[Dixielandjazz] Great Jazz Disasters!

[Ken Mathieson]

Hi Robert and assembled listmates!
The intricate sightless two-step described by Robert below was at a fine 
concert at the Queens Hall in Edinburgh by an all-star West Coast band 
calling itself the Lighthouse All-Stars many years ago. Some years 
before that I had worked with Shorty Rogers at the much-missed Black 
Bull Jazz Club in Milngavie, near Glasgow. He brought a pile of his 
wonderful quintet charts, which we rehearsed in the afternoon, then 
played at the club at night. Between the rehearsal and the gig, Shorty 
and I talked quite a lot and I remember telling him about tenorist 
Johnny Griffin's definition of Jazz: "It's a disease: some people catch 
it and recover, others catch an incurable dose without it actually 
killing them, and then there's the rest! Shorty enjoyed that and years 
later at that Lighthouse All-Stars concert at the Queens Hall, I went 
backstage at the interval to say hello to Shorty. He spotted me and 
shouted across a crowded room: "Hi Ken! How's your disease!" As you can 
imagine that stopped all the talking!

The Queens Hall is well accustomed to hosting jazz concerts, but jazz is 
pretty well unheard of at the Civic Centre in Motherwell, just down the 
road from where Robert stays. It was the unlikely venue for a concert by 
the Harry James Orchestra in the early 1970s and the scene of a 
spectacular incident involving drummer Sonny Payne. His drums were 
perched on a riser right at the back of the stage and, late in the 
concert, Harry announced a drum feature for Sonny. This involved a lot 
of sensational drumming and a bit of acrobatics with sticks being thrown 
into the air and bounced off the floor while the drum pyrothechnics 
continued. One of the sticks bounced up just out of Sonny's reach and, 
in trying to catch it and keep the solo on the rails, he fell off the 
drum stool, the riser and the stage. He disappeared completely from view 
but retrieved the wayward stick in the dark and, ever the showman, 
climbed back onto the stage, then the riser, then got back behind the 
kit while playing complex patterns on the floor as he went. The audience 
gasped at his fall, but the rest of the band were helpless with 
laughter. So disaster was narrowly averted, the audience loved it and 
predictably the band showed not an iota of sympathy, especially when 
Harry back-announced the solo by saying "Keep that in the act, Sonny!".

I think Robert might have come up with a great idea for a thread here 
and I'm sure other listmates must have loads of stories of jazz 
disasters (averted and otherwise).

Robert wrote:

We had also at that concert witnessed at close hand the alarming-comic spectacle of Bill Perkins, who demonstrated why it is unwise to dance wearing loosely located spectacles while stood up to solo on baritone sax.? The dance became more intricate after -- following some alarming bounces and slippages -- the specs eventually fell off and the wonderful Perkins, unable to stand still while improvising (behind a desk and in a very confined space!) had to avoid standing on the specs which were near his feet, and which , because they had fallen off, he could not see.? Fully a match for anything in those lists of Great Operatic Disasters some people compile.? Perhaps the accident added a further edge of nervous energy??

Cheers,
Ken