[Dixielandjazz] Frim Fram Sauce & Other Delicacies This Week on Riverwalk Jazz

[Donald Mopsick]

This week, Riverwalk Jazz celebrates the beginning of this holiday
season with a concert of cuisine-inspired jazz tunes. While you listen
to our show, you can chop, slice, saute, bake and broil your way to a
heavenly meal. Featured on the show are performances by The Jim Cullum
Jazz Band and their guests Vernel Bagneris, Topsy Chapman, Vince
Giordano, Dick Hyman, Leon Oakley, John Pizzarelli, Catherine Russell,
Mike Walbridge and Bob Wilber.

The program is distributed in the US by Public Radio International, on
Sirius/XM sattelite radio and can be streamed on-demand from the
Riverwalk Jazz website.

Louis Armstrong used to sign his letters, “Red Beans and Ricely Yours"
and gave his jazz compositions titles like “Struttin' with Some
Barbecue" and “Cornet Chop Suey." This week on Riverwalk Jazz, we're
cooking up a banquet for those who like their music hot. Also on the
menu, stories about that “sweet spot" where food and jazz come
together, from bass legend Milt Hinton and New Orleans guitarist and
banjo man Danny Barker.

Just check out our recipes here for delicacies like Strawberry Ice
Cream, Spicy Pepper Cornbread, Red Beans and Rice, and more.

We know that New Orleans' own Louis Armstrong took his red beans and
rice seriously. When Louis and his wife-to-be Lucille were courting,
he asked her if she could cook his favorite dish. Lucille just
laughed. A bit later in their relationship, she realized it was no
joke and promised Louis she'd learn how to make him red beans and
rice. The way Armstrong tells it, they sat down to a meal of Lucille's
home-cooked red beans with her parents—just before he asked her to
marry him.

Like many great cities, New Orleans has a long history of celebrating
good food and music. Just think of treasures like Preservation Hall
and Café De Monde. Our opening set salutes San Antonio's hometown
cuisine with “Enchilada Man" by Jim Cullum and “Jalapeño Rag" by
former band clarinetist Brian Ogilvie.

Milt “Judge" Hinton is fondly remembered by musicians and fans as a
great bassist and equally great human being. His career spanned some
70 years until his death a decade ago at the age of 90. In the 1930s,
Milt worked on the road with the Cab Calloway Orchestra nonstop for 15
years.

In those days, touring band members had to get creative if they wanted
home-cooked meals. Milt Hinton tells this story...

“Sometimes on the road, we couldn't find the proper food that we liked
and we decided amongst ourselves that, since we had some chefs in the
band like Foots Thomas, Lamar Wright and Tyree Glenn and yours truly,
we would want to cook our own food. So we ordered a big trunk, made
with an electric stove in it. It had three compartments. You could
even bake in this thing and we would take turns fixing our food. It
happened that one time in Kansas City we had to go on the stage and it
was my turn to cook. And I wanted some cabbage and ham hocks. Our
dressing rooms were in the basement of the theater. So I put all this
stuff on the stove and then we went on the stage to perform. And while
we were on the stage, the cabbage got to smelling and came up out of
the basement, and the management told us, “Please tell those gentlemen
to stop cooking, the audience is starving to death!"

Jazz banjoist Danny Barker grew up in the New Orleans French Quarter
in a family of traditional brass band musicians. In the 1930s, Barker
moved up north to work in top swing bands, and for eight years toured
with Cab Calloway. Wherever he went, Danny carried the culture of the
Crescent City with him. With his vivid memory and eye for detail, he
brought the flavors of early New Orleans to life in his storytelling.

In our show, Danny Barker talks about the carnival atmosphere of food
vendors and music—right outside his door as a kid. Jim Cullum and the
Band reflect this atmosphere in their performance of George Gershwin's
piece about Catfish Row food vendors from Porgy and Bess titled,
“Strawberry, Honey, Crab."

New Orleans reedman Sidney Bechet was more at home in France than in
the states. By the early '50s, he lived in the resort town of Antibes
on the Riviera where he was inspired to write his tune “Fish Vendor"
by watching men at work in the market. Soprano saxophonist Bob Wilber
performs it with Jim and the Band at The Landing.

On our holiday concert of cuisine-inspired jazz tunes, trumpeter Bria
Skonberg sings the traditional New Orleans song “Ice Cream," guitarist
John Pizzarelli sings “Frim Fram Sauce" and trumpeter Leon Oakley and
tubist Mike Walbridge join The Jim Cullum Jazz Band on Lu Watters
“Sage Hen Strut." Topsy Chapman sings “Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None of
My Jelly Roll" and bassist Vince Giordano sits in on “Clarinet
Marmalade."

We close the show with vocalist Catherine Russell joining Jim and the
band on Bessie Smith's raucous double-entendre tour-de-force, “Kitchen
Man."

-- 
http://about.me/donmopsick