, 7673 Winston Road, Chestnut  
Hill, 215-247-9797, themermaidinn.net.