Cullum Band Serves Up Musical Delicacies
By Dan Augustine
When you have dinner at home, odds are that the meal will involve pretty standard ingredients and won't be very complex. When you decide to dine out after work at a nice restaurant, the ingredients will usually be of better quality (including some you might not use at home) and the preparation will be more expert. But when you splurge on a Saturday night and have dinner and wine at one of the best restaurants in the city, or if traveling at one of the best in the country, the fare will include tasty but decidedly less usual ingredients, and they will be prepared with great expertise and presented with artistic flair.
So also with music.
The music you hear every day may be recorded and interesting, but it lacks immediacy, and other visual and audible events compete for your attention. Music by a local band or regional band makes you realize how good live music is, in that they play songs you might not know or have chosen yourself to hear, and their musical abilities may be better and more entertaining. But when you go to a concert and hear a world-renowned band play great songs you've never heard before, with incredible solos and wonderful artistry, you realize the differences among daily dinners and gourmet feasts.
The Jim Cullum Jazz Band set the table, brought the ingredients, and served up some of the most flavorful and best-prepared musical delicacies on Sunday afternoon, March 18th, at the Capital City Comedy Club in Austin, as part of the series of concerts hosted by the Austin Traditional Jazz Society. Not only did they play great old songs that neither your radio nor iPod will ever have, they really cooked in their execution of these dandies, with close-knit ensemble-playing, delightful combinations of two soloists in counterpoint, and saucy solos by each member of the band.
Jim Cullum (cornet), of course, has been doing this for over 40 years down in San Antonio at his club The Landing on the Riverwalk (http://www.landing.com/), as well as over the airwaves on PBS radio and in jazz festivals all over the world. Ron Hockett (clarinet) is simply one of the best jazz players in the world, and Kenny Rupp (trombone) combines a silky smooth sound with Teagarden-like (and -inspired) solos. Jim Turner (piano) could easily charm an oyster into a roux with his keyboard flourishes; Howard Elkins (guitar and banjo) plays spicy melodies on the banjo and multi-flavored rhythms on the guitar; Don Mopsick (string bass) provides the harmonic underpinning to which all the melodies (including his own tasteful solos) must refer; and Mike Waskiewicz (drums) stirs the hot-jazz gumbo with peppery sticks and brushes.
But even better, these world-class musical chefs worked their talents on some of the less-heard but delightful songs from different musical jazz-cuisines. An appetizer was taken from the early sounds of New Orleans they played trombonist Santa Pecora's "She's Cryin' for Me", with a middle section in a dark minor. A little-heard Duke Ellington song, "Misty Morning", provided a slower change of pace, followed by a (can it be said?) almost-never-heard "minor blues" tune "Raggle Taggle" by a 1930s San Antonio band named Boots and His Buddies, which was simply one of the best songs of the afternoon, and deserving of wider recognition. Other entrees included "Bullfrog Blues" (with Kenny Rupp's trombone growling in the nether regions); Satchmo's famous "Dippermouth Blues"; and a crowning finale to the first set with Gershwin's "Prelude in C# Minor", which began on Jim Turner's piano, progressed into a faster four-beat section, descended into a soft solo cornet by Jim Cullum with gentle guitar, bass, and drums, and ended with the original piano solo followed by the lingering mix of cornet, clarinet, and trombone. Now I ask you: what other band in the world could play this banquet of songs with such great fire and taste?
As if that were not enough, what's past is prelude (or maybe what's pasta is praline?) in the second set's helpings. The answer to the musico-gustatory question "How soon dose biscuits ready?" was provided with the band's "When Day Is Done". Mr. Cullum challenged the audience to name the next tune, and promised a red Ferrari convertible to the winner, but nobody guessed "Gypsy Love Song" by Victor Herbert. He threw the audience a bone with "Dogtown Blues" next, and then played a song no other band I know of does, Jelly Roll Morton's "Pep". As long as they were on a Roll, the band ended the set with Jelly's "Wild Man Blues", featuring some almost Bachian imitative counterpoint between Cullum and Hockett by themselves. (Some astute listeners might have known that 'hocketing' is a contrapuntal device in medieval polyphony where two voices alternate in short groups of notes.) For many listeners (yours truly included), this was the highlight of the afternoon.
The last set featured the tunes "(What Are You Waiting For) Mary" (recorded by Paul Whiteman in 1927), "Night and Day", and "Gulf Coast Blues". For the last tune "Dinah", Mr. Cullum was nice enough to invite some local musicians to sit in with the band, and they were Chuck Reiley (leader of the Alamo City Jazz Band) on trombone, Larmon Maddox on cornet, Dave Stoddard on valve trombone (who also plays tuba), and Budge Mabry on drums, all well-known musicians in local bands.
In the first intermission, Tom Straus, President of the ATJS, presented Beverly Wisdom with a plaque in thanks for her many years of service on behalf of the Society (founded by her late husband Gene Wisdom).
The room at the Capital City Comedy Club was almost filled with appreciative listeners, and many dancers also used the dance-floor. During the breaks, the band's supply of CDs on the back table steadily dwindled, and the applause rang out loudly for each number. It seems each time the Jim Cullum Jazz Band plays in Austin that they are better than the last time, but this is not an illusion. Simply stated, we have one of the best jazz bands in the world just south of us in San Antonio, and one never tires of savoring such exemplary fare.
