[Dixielandjazz] Stan Wrightsman

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

I do like pianists spoken of as obscure. Anyone still wondering about Stephen "the Beetle" Henderson might like to try YouTube, where one of the two solo performances he delivered for an Art Hodes broadcast has turned up, having been on a weeping up of bits and pieces on the Euphonic label, which specialised on obscure piano men, though some of the notes (written) could be odd, like the worse than speculative stuff on the blues pianist James Crutchfield, who didn't as the sleevenote to the coloured transparent vinyl LP I have turn up on 1920-1930s sessions. People have a chortle when they learn that he lived on and unknown until somebody produced a hi-fi full-blown LP of him, a little short on variety though "Bogalusa" on its own could be a classic, like the 1960 things on Euphonic. Is he even on a YouTube video-clip?The chortling follows when folk read that around the time the LP was recorded Mr. Crutchfield was the beneficiary of an award for distinction in activity named for sometime President Jimmy Carter's mother . .  

But I see the name of STAN WRIGHTSMAN in the Rampart serenaders (Blondel the minstrel, in earshot of the cell of Richard the Lionheart?) piano chair. There are piano trio recordings of him from small labels on YouTube. Intriguing. Nice to find, discovery inspired by recent query, thank you! Ask and other information will be generated for other people! 

I remember 1987 and Ralph Sutton's solo gig in Edinburgh, where he was putting everything into it, really impassioned, but with a quota of bum notes eminently ignorable given the strength of his performance. But the gig had been Dick Wellstood's, and Dick had died the year before at a US jazz party weekend where Ralph was present. Very sensitive man, Ralph. He looked pleased after the Edinburgh set when I remarked on his having announced clearly and played extremely well a composition by Stan Wrightsman. 

The set in which Ralph's was the second part (Lawyer Wellstood might have had a party being the party of the second part?) had for its first half an ensemble such as Edinburgh used to being together back then, and deep in the heart of which the nice Englishman next to me (bought me a pint!) marvelled at the powers of tolerance and endurance of our local Stanley, Mr. Greig, sometime piano tuner in Highgate. Stan was pianist on something called something like TUBARAMA (Tubakrishma?) involving stress testing of platform floorboards by the imposition of a number of gentlemen suitably heavyweight to bear the low horns mentioned in the title, as some (?)woodwind or reed-activated heavy metal of blown varieties -- reminded me of a touring opera's Wagner, whose fat lady (sorry!) could not hide even with her voluminous singing the extremely loud creak her foot elicited from the timber frame of the stage mountain-top. One of the people Stan was supporting looked like one of the Hairy Biker TV cooks carrying and alternating between, and getting music out of respectively a brazen anaconda and a tandoori euphonium-oven. At least I don't remember the floor creak,   

I can't Stans no more, as Popeye used to say,
Robert R. Calder 




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