[Dixielandjazz] The Jazz Evangelism of Woody Allen - Part 1.

[Stephen G Barbone]

Eddy (greenmeat at mac.com) suggested that the Woody Allen article from  
The Village Voice should be read in its entirety. I tried to post it  
on June 2 and again earlier today but do not see it in the Archives or  
in earlier digests.  Here is half of the article as, part one since I  
was just notified that the original was rejected by the moderator  
being too long. I'll send part 2 tomorrow

Before folks unload on Woody Allen, they might read the entire article  
thoroughly. Then realizing what this single man has done for jazz in  
comparison to the rest of us, cut the guy more than a little slack

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband



Love him or hate him, Woody Allen is good for jazz. This article,  
courtesy of Jim Russell, Jonathan's dad, is from the Village Voice, a  
hip NYC Newspaper.

The Jazz Evangelism of Woody Allen
Clarinet in hand, the director defends one of America's disappearing  
Art Formsb

by Stacey Anderson - The Village Voice - Tuesday, June 1, 2010

The Carlyle hotel on Monday nights is, like all great Manhattan  
institutions, a carefully romantic transaction. For sale is a moment  
in Old New York, a composite of faded glamour to delicate to survive  
and too perfect to have ever really existed. Beneath the soft, earthy  
brushstroke of an original Marcel Vertes mural, amid the soigne murmur  
of rustling silk and clinking stemware, 90 eager patrons of all ages  
gather in the Cafe Carlyle supper club to soak up pristine, antique  
luxury.

They've paid $100 or so apiece to see the musician seated in the  
perfect center of the room, at the carpeted meridian of this alternate  
universe - and "see" is truly the impetus here, as the music he offers  
is secondary to the draw of his enormous celebrity, as contemporary a  
fame s the music he loves is traditional. Illuminated in dim,  
flickering light, the man handles his clarinet with ardor, scarcely  
glancing up through his ensemble's two-hour performance; he knows the  
reason we all came, and doesn't need to squint into camera flashes for  
a reminder. But he embraces his part in it all, because he believes in  
the romance too.

"Jazz has a mythological feeling to it - time has done that," Woody  
Allen tells me beforehand. "And early jazz especially, since it was  
the birth of the art form. I love it."

He loves jazz, but the sold-out audience loves the proximity of his  
fame even more. He uses this, with some combination of resignation and  
shrewdness, to expose new audiences to his favorite, increasingly  
obscure style of jazz. And in the troubled, rapidly shrinking world of  
that music (especially here in New York), his currency is crucial in  
ways no one predicted, least of all him.

"I'm not saying this to be amusing: To be even as bad as I am, you do  
have to practice every day," says Allen with a small, almost  
imperceptible chuckle. "I'm a strict hobby musician. I don't have a  
particularly good ear for music. I'm a very poor musician, like a  
Sunday tennis player."

When it comes to jazz, he never wanted to be amusing. Allen is  
notorious from approaching the music with complete gravity, both in  
performance and in the few interviews he grants, an indication of his  
larger proclivity being "off" in real life from his skittish comic  
persona. When he rings  the "Voice" from his upper East Side apartment  
one warm Tuesday afternoon, he is somber and languid with his answers,  
far removed from the familiar flurry of neuroses he has exhibited for  
decades onscreen. But jazz gets him (relatively animated, as it has  
been the most enduring passion of his 74 years, and is well documented  
in the filmmaking that made his name.

End of Part One.