[Dixielandjazz] Don Jones -- his father's teaching Paul Breitenfeld ( Desmond)

Sun Jul 22 17:32:39 PDT 2012

I wonder how Paul Desmond would have got on in the Brubeck ensemble with one of the sons playing bass trombone -- and on one CD I bought for pennies in Germany there is some serious OKOM fun.

Rex Stewart was in England not long before he died (did anybody save a recording of the Jazz 625 broadcast with him, or was that one of the tapes whose destruction was glossed over by a controller who sought to excuse himself by saying he had produced jazz shows for radio in the late 1940s? I gather some material disposed of has turned up since)

Is there still a copy of the audio tape on which he talked jazz for maybe ten minutes of radio time (broadcast ini a series 'Hear me talkin' to Ya')  and cited Paul Desmond as a current musician he admired and listened to? As I recall, Desmond represented something of an ideal for Rex, whose relationship to the music of Bix and background in the more European music of his (culturally) East Coast homeland marks something of an affinity with what Desmond was about, 

and good-time jazz and complex time jazz aren't mutually exclusive categories

take "Five o'Clock Whistle" (Ellington joke) 

Robert R. Calder

>________________________________
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>Sent: Sunday, 22 July 2012, 20:00
>Subject: Dixielandjazz Digest, Vol 115, Issue 25
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>Today's Topics:
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>   1. Don Jones relates about his father's teaching Paul
>      Breitenfeld ( Desmond) (Norman Vickers)
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2012 19:18:10 -0500
>From: "Norman Vickers" <nvickers1 at cox.net>
>To: <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
>Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
>Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Don Jones relates about his father's teaching
>    Paul    Breitenfeld ( Desmond)
>Message-ID: <003d01cd679f$7c5bbba0$751332e0$@cox.net>
>Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="us-ascii"
>
>To:  DJML and Musicians and Jazzfans list
>
>From:  Norman Vickers, Jazz Society of Pensacola
>
>
>
>Don Jones, editor of traditional jazz monthly, American Rag, had mentioned
>that his father gave lessons to Paul Breitenfeld ( later he renamed himself
>Paul Desmond).
>
>Don said that his father would never give him, Don, music lessons but that
>Don would listen in on some of Dad's lessons.  So, I asked Don if it were OK
>to post to the list and got an affirmative answer.  I'm passing this on in
>hopes it will flesh out the Paul Desmond story a bit.  Don mentioned it in
>the July issue of AR.  See my note at the bottom which prompted the response
>from Don.
>
>Thanks, Don.
>
>
>
>
>
>From: Don Jones [mailto:pubdonj at verizon.net] 
>Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2012 3:43 PM
>To: 'Norman Vickers'
>Subject: RE: congrats on the story about your dad's teaching Paul
>Breitenfeld ( Desmond)
>
>
>
>Thanks, Norman. 
>
>    About ten years ago I was telling this story to the late Nan Bostick,
>Ragtime pianist//teacher//historian, who knew the Breitenfeld's personally,
>and recalled having heard from them at the time that someone was giving
>lessons to Breitenfeld's son, Paul, but of course didn't know it was my
>father at the time. 
>
>    Paul would come to my grandmother's laundry to get his lessons from my
>father, and I had to be like a little mouse in the corner. 
>
>    She hated the constant sound of clarinet and sax students' noises
>squawking above her laundry rooms downstairs. 
>
>    Dad would teach his students from her New Central French Laundry on 12th
>St., in Oakland, CA because it had a large dining room on the second floor
>where he could set-up a music stand and use the dining room table to open
>instrument cases. 
>
>    I'll never forget, shortly after the Japanesee had bombed Pearl Harbor,
>my dad was teaching a nearby Japanese boy (older than me) who's parents
>operated their grocery story down the street from my grandmother's laundry.
>As the mouse in the corner, I heard him tell dad this would be his last
>lesson because his family would be closing their store and would be forced
>to move into one of the concentration camps the U.S. government established
>to get them away from the Calif. coastline. I never saw him again. 
>
>    The real benefit was that the location had an electric (Key System - the
>"A" line) commuter train service that traveled throughout the Oakland east
>bay and Berkeley areas connecting directly with San Francisco traveling over
>the S.F./Oakland Bay bridge; he used her laundry without having to pay her. 
>
>    Here's a great YouTube I just found this week:
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXbicSxD0_g showing all this in living color!
>WOW!
>
>    At about 5-minutes into the video it begins to show the 1939 & 1940
>World's Fair at which my father played and which I visited every weekend for
>two years. 
>
>d.j.
>
>
>
>From: Norman Vickers [mailto:nvickers1 at cox.net] 
>Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 2:05 PM
>To: Don Jones
>Subject: congrats on the story about your dad's teaching Paul Breitenfeld (
>Desmond)
>
>
>
>Interesting.  My  home copy of AR came today but the copies to the Jazz
>Society came last week!  
>
>I didn't congratulate you on that nice story about your growing up years and
>your father's instruction of young Desmond.
>
>I'd heard you tell that but not in the detail  as in the AR.
>
>
>
>Hope you get good feed-back on that.
>
>
>
>Norman
>
>
>
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