Click here for more information about the book Flavor and Soul by John Gennari
“There is no other than Gennari—a huge-hearted scholar of voracious curiosity and impeccable taste—to productively mine what happens when black and Italian meet. He sees the third thing those two galaxies of history and self-expression create at the crossroads.
Cooking and eating, sports, film, and, of course, music are where the most potent and telling cultural action is, where we go to experience the true beauty and meaning of life in a world where we may know ourselves deeply along cultural lines but then find so much more at the recombinant intersection.
Flavor and Soulis brilliant, encyclopedic scholarship that also accomplishes the rare work of speaking directly to and from the heart. This is a passionate treasure book of scholarship and ultimately a handbook for living a rich, surprising, culturally-guided life.”
(Elizabeth Alexander, author of The Light of the World: A Memoir)
Famed Sicilian-American New Orleans record producer Cosimo Matassa (born 1926) recalls life in the French Quarter growing up in the 1930s and 40s.
Click here for more information about the book Flavor and Soul by John Gennari
Not covered in the interview, but this seem like a good place to put it for now:
“I’m beginning to find out that an awful lot of early jazz history is totally wrong. Here is a quick example. There are a number of well-known New Orleans trumpet players who came out of New Orleans at the same time. A third of them were White Italians, and the Italians were just as despised as Blacks and they lived in the same neighborhoods and they played the same music. Gerald Early, a very famous professor of African-American history at Washington University always starts his lectures showing that whites have been in this from day one. It’s an American music.”
Note from Ken: Sicily, which was the source of most of the Italians who landed in New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th century, has a rich tradition of…brass bands that march in well put together uniforms. If I were a betting man, I’d say African-Americans adopted this tradition from their Sicilian brothers in New Orleans and made it their own.
Video references
Jon Batiste on the influence of opera on Louis Armstrong
The opening cadenza to West End Blues – one part opera, one part blues
Louis Armstrong and opera
After completion of my season at the Metropolitan Opera during the 1950’s, I would go to the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas where Louis and I performed both singly and together for a few weeks. We had special material written for us where we reversed roles, doing opera versus jazz; he singing ”Vesti la giubba” and I singing ”Honeysuckle Rose.” Between shows, he would regale me with reports of his European tours, especially in Italy, where he made a point of visiting opera houses, and tell me, ”Man, I met all of them cats over there.”
ROBERT MERRILL
New Rochelle, N.Y.
From a letter to the New York Times dated April 2, 2000
Louis Prima, his then-wife and “straight man” Keely Smith, Sam Butera and the Witnesses
Frank Sinatra and Count Basie and his Orchestra, arranged and conducted by Quincy Jones (1965)
Qunicy Jones talks about Frank Sinatra
New Orleans “soul” music – Aaron Neville sings “Ave Maria”
Click here for more information about the book Flavor and Soul by John Gennari
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
Music credit: The Jazz on the Tube podcast theme song is “Mambo Inferno” performed by The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bobby Sanabria from the CD ¡Que Viva Harlem!
Music credit: The Jazz on the Tube podcast theme song is “Mambo Inferno” performed by The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bobby Sanabria from the CD ¡Que Viva Harlem!
First come the musicians. Equally necessary is the audience. Also included is everyone who contributes to the creation and education of the audience – and that’s where our jazz journalists come in.
Author, producer and veteran jazz writer with over 40 years in the trenches, Howard Mandel is the president of the Jazz Journalists Association.
In this wide ranging conversation, we talk about Howard’s work including his books “Future Jazz” and “Miles, Ornette, Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz” and the pleasures and challenges of being a jazz writer in the digital era.
Jazz heroes
Among the many intriguing initiatives the Jazz Journalists Association is involved in their annual Jazz Heroes awards is one the most impressive.
Every year, community members nominate “advocates, altruists, activists, aiders and abettors of jazz” who work to help jazz flourish in their local communities.
If you’re a writer or documenter of jazz with video, audio, photography – on the web or via broadcasting – or if you just appreciate these arts and want to support them and follow some truly interesting work check out the Jazz Journalists Association.
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
Music credit: The Jazz on the Tube podcast theme song is “Mambo Inferno” performed by The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bobby Sanabria from the CD ¡Que Viva Harlem!
Jazz on the Tube interviews music journalist Tomás Peña.
Peña is editor of JazzdelaPena.com and co-editor/contributing writer to the Latin Jazz Network. He also writes the monthly column “The Latin Side of Hot House” for Hot House Magazine.
In this call, we talk about the mostly unknown and little appreciated contributions of Puerto Rican musicians to the development of jazz from the art form’s very earliest days through its commercial peak and right through to our present era.
Here’s the tune that got Tomás started on Latin jazz.
Wes Montgomery – Bumpin’ on Sunset…
Other musical references
1919 recording of John Reese Europe & the 369th U.S. Infantry “Hell Fighters” Band: “The Darktown Strutters’ Ball.” The band included 18 musicians from Puerto Rico selected for their high level of musicianship
Juan Tizol performs his composition “Caravan” with the Duke Ellington Orchestra
Ray Barretto and band perform Thelonious Monk’s “I Mean You” at his induction ceremony as an NEA Jazz Master (2006)
P.S. Our unique programming is made possible by help from people like you. Learn how you can contribute to our efforts here: Support Jazz on the Tube
Thanks.
Music credit: The Jazz on the Tube podcast theme song is “Mambo Inferno” performed by The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bobby Sanabria from the CD ¡Que Viva Harlem!
Musician, educator and historian Bruce Conforth introduces us to the real Robert Johnson.
Far from the one-dimensional “native genius” he is often portrayed as, Robert Johnson was a well read, well traveled, versatile artist whose genius was no accident.
Dead at the age of 26, in his short life Johnson’s art left an indelible mark on American and world music.
Conforth, a guitarist and harmonica player, has been studying Johnson’s life and work for 40 years.
P.S. Our unique programming is made possible by help from people like you. Learn how you can contribute to our efforts here: Support Jazz on the Tube
Thanks.
New Orleans poet Chuck Perkins and Jazz on the Tube’s Ken McCarthy
After the 2005 levee collapses (don’t call it “Katrina”), Jazz on the Tube’s Ken McCarthy started visiting New Orleans.
After a few week-long visits here and there, he started spending nearly half of every year there, arriving in December and leaving after Jazzfest.
One of his projects was advising levees.org, a relationship that continues to this day.
He also created an online fundraising system for the New Orleans Musician Clinic that earned an average of $1 for every web site visitor and and an average of $10 for each subscriber at the point of opt-in before they were formally asked for a donation.
In the years right after the levee failures, understanding of the severity of the challenges the city faced and its need for ongoing support was limited both in the US and overseas.
To help with this situation, Ken arranged for New Orleans musicians to perform in New York and in the UK, a venture he called FoodMusicJustice.
One of the projects was a tour of England for New Orleans poet and impresario Chuck Perkins.
Chuck’s tour reached its high point with him being invited to perform at the Manchester Poetry Festival, Europe’s biggest festival devoted to poetry, and later opening for Amiri Baraka at London’s South Bank Centre, the largest single-run theater complex in the world.
Chuck’s tribute to the New Orleans musicians – “the artistic vanguard who came back when times where hard” – starts at 5:00
Ken goes back to New Orleans every year now, but now it’s only for a week or so at time.
At some point – maybe next year – he may organize a trip for interested Jazz on the Tube fans to meet the musicians, discover the clubs, and go deep into one of America’s greatest cultural treasures: the music scene in the great city of New Orleans.
New Orleans poet Chuck Perkins and Jazz on the Tube’s Ken McCarthy
Thelonious Monk