[Dixielandjazz] Jazz Disasters

[Steve Voce]

Charlie Shavers and I went on a pub crawl in Liverpool. When we got back to his hotel he showed me a large suitcase. When he opened it , it was full of bottles of Wee Heavy. I asked to taste one.
He said 'I wouldn't give you one of those, not even if you was the Pope!'
A very memorable night!

Steve Voce

Sent from my iPad

> On 7 Jul 2015, at 10:27, ROBERT R. CALDER <serapion at btinternet.com> wrote:
> 
> Whoops!My memory has let me down!  It wasn't in Europe,  it was the same Australia tale I was remembering or mis-remembering.. Apologies....  Same story, the world of a difference between the locale and my mislocation of the event was mere geography.  
> Probably there was some interaction between beer stronger than Brother was accustomed to in a bottle labelled Heineken, and jet-lag...
> We have already mentioned the occasion when Charlie Shavers mistook bottles of Wee Heavy, one of the strongest of strong ales, for little bottles sold in six-packs in New York.  How the surviving product of Fowler's, brewer even then long since drowned in a biggie, turned a Tommy Dorsey ghost band concert into a commercial for a wonderful beer, which -- horror of horrors -- was when last heard of supposedly being revived but in another city with its different water supply.  Steve Voce has spoken of his own thirst, when long ago interviewing Charlie while Charlie revived himself with a bottle from a suitcaseful of bottles of the ichor, and of an attachment to the ale which produced the declaration from Charlie that he wouldn't part with a bottle even to the Pope!  
> My late lamented friend (no relation) Dr. Angus Calder (we did collaborate on an entry on Jack Purvis on Angus's Dictionary of Alternative Biography) used to regret the absence of a co-operation between Charlie Shavers and Duke Ellington.  When I received for review a 3CD box of Dorsey material I think to mark 50 years since TD died,  I noted among the broadcasts Charlie getting a mention on the one number with Elvis Presley (mostly an ensemble lead) but there was the Ellington appearance with the Dorsey band.....
> A jazz disaster.  It's long, and it seems even longer through the succession of not exactly jokes between Duke and TD, to about 1.25  of the five minutes total. Just when Charlie might be expected to breeze in (it is "A Train") the brass makes a transition and there are lush strings -- in which some nice piano and interesting arranging ideas manage to avoid drowning; but when finally we get Charlie there is less than half a minute to go, about thirteen seconds of actual improvisation before the trumpeter has to resume close relation to the building climax and after hitting a high note disappear into the conclusion.  Thirteen seconds of prime Shavers...    After the blarney, and the fiddles .....   Well might the CD end with "Heartbreak Hotel"!  
> 
> Robert R. Calder 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>     On Monday, 6 July 2015, 22:24, Bill Haesler <bhaesler at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> ROBERT R. CALDER wrote:
>> Booze is a standard cause it seems.Little Brother Montgomery was quite right in supposing his preferred Heineken brand would be available on his European tour.  Doubtless it tasted better, but for the same reason that he did not manage to come back after the interval in a concert. The Heineken he'd had in Chicago was like the American beers I recall from long ago, considerably less alcoholic than what was supplied as a matter of course nearer Holland, hic!
> 
> Dear Robert,
> Perhaps, it was the loveable 'Little Brother' Montgomery's party trick.
> He did exactly the same thing here in Sydney, Australia (c.1979) at his first public performance.
> Kind regards,
> Bill.
> 
> 
> 
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