[Dixielandjazz] Hot Jazz Jubilee and Sacramento Music Festival

[Robert Ringwald]

The new Hot Jazz Jubilee conceived and put on by Ken McMurry over the Labor Day Weekend in Sacramento was a huge success. While there were a few glitches, very few, for the first year it was run very well. Frankly, no one knew that it would be so well attended. 



The feeling in the hallways was that everyone was having a great time. One person from the Los Angeles area told me that it was like “Festivals used to be.”



At one point, at 3:00 PM on Saturday, there were so many people that we couldn’t even get down the hallway. We had to go outside and around to get to the other end. It was impossible to find a room with 4-empty chairs. We finally went into the bar and had a snack. 



The festival will be back next year with appropriate changes to accommodate even more people who, after hearing about this year’s success, will want to come. 



My congratulations to Ken McMurry who conceived the idea and proceeded to make it happen. 



Now, to slightly change the subject, Charlie Hull wrote in part about the Sacramento Music Festival, formerly the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee and Sacramento Dixieland Jubilee:



“I think there's still a Sacramento market for Trad jazz, but the people

who plan and run the event have to like it, or they won't book it.

That's what happened to the former "jazz jubilee"; the younger

sophisticates taking it over have their own preferences.”





Excuse me Charlie; The people planning the Sacramento Music Festival are not “younger sophisticates.” It is not a matter of what they like or dislike. It is a matter of selling tickets and continuing to have a Festival in Sacramento over Memorial Day weekend. 



While I don’t wish to get DJML once again involved in a discussion of how the Sacramento Music Festival is operated, let me say that, if there is a viable market for Trad Jazz anywhere in the country, why isn’t there even one band working steady 5 or 6 nights a week in a club, like there used to be in the “Good ol’ days?” It is not happening and it will never happen again. Times have changed, they always change and there is not a damn thing Charlie, me, or any of us can do about it.  



What STJS (Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society) sponsor of the Sacramento Music Festival has done by hiring bands that play other forms of music besides Trad Jazz, is to have saved the Festival. 



Keep in mind that even the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival has mostly big name Rock and Blues bands. At least Sacramento had the decency to tell the truth, call it what it is now, a Music Festival. 



Be aware that that there is no way the city of Sacramento is going to give up on a music festival over Memorial Day weekend. If STJS threw in the towel, there would be a dozen promoters jumping in to fill the venues with nothing but Rock and Blues. There then would be no OKOM (Our Kind Of Music) at the Festival at all. By reading some of the negative things written by Trad fans over the years since Sacramento started bringing in other forms of music, it almost seems as if that is exactly what some of them want. They don’t want to except reality. They want to live in the past. They want it to be all Trad Jazz, or nothing at all… 



One time in the late 80s or early 90s Steven Joseph, a fine musician from WA, told me that every time he walks by a venue during our festival, that has a Zydeco or Blues band playing in it, he stops and says thank you. Because of people buying tickets to hear this band, it enables us to continue to play OKOM (Our Kind Of Music). 



Yes, as Charlie says, there is still an audience for Trad Jazz. Obviously over a 3-day weekend, 650 people will buy tickets to attend a small festival at a hotel in Sacramento. 



Fresno, San Diego, Sun Valley, Pismo Beach and maybe Mammoth are still going. What about Los Angeles, Orange County, Sisters OR, Las Vegas, Reno and maybe 20 or 25 other festivals which have either gone broke or quit just before going broke?



The audience, as we used to know it, is no longer there. Times have changed. Times have always changed. Times will always change. Big business, radio, TV, recording industry have all turned their back on Classic/Trad/Dixieland Jazz. In fact, from day to day, month to month, it turns it back on other forms of music and performers also. It chews up the performers and spits ‘em out. We may not like it, but that is reality. 



I suggest that all the naysayers Suck it up and support what Festivals there are who are programming OKOM, or they too will disappear. And, if a band is playing in your area, get your ass out of your easy chair and go support them, instead of sitting at home complaining that there is “No live Jazz anymore.”



-Bob Ringwald