[Dixielandjazz] Ellington video and Remembering Floyd Levin

[Norman Vickers]

To:  Musicians and Jazzfans list;  DJML

From: Norman Vickers, Jazz Pensacola

 

This video of Ellington's recording of "The Mooche"  brought to mind good
friends Bill Gottlieb and Floyd Levin .

The photo of Ellington in his dressing room was taken by jazz
photographer/writer Bill Gottlieb.  ( a copy, gift from Gottlieb, hangs in
my home)

 

Also, the photo of Barney Bigard-also shown on the video-reminded me of
Floyd Levin.  Floyd was a most interesting man.  He followed the New Orleans
musicians who came to the West Coast-including Kid Ory.  In clarinetist Joe
Darensbourg's biography, Floyd is mentioned  in several places-including
going crawfishing in the streams with the New Orleans musicians for their
crawfish meal.  Floyd befriended Barney Bigard and after Bigard's death, the
widow Bigard gave  his clarinet to Floyd, who had it mounted and displayed
on a wall. In Bigard's book, there's a  1950s photo of Floyd and some
musicians standing outside an airliner before taking off for a European
concert tour.

 

I have attached Floyd's  obituary from Los Angeles times for information.
Floyd has never gotten proper credit, in my opinion, for his role in
commissioning and production of the Armstrong statue which stands in New
Orleans' Armstrong park.

 

It was my pleasure to have known and been befriended by both Levin and
Gottlieb.  

 

Thanks for listenin'!

 

Norman 

 

 

With the death of violinist and bandleader Andy Preer in 1927, Harlem's
Cotton Club was left devoid of a house band.

 

This unfortunate event provided a young

Duke Ellington with a once in a lifetime career launching opportunity taking
up a residency that would propel his band to superstardom.

 

Recording:

 

http://www.20sjazz.com/page/28097.html

 

Thanks!

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 


Obituaries

Floyd Levin, 84; influential jazz journalist and historian

 <http://articles.latimes.com/2007/feb/05> February 05, 2007|Dennis McLellan
| Times Staff Writer


 

 

For 40 years, from 1947 to 1987, Floyd Levin owned a downtown Los Angeles
textile manufacturing company that made tablecloths, aprons, toaster and
barbecue covers, and other housewares.

But Levin also had an abiding passion for jazz, and for nearly two decades
longer than the four he spent at Parvin Manufacturing Co. he had a second
career as a jazz journalist and historian.

He was on a first-name basis with musical greats such as Louis Armstrong, in
whose honor Levin led a fundraising campaign to erect a statue of the
legendary jazz trumpeter in his hometown of New Orleans.

Levin died Jan. 29 of a heart attack at his home in Studio City, said his
grandson, Marc Levin. He was 84.

http://articles.latimes.com/images/pixel.gif

Beginning with his first published article in 1949 -- on trombonist Edward
"Kid" Ory in Melody Maker -- and continuing up to his death, Levin wrote
hundreds of reviews and profiles that appeared in such publications as Jazz
Journal, Metronome and Down Beat.

The author of "Classic Jazz: A Personal View of the Music and the
Musicians," a 2000 book published by the University of California Press,
Levin also conducted scores of oral interviews with jazz musicians that he
donated to the Smithsonian Institution and to the jazz archive at Tulane
University in New Orleans.

"Although he was very good friends with Louis Armstrong and he wrote about
other giants like Duke Ellington and Count Basie, he was always interested
in the underdog, the guy who very few other people knew about but who played
a very significant role in music," said Dan Del Fiorentino, historian for
the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, Calif.

In 1949, Levin co-founded the Southern California Hot Jazz Society, the
second oldest jazz appreciation club in the United States.

Levin's visit to New Orleans in the late 1960s led to his efforts to honor
Armstrong with a statue. "He was on a tour bus and there was no mention of
Louis Armstrong or his contribution to the city," Marc Levin said. "He, at
that moment, decided that was an injustice to Louis Armstrong and started a
fundraising campaign on that bus."

As a major fundraiser for the statue in 1970, Levin produced a 70th birthday
party for Armstrong at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Emceed by songwriter-musician Hoagy Carmichael, the onstage birthday bash
before a near-capacity crowd of 6,000 included Armstrong's reminiscences as
a slide show chronicled his life and an array of traditionalist musicians
played the music that represented the various phases of his career.

The memorable musical evening also featured songs by Sarah Vaughan and other
artists, a six-tiered, 800-pound, 11-foot-tall birthday cake and several
songs sung by Armstrong himself, who led the crowd in a sing-along rendition
of "Hello, Dolly!" as midnight approached and July 3 turned into the Fourth
of July, his birthday.

"I've had a lot of wonderful honors in my life," Armstrong said when it was
over, "but tonight has been the biggest thrill of all."

Then, in what then-Times critic Leonard Feather wrote "was a rare display of
offstage emotion," Armstrong kissed Levin on the cheek.

Armstrong died in 1971, but Levin continued to raise funds for the statue.
Among the donors was Bing Crosby, who provided an urgently needed $10,000
for the statue's completion in time to be unveiled, on a flatbed truck, in
New Orleans during national television coverage of the nation's bicentennial
celebration on July 4, 1976.

 

 
--End--

 

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