Elephant (in the) Room
By Dan Augustine
All right, my friends, i'm going to try to acquaint you with the
enormity of your error if you were not present at the concert last
Sunday (November 16, 2008) by the Mission City Hot Rhythm Cats, who
played at the Capital City Comedy Club in Austin, Texas, as part of the
series of traditional jazz concerts hosted by the Austin Traditional
Jazz Society. The band's website is at
http://missioncityjazz.com/.
To do this, i'm going to have to resort to analogies, which are always
suspect, but frequently the only way to give person B an idea of what
person A knows about. For example, say you saw an elephant,
but your friend has only ever seen a mouse. Yes, you could
tell him that both animals are grey, have a nose and a tail, are rather
round in shape, and the elephant is bigger, but that really doesn't do
it, does it?
Well, the Mission City Hot Rhythm Cats (hereinafter abbreviated to
MCHRC) are kind of like elephants. Didn't work, did
it? Let me try again.
Everybody has some musician friends who play instruments, and sometimes
enough critical mass of players is achieved, with the right
instrumentation, to allow them to put together a band, which is mainly
just for kicks and plays at local events for no money.
Eventually they may get good enough to attach a name to their group,
and maybe get a gig at a local bar or restaurant. After a
while, they start to get better known around the city, attract a
following, and are mentioned in the newspaper. In time, they start
playing in other cities in the area and then the region, and then the
state. If they are really very good, after a while they begin
to garner attention nationally, and perhaps go on tour or get paid to
appear at jazz festivals in other states. And after a number
of years doing this, they go on tour internationally, and after decades
become an icon, an exemplar of a style of music. So, seen
this way, bands may be regarded as a 'friends' band, then local,
neighborhood, city, area, regional, statewide, national, international,
and timeless.
Not surprisingly, given their individual histories, MCHRC is (in my
opinion) already up to the level of an excellent regional band, and
pretty soon they're going to be statewide and national in
reputation. That's what you missed. They're that
good. These guys are pretty close to the Jim Cullum level,
and rising. And they didn't just fall off the turnip truck,
either, but individually have a decades-long history of playing and
recording traditional jazz in Texas and New Orleans, working with the
best players in both areas. Lemme 'xplain:
The band's personnel is as follows: David Jellema (co-leader, cornet,
clarinet), Mike Pittsley (co-leader, trombone), Pierre Poree (clarinet,
alto saxophone, vocals), Mark Hess (piano), Tim Paco (bass), and Ed
Torres (drums).
David Jellema (cornet, clarinet) played with traditional-jazz bands in
the Washington DC area from age 13: Southern Comfort, Buck Creek,
Storyville Seven, Last Chance Jazz Band, Bay City Seven, Federal Jazz
Commission, and the New Traditonal Jazz Band. He
also has a BA in Classical Civilizations and has worked in Egypt with
Horn of Plenty refugees and in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey
with Kurdish refugees.
Mike Pittsley (trombone) grew up in northern California and in 1978
joined the Jim Cullum Jazz Band, appearing in over 100 broadcasts of
Riverwalk, Live from the Landing, as well as playing on many Cullum CDs
over the years. He teaches low brass in the San Antonio area
and also holds a commercial aircraft pilot's license.
Eddie Torres (drums) also played with the Cullum band (1984-2000), and
is a devoted fan of Gene Krupa and Zutty Singleton.
Mark Hess (piano) is another Cullum alumnus (hear him play trombone on
the Happy Jazz LPs of "Happy Landing" and "Listen Some More"), and also
in 1975 won the prestigious Texas Ragtime Championship.
Pierre Poree (alto sax, clarinet, vocals) hails from New Orleans, but
he relocated to San Antonio to escape hurricane Katrina. In
New Orleans he played and sang regularly with local bands, and has
continued doing so in San Antonio, where he is also a music educator.
Tim Paco (string bass) is a San Antonio native who worked for years in
New Orleans, and has played bass, tuba, and sousaphone there with Pete
Fountain, Connie Jones, Bob Havens, Tim Laughlin, and Matt Perrine
among others.
So what kind of gumbo do you get with these ingredients?
Well, you got your San Antonio roux (Pittsley, Hess, and Torres all
played with Jim Cullum for decades, and Tim Paco is a
native). Then there's the New Orleans influence with both
Pierre Poree and Tim Paco. Add a hefty dollop of East Coast
with David Jellema (Washington DC) and Ed Torres (New York City), and
finish off with a soupon of Sacramento (Pittsley grew up around there)
and West Coast styles. Stir, and you get a fine blend of
flavors that change the way you hear each song. Moreover,
these are not only highly experienced musicians with great technical
mastery over their instruments, they build on top of that by being
enterainers as well. If you want to put on a great show, you
can't get up there and just play notes, you have to connect with the
audience with showmanship.
The first set opened with "Swing That Music" (which you can hear of
sample of at http://missioncityjazz.com/Sound%20Clips.htm), with each
player taking a solo. About Ed Torres' solo, what the
MCHRC-website said about his playing is appropriate here: "Eddie has
now achieved his own notoriety in the jazz world. Many of the
greatest drummers in the business today have stood in awe and marveled
at the techniques Eddie effortlessly employs to propel a jazz band to
new levels of musical excitement and drive." The next tune
was perhaps intended to stretch our ears a little (elephants have
pretty big ears, you know): "Bernie's Tune", an old straight-ahead jazz
favorite from the 1950s (catch a great version of it on YouTube with
Gerry Mulligan at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k0FS3VszT4), with Tim
Paco using some double-stops in his fine bass solo. "Somebody
Stole My Gal" took us back to more traditional fare, with a good beat
and Pierre Poree doing a solo and a great vocal (even if he did forget
some of the words).
One of Turk Murphy's aims in a concert was to entertain both the
audience and the band by playing "one for them, then one for
us". MCHRC did the latter by dipping into some New Orleans
history with an old Sharkey Bonano tune called "Git-Wit-It".
David Jellema then traded his cornet in for his clarinet in "Poor
Butterfly", which got a lot of couples out on the dance
floor. Eddie Torres then demonstrated how to play a New
Orleans street-beat on drums behind "My Gal Sal" (to which ATJS
President Tom Straus, a banjo-player, responded that MCHRC was
"co-opting a lot of banjo-club tunes"). The set ended with
more fine drum-work in Duke Ellington's "Caravan".
During the intermission, ATJS vice-president Dave Stoddard made some
announcements, including the fact that one of our favorite
clarinet-players, Rose Imperato, will be playing a final time this
Friday at the Carousel Lounge with the Chaparral Dixielanders before
decamping with her husband Artie for the wilds of New York
City. Then our own Ben Conroy favored us with a number of
boogie-woogie tunes on piano.
Before the second set started, the band played "Happy Birthday" to Dave
Stoddard, whose birthday today it was, and the crowd joined in to wish
him a happy 39th birthday (but which 39th was not vouchsafed to
us). The set was devoted to songs associated with Bix
Beiderbecke, and it should be noted that David Jellema brings a special
authenticity to his performances of the music associated with
Bix. In 1999, the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Society reported
that the Jellema's band (The New Traditional Jazz Band from Maine) at
that year's festival had "the most faithful Bixian sound and style" of
all ten bands there. They continued that "one of the
highlights of the Festival was David Jellema's reading on Sunday
afternoon at LeClaire Park of the poem 'Bix Beiderbecke Composing a
Suite for Piano, 1930-1931: mist, candlelights, cloudy, flashes, dark'
by his father, Rod Jellema."
(http://ms.cc.sunysb.edu/~alhaim/BixBeiderbeckeMemorialSociety.htm)
The band played "Since My Best Gal Turned Me Down", with a good beat
and alternating fast and slow tempos after the solos.
(Several glosses on this title were also mentioned, such as "Since My
Best Gal Turned Me In".) Mike Pittsley had a forceful
trombone solo on "Rhythm King", and "Susie" showed off the nice
chord-changes of that tune. A less frequently played song was
"Blue River", with Jellema on clarinet, then a section without rhythm
of clarinet, sax, and trombone. "Clarinet Marmalade" in a
fast 4 with a good beat followed, and one of Bix's best-known tunes,
"Singin' the Blues" featured a very Bixian cornet solo by David
Jellema. The last tune of the set, "Sensation Rag", showcased
Mike Pittsley's trombone solo, which at times reminded me of the solos
that Abram ('Abe') Lincoln used to play. Mike later told me
that this was no accident, as he is working on a website on Abe Lincoln
(http://www.abelincolntrombone.com/).
The last set delved back into traditional songs, with "Dixieland
One-Step" (another fine drum solo by Ed Torres), and Pierre Poree
showed what an expressive song-stylist he is with a vocal on "What a
Wonderful World". The little-heard "Weary River" was next
(garnering the Elmer Fudd pronunciation-award of the day, according to
the band), and David Jellema displayed some nice plunger work on his
cornet solo. "Struttin' with Some Barbecue" had an infectious
beat, and Mike Pittsley is the first right-handed trombonist i've ever
seen suddenly switch his bell around to play the slide with his left
hand, an amazing bit of dexterity that he explained was due to some
kind of cramp in the fingers of his right hand. The concert
ended with an old favorite, "Tin Roof Blues", featuring both Pierre
Poree and David Jellema on clarinets.
After Jellema's final introduction of the band, the crowd rose almost
as one and gave them a standing ovation, as well they should have, as
it was one of the best band and best concerts we've seen since, um
let's see, probably the last time Jim Cullum played for us.
The Mission City Hot Rhythm Cats said that they'd like to play for us
again, and you can be sure that they will, and soon.
