When beauty stops by unannounced, wise people invite it in.

Barbara Rosene, heartfelt unaffected singer, scholar, and sterling mortal, paid a visit to Winnie’s Jazz Club last October 10 and offered us a portion of musical ardor, sweet and passionate although not melodramatic.

She was accompanied by Danny Tobias, trumpet; Harry Allen, tenor saxophone; John Allred, trombone; Steve Ash, piano; Felix Lemerle, guitar; Jen Hodge, double bass; Kevin Dorn, drums. Please note the smiles on the musicians’ faces as Barbara sings: musicians are a tough crowd, because they have heard so much, but their delight is genuine. As was ours. Great art without fuss!

And that magnificently rare thing: a singer without amplification, so her voice comes through right to us (although Barbara is even more herself when you are sitting right in front of her: find out for yourself). Barbara has solo gigs in New York and Ohio, and is also featured with the Harry James Orchestra. In addition, she is creating a project in tribute to Mildred Bailey, focusing on songs Mildred sang on radio in her earlier years but didn’t record: the project will involve Vince Giordano, Catherine Russell, Kellie O’Hara, and (as they used to say) “a host of stars.” Details Mildred Bailey Lives! – (Travalanche)

And an aside: I’ve known and admired as an artist (and painter) since my second or third round of jazz immersion, beginning in late 2004. She is one of a rare half-dozen people who can animate the most familiar, overworked song — for instance, IF I HAD YOU — making it yearning and emotionally new. In a chorus-and-a-half, simple musical wisdom and honesty.

See and hear more about and from Barbara here in that nicest of things, an up-to-date website. And her paintings. I love herprimitives especially and have one in the room where I am writing. See more here.

Beauty, generously offered, the wide-awake.

May your happiness increase!

Unforgettable. And more.

Ken Peplowski, clarinet, leader; Keith Ingham, piano; Marty Grosz, guitar; Vince Giordano, aluminum double bass; Arnie Kinsella, drums; Andy Stein, violin; Scott Robinson, Normaphone, bass saxophone; tenor saxophone; Randy Reinhart, Randy Sandke, Jon-Erik Kellso, Bob Barnard, trumpet, cornet; Dan Barrett, Bob Havens, trombone.

The last notes played (and scatted) at the end of a joyous and exhausting weekend at Jazz at Chautauqua, 2001. This extravagance was created by the exquisitely wonderful musicians, and presented to a live audience by enthusiast, collector, promote, visionary Joe Boughton (who got good value from the musicians from Thursday afternoon to this).

That we can see it now is thanks to the kindness of Sarah Boughton Holt and Bill Boughton, and it I offer it is with reverence and hilarity. Eighteen is life, symbolically, and this surely is.

I wasn’t there in 2001, so this has the joyous heft of a new Basie airshot from 1938. And it’s here to stay, to be seen and seen again.

Blessings and gratitude to all.

May your happiness increase!

Read all about it!

There are “music venues” and “jazz clubs” in New York City, each of them lovely in their own way. (Why live anywhere else?) But Winnie’s is its own delightful thing: accessible, friendly, warm, with a fine variety of music. I’ve been chronicling the expressive joyous music made by Danny Tobias and friends, coincidentally, since March 14, 2025. More than a few videos can be found on YouTube, and the various bands, quartet, septet, sitters-in, have been so life-affirming.

But that isn’t what Jimmy the newsboy is shouting about.

WINNIE’S JAZZ BAR, after a brief pause for refurbishing, had a “soft opening” on March 11, and the good sounds will be coming back on March 26, with Danny, Dan Block, Jen Hodge, and Felix Lemerle. Hooray! All gratitude goes to the guiding genius of Winnie’s, Matthew Rankin, whose goals are to make Winnie’s even more welcoming, cozy, and groovy than it was a few weeks ago. And he’s the man to do it.

Design by the multi-talented cyber-whiz from over the bridge, Mister Tobias.

Now, if you came to my house, I would offer you something to eat and drink, according to your desires. JAZZ LIVES is my house, so what kind of host would I be if I didn’t put some nourishing music and video on your plates? Here are two performances from last year, September 26, 2025: Danny, Jay Rattman, Scott Robinson, Steve Ash, Pat O’Leary, Kevin Dorn, and sitting in for Felix Lemerle, young Devan Kortan, guitar.. If you can’t figure out who’s playing what, you are behind on your aesthetic homework.

Music!

and something for Louis, (GIVE ME) A KISS TO BUILD A DREAM ON:

See you there as soon as my (currently untrustworthy) legs decide to play nice. Soon!

May your happiness increase!

When I look around for the space where the irreplaceable Ken Peplowski used to be, I can console myself by saying, “Ken’s on the road to a gig in Valhalla. Or Samarkand. He’s got Murray and Ben with him, and some local cats. After that, a long residency in Shangri-La. Private plane, no buses. We’ll catch up soon.”

Here they are, so lovely, flourishing.

The beautiful photograph is by John Herr.

Ken Peplowski, clarinet, tenor saxophone; Frank Vignola, guitar; Benny Aronov, piano; Murray Wall, double bass; Tom Melito, drums. Bern Jazz Festival 1995. RING DEM BELLS / THE ONE I LOVE / MENINA FLOR / TIGER RAG / add Randy Sandke CALLING ALL CATS / STAIRWAY TO THE STARS (Peplowski out) / WRAP YOUR TROUBLES IN DREAMS (Peplowski back) / JOHNNY COME LATELY //

Working hard and playing delightfully. Ringing those bells.

May your happiness increase!

I hope readers will forgive the self-indulgence of putting myself first. I will aim for restraint in future. But after two surgeries, two hospital stays, and a stay in rehab that ate up February 2 – March 9, I am crowing about being alive and being home.

The arboreal photograph below is the view from my computer office / studio / JAZZ LIVES HQ is what I see if I turn my head to the left, as I often do.

And here’s a lovely and rare musical objective correlative from Ethel Waters and Joe Smith:

And since this is a page of celebrations, including the bosky dell to my left, Let us celebrate the more remarkable Dick Hyman, who turned 99 on March 8. Here he is with some heroic younguns, Randy Sandke, Rossano Sportiello, and Eddie Metz, at home in Florida, last month.

I would go on that jazz safari.

Maestro Hyman is a lyrical rover, a gracious wizard. But thirty-two bars of any performance will tell you more about his deep witty sweet imagination than I could in pages. So here are many bars, performed and captured at Jazz at Chautauqua, Friday night, September 20, 2002. The songs are glorious (or overplayed) standards, except for the obscure and lovely Fats Waller tune that impresario-scholar-benefactor Joe Boughton (Chautauqua his fest for us) and Dick had fun with: RUSSIAN LULLABY / I’M GOIN’ TO SEE MY MA / OVER THE RAINBOW / ALL GOD’S CHILDREN GOT RHYTHM. That we can hear and see these marvels now thanks to Bill Boughton and Sarah Boughton Holt.

Thank you to the OAO, more than I could write in a thousand blogposts. And thanks to everyone whose affectionate enthusiasm got me home. And while I was lying in rehab, counting the hours until I could be deemed worthy of escape, I listened to Maestro Hyman in the darkness. So a hug to the venerable gracious Floridian wizard.

Send plaudits, if appropriate, to JAZZ LIVES, c/o Bosky Dell, Bronx, New York.

May your happiness increase!

The vivacious music that follows comes from my laptop in the rehabilitation center, but to mangle Descartes, “Je blog, donc je suis.”

For Venuti and Lang and friends, unforgettable. Jazz at Chautauqua, Friday night, September 20, 2002.

MY HONEY’S LOVIN’ ARMS / SLEEPY TIME DOWN SOUTH / LIMEHOUSE BLUES / PRETTY TRIX //

Andy Stein, violin; Marty Grosz, guitar; Dan Block, reeds; John Sheridan, piano; Vince Giordano, bass saxophone; aluminum double bass; Arnie Kinsella, drums.

This music was made possible by the musicians, of course, but given a welcoming venue by jazz enthusiast and producer Joe Boughton. It is shared with us through the generous kindness of his children Bill Boughton and Sarah Boughton Holt. Presented here with gratitude and delight.

Lovely string music with the sweetest swing.

May your happiness increase!

Personal stuff first. I dedicate what follows to my magical wife, the OAO, who has been saving my life since April 20, 2021, without fuss, with grace and love and wit and power. I would not be here without her.

In this era of documentation, we like to believe that all can be known. But evidence is a tricky thing. I can be fairly sure that the music that follows was recorded on an aluminum disc at the home of Squirrel and Jane Ashcraft, Evanston, Illinois, sometime in the Forties. My ears tell that the soloists on this performance of Vincent Youmans’ TIME ON MY HANDS are Bobby Hackett, trumpet or cornet; Joe Rushton, metal clarinet. Squirrel may be the pianist. Bud Wilson, trombone, and Jack Howe, tenor, are possibles, as is Bill Priestley, guitar. Or Rosy McHargue and Jack Gardner, clarinet and piano.

“It would be nice to know for sure,” but if you asked me to trade the recording for an engraved scroll with all the data, I would be laughing at you.

The sound is distant, and no doubt someone hearing this will mutter, “I wish this had been cleaned up,” because not only do some of us live in the world where everything an be known, other live in a world where all recorded information is blazingly clear, every intricacy on display. I grew up in the paradoxical world where sometimes the most luxuriant embraces of sound and emotion are sonically imperfect. And I not only accept that but celebrate it. When your heartthrob writes you a love-note and leaves it on your pillow, do you criticize the script?

Do you say, “That hug was two seconds too short?”

So what we have is a group of like-minded dear people, worshippers at the shrine of Melody for its own sake, taking three choruses on a familiar and beloved ballad. No pretensions. No, “Let’s get lyrical and create music that someone, through the grace of one or the other Goddess, will savor eighty years later,” hardly. A blessing that they played with such sweetness, that it was captured, and that here it is. If you recoil from the sentimentality of my prose, I apologize. But I think that surprising musical interludes are what make life worth living.

I find this particularly evocative — think of it as the soundtrack for a Forties romance film — because I am sitting on the edge of the bed in a post-surgical rehabilitation unit, and I surely do have time on my hands. And Bobby Hackett is a deity.

The music comes from the collection of jazz enthusiast and producer Joe Boughton, who borrowed tapes from Squirrel, and we can hear it through the generosity of Bill Boughton and Sarah Boughton Holt. P.S. Some of this material was issued on a private lp, whose cover you see here. TIME ON MY HANDS was not.

And all I can suggest is one ruminative listening after another, the same way you would look at Monet or a Kandinsky slowly, from different angles. Or the way you might read a lovely paragraph or stanza, tilting your head, hearing the words resonate. The song and the musicians and the living-room deserve no less.

I forego my usual close: I hope you know it by now. May you have someone who saves your life. May you extend the same grace.

Our focus today is an unbilled player, in the background, making beauty with his cornet and nifty suspenders. I think he steals the show, although the singer has a great future.

Here’s where I began: some enrapturing music coated in Hollywood cliche:

from

Charlie_Parlato (1919-2007), born in Fredonia, New York, was a superbly talented “Hollywood studio guy,” who gigged both as trumpeter and ensemble singer with Kay Kyser, Jud Conlon’s Rhythmaires, and eventually the Lawrence Welk Organization for twenty-five years. If you watched Welk even casually, you would have seen and heard him. But his work on SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY struck me hard as coming directly from the Sinatra-Bobby Hackett collaborations of 1947 (BODY AND SOUL and I’VE GOT A CRUSH ON YOU) records never equaled. If the family name sounds familiar, his granddaughter is the fine singer Gretchen_Parlato.

The only distraction in that scene is the camera’s fascination with Burr, looming, where Burr moves from disinterest to interest, then to other emotions, as if he realizes that he has missed breakfast: I keep thinking of BILLY BUDD, but others may not.

The remainder of the film, even though Sinatra is in fine voice and the plot echoes his contract with Tommy Dorsey, I am in no way compelled to see. Readers might investigate here (Richard Brody, 2022).

But I will come back to SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY. How lovely it is! (I have no need to immerse myself in the squabble, “Is Frank Sinatra a jazz singer?”)

Just another of the precious things that mean so much. Your reading these posts means so much.

May your happiness increase!

.

Alice Spencer wants to make sure we feel what she and the song do. She is not about Pretending, but about Being. Her energy as a storyteller is based in her insistence on the truth. This comes through in eight bars: sometimes raw, always intense.

“Authenticity” is a minefield, but Alice never stands at a distance from the song.

She shone all through the 2025 Redwood Coast Music Festival, and dazzled us twice at the “Ladies of Song” set on the closing day. Alice had the best band: Duke Robillard, guitar; Marc Caparone, trumpet; Riley Baker, trombone; Jacob Zimmerman, alto saxophone and clarinet; Jake Sanders, guitar; Chris Dawson, keyboard; Sam Rocha, double bass; Josh Collazo, drums.

A SUNDAY KIND OF LOVE: yearning candor in swing, and not a trace of melodrama.

and here’s her seismic DON’T YOU KNOW?:

There’s a lot going on the world of Alice and friends. She’s investigating a new program of Billie Holiday songs from the Thirties, not the ones done to death. I can’t wait to hear her version of I”VE GOT A DATE WITH A DREAM. She appears (gloriously) on a new Brooks Prumo CD — details https://brooksprumoorchestra.bandcamp.com/album/good-bait. You can catch her at her regular Austin gigs, and of course she will be back at the October Redwood Coast Music Festival, lighting the rooms.

We’re thrilled to live on Alice’s planet, where the truth sounds so good.

May your happiness increase!

TEA FOR TWIO / CHANGE PARTNERS / LESTER LEAPS IN. Recorded in concert, New Jersey, June 7, 1982. John Bunch, piano; Warren Vache, Jr., cornet; Scott Hamilton, tenor saxophone; Michael Moore, double bass; Connie Kay, drums.

Timeless swing wisdom and feeling, across generations. Warren celebrated his 75th birthday two days ago, Scott is making rare music every day, and Michael’s bass solos on YouTube are marvels.

Nothing better.

May your happiness increase!

Photo by Lynn Redmile.

Two heroes — great singular improvisers and comic forces of nature: Marty Grosz, guitar, vocal; Ken Peplowski, clarinet . . . captured here at the Cleveland Classic Jazz Party, September 11, 2015.

Ken, alas, moved to another neighborhood not long ago; today, February 28, is Marty’s 96th birthday. And where is Horace Gerlach now?

May your happiness increase!

Talking of gratitude may have become a sentimental cliche, and in a world so skewed, it may seem ungracious, an entitled boast. But this, the briefest of blogposts, is to suggest that considering “the little things that mean so much” is a rewarding spiritual exercise. I have written on Facebook of a catastrophic February, with two surgeries, two hospital stays, a thousand blood-draws. I am writing now from a rehabilitation institution.

The list of “little things” that resonate now is too long, but the touch of the OAO’s hand. Free breathing. Cold water. A grin from the man across the hall, The absence of pain.

The sound of Teddy Wilson, playing his own song:

I hope your list of meaningful life-enhancements is long.

May your happiness increase!

Sometimes the simplest material allows for the more uninhibited improvisations. Here is some memorable hot music based on a pop tune from 1923, BARNEY GOOGLE, which no one would rank alongside Kern or Youmans. But its silly wide-open-spaces enable great freedom. And great goofy joy.

A touch of autobiography: I just got discharged from a superb hospital after twenty days. Now I am writing from a rehab: verdict to come. But I and you need some joy.

First, some reference points. “Barney Google” was a comic strip published in newspapers with great success beginning in 1919.

Four years later, the popularity of the character provoked a popular song, a huge hit:

It was so popular that Jones and Hare recorded it for other labels, as was the fashion: recordings of it on Columbia and Edison are on YouTube for those who just can’t get enough.

Some might think BARNEY GOOGLE an unlikely vehicle for jazz improvisation because of its simplicity: its structure, its harmonies. But those are the very qualities that make it memorable, whether you like it or not. It’s fun, and not just because of the comic lyrics.

I offer two versions, both delightfully hot, by a cast of California characters who are obviously enjoying themselves. The first is a group of musical friends billed for this occasion as “New Orleans Jazz Club of Northern California All-Star Band.” They are Jim Goodwin, cornet; Bob Mielke, trombone/vocal; Bob Helm, reeds; Ray Skjelbred, piano/vocal; Dick Oxtot, banjo/vocal; Squire Girsback, bass; Vince Hickey, drums/vocal. It was recorded by Marshall Kent on Mar. 15, 1970 in Santa Rosa, CA. Thanks to John Ochs, Hal Smith, and Robert Morgan for making the music accessible to us (it was only issued on a very hard-to-find lp).

And . . . in living color at the Breda Jazz Festival in 1978, with a few of the same heroes.

May your happiness increase!

I had heard of the bass-clarinetist Stefano Doglioni many times, but our paths didn’t intersect. Given the joyous energies he creates, on his own and with others, I have missed a great deal. Happily I was at Cafe Ornithology for a singular evening, and you can experience the results.

WOODY ‘ N YOU / WHEN I GROW TOO OLD TO DREAM / DANCING SUNBEAM / A FLOWER IS A LOVESOME THING / WHAT A DAY / PUT ON A HAPPY FACE / BLUES:

BIG FOOT / DEWEY SQUARE / IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT / JUST AS THOUGH YOU WERE HERE / LOVE CHANGES / MORE THAN YOU KNOW / FRANK GETS AN OSCAR:

May your happiness increase!

A dear interlude of musical and emotional grace, created in the moment.

Rebecca Kilgore, vocal; John Sheridan, piano; Howard Alden, guitar; Bob Barnard, cornet; Scott Robinson, tenor saxophone; Bob Reitmeier, clarinet; Bill Crow, double bass; Kevin Dorn, drums. The wonder that was Jazz at Chautauqua, the delicious musical cosmos created by Joe Boughton.

Here, a Friday-evening set on September 20, 2002. ALL I DO IS DREAM OF YOU / ‘T’IS AUTUMN / GIVE ME THE SIMPLE LIFE / HUMPTY DUMPTY HEART (duet) / GET OUT AND GET UNDER THE MOON / LET’S GET AWAY FROM IT ALL / DREAM //

This music was made possible by the musicians, of course, but given a welcoming venue by jazz enthusiast and producer Joe Boughton. It is shared with us through the generous kindness of his children Bill Boughton and Sarah Boughton Holt. Presented here by Michael Steinman for JAZZ LIVES (http://www.jazzlives.wordpress.com) with gratitude and delight.

What a blessing to be given these gifts of lyricism, so rare and graciously offered. And a continued blessing that we can revisit this art at our leisure.

May your happiness increase!

Those of us who live deeply in art have a responsibility to make sure that its creators of beauty are never forgotten. A medical document may say that the artists are no longer alive, but as long as we can drink deeply of what they have given us, they are merely moved to other neighborhoods.

I learned that the noble KEN PEPLOWSKI “died” earlier this week, but I prefer to think he returned home to Cleveland under an assumed name and is now running a farm for the dogs he loved so. Don’t bother to contradict me, please. It’s the only way I can deal with his and others’ absences.

Another way to deal with grief is to celebrate. Here is a session of lovely music from the last Cleveland Classic Jazz Party, performed on September 17, 2017, where Ken and his noble friends made exquisite sounds: Ehud Asherie, piano; Nicki Parrott, double bass; Pete Siers, drums.

This took place on a Sunday morning . . . such beautiful music under what jazz musicians consider adverse scheduling. The CCJP, by the way, was the final incarnation of the jazz weekends created and maintained for decades by jazz enthusiast and producer Joe Boughton.

Except for the final selection, a clarinet rampage, the mood is mellow, one of Ken’s great gifts to us. The songs are AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, LOVE LOCKED OUT, RECADO BOSSA NOVA, I’LL FOLLOW MY SECRET HEART, ALLEN’S ALLEY:

There will be more celebrations of Ken’s music to come. Let us never forget.

May your happiness increase!

Recently, I have had the sad duty of writing obituaries for three hero-friends: Rebecca Kilgore, Ernie Hackett, and yesterday Ken Peplowski. I don’t know about you, reading these posts, but I certainly need a corrective.

So here are four living musicians having a fine time in front of an appreciative audience, making fine music. No need for the elegiac note here: we celebrate these four!

Stephanie Trick, Paolo Alderighi, piano; Dawn Lambeth, vocal; Marc Caparone, cornet. And by the way, two married couples in singular and collective harmony, always a cheering sight. All of this good noise took place at the March 2025 Jazz Bash by the Bay in Monterey, California. And you can be sure I approve of this message. For once, I am pleased with my still photographs of the session, so here is a small deluge.

and

and

and

and

And now for the moving pictures and uplifting sounds.

OLD-FASHIONED LOVE (the quartet in an easy glide):

CAN’T WE BE FRIENDS? (Dawn and Stephanie):

VICTORY STRIDE (Marc, Stephanie, Paolo):

SKYLARK (Dawn and Paolo):

I’M IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Dawn, Marc, Paolo):

I’m ready for the world tour. But I would settle for more gigs and perhaps a CD. I can be reasonable, even though they are wonderful and deserving of great fame. Thank you so much, my four friends!

And a more salutary note: OLD FASHIONED LOVE and VICTORY STRIDE are compositions by the irreplaceable pianist and composer James P. Johnson. A monumental and delightful new biography — four decades of research but never dry — has just come out. Read all about it here.

May your happiness increase!

The Grim Reaper has been mighty busy of late. Rebecca Kilgore, Ernie Hackett, and now Ken Peplowski. In my case, add to that list a beloved family member, a delightful former colleague, and Catherine O’Hara. But the Reaper’s power is as double-edged as his scythe: he can remove the physical presences of the people we love, but in doing so, he reinforces their singularity. Missing them makes them powerfully, deeply unforgettable.

Here’s Howard Alden and Ken in 2008:

What follows is mostly reminiscence, with music attached.

I first encountered Ken on recordings with Howard, Marty Grosz, Mark Shane, Dan Barrett, Randy Sandke, and many others. Thankfully, he has a catalogue of recordings, live and in the studio, for many labels, including Concord, Arbors, Jazzology, and more — with Hank Jones, Charlie Byrd, Chuck Redd, Joe Wilder, Scott Hamilton, Dick Hyman, Bucky Pizzarelli, Frank Wess, Loren Schoenberg, Warren Vache, Johnny Varro, Rebecca Kilgore, Keith Ingham, Peter Ecklund, Tommy Flanagan, Jon-Erik Kellso, Michael Moore, Eddie Higgins, Ted Rosenthal, Barbara Carroll, Daryl Sherman, Carol Sloane, Hanna Richardson, Wycliffe Gordon, Nicki Parrott, Allen Lowe, Michel Pastre, Alan Barnes, Brian Lemon, Sean Smith, and of course as a member of Benny Goodman’s last band. Anyone who wants the complete Peps on disc has forty years of fine varied music to savor.

I first came to him in more swing-oriented sessions but he recorded all types of improvised music and was a star in the most varied contexts, unafraid, himself, thoughtful, jubilant. His clarinet playing was lyrical and spiky; his saxophone work was searching, singing, potent.

I first met Ken, or as I called him, “Mr. Peplowski,” at the September 2015 Cleveland Classic Jazz Party, the successor to Joe Boughton’s Jazz at Chautauqua. I had my video camera and after recording one set, I introduced myself and asked how he felt about video performances going public on YouTube. He was very polite to me but he was not happy with the idea: I understood this, because I was not paying him for his work and he did not have any control of what I would be posting. Like many musicians, he also felt it would undermine his income. I don’t remember how much of this came out in our polite conversation, but I said I would honor his wishes. He said I could post an excerpt or two, but I said that I would rather not. In all candor, beneath his politeness, I thought he would be someone I would not want to irritate, so I left him alone, although I did shoot a few sets then, and again in 2017, finding it painful to leave them undocumented.

The years passed, as they do.

I reviewed a CD or two of Ken’s on this site, but did not encounter him much in person. He was not shy on social media, so I read about his divorce and the loss of his beloved dog, his diagnosis of multiple myeloma. It was clear that he was suffering but even more so that he was determined to survive, strong mentally and emotionally even though he looked thinner. And he never lost his sometimes acerbic sense of humor and razor-sharp comic timing: the improvisatory brilliance continued when he was not playing, and even the well-polished jokes we had heard before gleamed.

Late in 2024, through the immense kindness of Joe Boughton’s children Bill Boughton and Sarah Boughton Holt, I was able to acquire a good portion of Joe’s recorded legacy: video and audio recordings of concerts on which Ken had appeared. Early in 2025, I wrote to him, explaining the situation and asking permission to post some videos on which he appeared. He wrote back to say yes, giving me details on his former reluctance and saying he was a big fan of my work, which as someone said once, “set me up for days,” knowing that Peps was reading JAZZ LIVES. The approval of my heroes is worth the world to me.

Encouraged by this, I bought a ticket to his mid-August performance at Mezzrow, where he had a trio with two long-time friends and heroes, Rossano Sportiello, piano; Kevin Dorn, drums. Ken was talking with Kevin when I went in and re-introduced myself. I had a present for Kevin, a dear friend since 2004 — a t-shirt with Louis as Superman — and Ken approved of it, so I asked his size and sent him one. I never got to see him wearing it, but he said he liked it and it fit. More I can’t ask.

I sat at the front table on the right and enjoyed music both soaring and soothing. The format was evocative of the great Benny Goodman Trio, but this was free-flowing individualistic music, admiring glances over the three shoulders at the Ancestors, but not recopied transcriptions. Here’s an excerpt from ROYAL GARDEN BLUES, with a story to follow:

You can watch the whole two sets https://www.smallslive.com/events/30439-ken-peplowski-trio/ and I promise you a delightful visit to Mezzrow: you will also notice a giant catalogue of live performances streamed, going back to 2010, I believe, featuring over 4000 musicians. A treasure box beyond compare.

But here’s the story: Ken’s comedic talents in fifth gear. Before the trio played ROYAL GARDEN BLUES, Ken took the microphone, with obvious pleasure, and announced it as one of the oldest songs in the repertoire (did he say it was recorded on a stone disc? I could be inventing this.) so old that Thomas Edison was the engineer. I was watching him to see where this fantasie-impromptu would go, when he suddenly turned to me and said, “Michael, you were at the recording session? How was Edison as an engineer?” I gulped and realized I was in the presence of true Catskills-mastery and that I had no time to improvise something at his level, so I said the truth, “He was no good, Ken. He couldn’t hear a thing.” Ken was pleased with this, raised his arm, and shouted “Security!!!” which provoked the expected laughter, and they went into ROYAL GARDEN with, as Marty Grosz says, Dispatch and Vigor.

I was pleased that I had survived the surprise moment in the spotlight without disgracing myself, and when the set was over, I thanked Ken, and said, “Hey, you could have let me know I was going to be part of the act. I would have prepared better material.” He grinned and said, “Don’t you know? You’re one of us now.” I have always been somewhat of an outsider, a civilian in the world of musicians, my nose pressed to the bakery window, so his words are ones I will carry in my heart always. Beneath the wise-assery there was immense kindness and welcome.

I was in a Manhattan hospital for an elective procedure (it turned out well and I am writing from home) when I learned of Ken’s death. When the nursing staff wakes you up every few hours to “check your vitals,” the medical euphemism for remaining nicely alive, if you are me, and surgery of this kind is a new experience, you check your phone and read emails and look at social media. I was horrified to read the news, and I confess my grief at the loss of someone I could now consider a friend as well as an idol was touched by the fact that I am older than Ken. I was unfortunately reminded of the New Yorker cartoon by Roz Chast, or someone reading the obituaries in the newspaper. In the midst of grief, I counted my blessings and mused on mortality.

Music. Here are three performances from the Cleveland Classic Jazz Party, September 2017 and September 2015. I have gotten permission from the musicians who like to be asked. First, two songs, one for Bix and one for Louis, by a truly stellar combination: Andy Schumm, cornet; Dan Barrett, trombone; Ken, clarinet; Scott Robinson, tenor saxophone; James Dapogny, piano; Howard Alden, guitar; Joel Forbes, double bass; Hal Smith, drums. There is the head of a nicely coiffed woman in the way, but this simulates the actual experience of being at a festival with a video camera, trying to be unobtrusive while getting the best shot. Had I sat in the first row, I would have been too close to the band to capture the entire vista. Critics can request a refund at the rear door. Listen for Ken, so tersely lyrical in his solos and so wisely empathic in his ensemble playing.

LONELY MELODY:

THE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET (a special request from the Reaper):

and the Dynamic Duo, Music and Japery While You Wait, No Job Too Big, No Job Too Small: Marty Grosz, guitar and vocal; Ken Peplowski, clarinet and commentary. Performing ALL MY LIFE at the Cleveland Classic Jazz Party:

A request for the Reaper. Take a seat. Send the scythe out for maintenance. Lower your hood. Relax by the pool with a pina colada. Have some grilled fish and a nice salad. You’ve fulfilled your quotas and more.

And, dear Peps, wherever you are. Know that being so loved transcends categories of mortality / immortality. We will remember you all our lives.

May your happiness increase!

Young Ernie and his father, a cornet player named Bobby.

I never met Ernie Hackett in person, and it surprises me now that in my Seventies jazz peregrinations in New York City, I never saw him play. But we did know each other online; I did a long interview piece with him which you can read here.

I was shocked and saddened to read of his death. In my mind, there is a large void where he used to be, and the thought that I will never see him on Facebook is painful. So even though I try to keep JAZZ LIVES from being a mournful necrology (I am not calling it JAZZ DIES) I want to celebrate Ernie here as a person and musician. And a personality. He was not timid. I never heard him be lukewarm about any subject.

I should point out that I first was aware of Ernie Hackett, not as Ernie, but as “Bobby Hackett’s son,” and since Bobby has been a hero since my childhood, I was fascinated by Ernie first as a way of being in touch with his glorious father. That didn’t stop, but Ernie soon, and rightly so, took center stage.

Ernie and his mother, Edna Hackett

I spoke to his niece, Michelle Kap, and present her affectionate recollections. (Michelle approves of this post’s title and the order of Ernie’s loves, by the way.)

“He was passionate about dogs and politics. Those were his two big things. Of course, music. The order depended on the moment. We grew up in the same house together. When I was three years old, my mother was pregnant with my brother, and our father left us, so we all moved into our grandparents’ house.

I remember my uncle, Ernie (even as a child, we never called him “Uncle”), was in a high-school band called The Freelancers. He played guitar. Our grandfather encouraged him, but he didn’t push him. I don’t recall him playing the drums until he went into the army, around 1968, when he was eighteen or nineteen. He enlisted, in hope that he wouldn’t get drafted and have to go to Vietnam, and as a result he was stationed in the army band in Virginia, playing the drums. When he came back, he was full-on being a musician. This was 1970 or 1971, and we were all on Cape Cod by then. He moved in with the family (I didn’t live on the Cape except for school vacations) for a number of years; there was a bedroom and bathroom downstairs. He was very active as a musician on the Cape, and then he moved to New York 1974 or 1975, and he worked a lot in the late Seventies at Eddie Condon’s and in Jimmy Ryan’s, on 52nd Street. He lived in Manhattan for a few years, and then he met his third wife, Dee, and moved to Georgia. She passed away twelve years ago. They were together twenty years. You know, Ernie was married three times, and at his first wedding, Tony Bennett came in and sang a song at the reception, said hello to everybody, and left.

He was crazy about his dogs. He talked to me about this many times. When his wife died, she was cremated, and he had her remains in his house. He also had the remains of a previous dog and a cat, and he made me promise I would bury all those ashes together with his. ‘Please make sure that the cat and the dogs go in the grave with us. Nobody’s got to know.’ We’ll plan a burial in the family plot in Chatham later this year.

It was an interesting house to grow up in, the Jackson Heights house, because I had no idea who these people were. To me, they were just Grandpa’s friends. I had no idea that Louis was famous! I remember he had a little dog named Trumpet.

Ernie was a collector of gadgets. Anything electronic. I’m sure he got that from my grandfather. Fifty different types of speakers. Electronic drums, electronic keyboard. Every kind of kitchen tool. Meat thermometers. Shavers and razors, nail clippers, and hair trimmers. Every dog toy! Hundreds. Leashes, collars. Ten coats for the dogs. Lots of music. Lots of Seventies rock. I remember as a teenager, I used to steal his records all the time. He used to tell me, ‘I don’t care if you take them, but don’t scratch them and put them back where you found them.’ We liked a lot of the same music. He was only nine years older than me. The end of an era.”

and her brother, Bob Traynor, whom I interviewed about his grandfather Bobby:

I remember living with Ernie most of my younger life. He would take me to hockey games at the Cape Cod Coliseum to see the minor league teams. He started getting into photography when we lived on the Cape and he taught me how to develop and print my own photos. He had all the equipment but it was set up on my ping pong table and stopped our ping pong matches until it could be moved. One night our dog got skunked and Ernie woke me up very late to help him give the dog a bath in tomato juice to get rid of the smell. (It helped a little!) My sister and I were trying to get him moved up closer to us to help him when needed, but he did love his place in Woodstock, GA.

Ernie always had great musician stories and he also met many musicians when he worked at Manny’s Music in Manhattan. I can confirm his love of gadgets as Michelle said, I think she found 23 remotes in his house after he passed.

I knew Ernie first the way one knows musicians, through sound. He was a model jazz drummer: steady, thoughtful, listening, enthusiastic when given the chance, but always supportive. So here are two examples of him as a working musician, on gigs in New Jersey, with Ed Polcer, Don Coates, George Masso, Bill Crow, Bobby Gordon, and Sam Margolis:

He always swung the band, so these songs are even more in his honor:

SWING THAT MUSIC

and IT DON’T MEAN A THING (IF IT AIN’T GOT THAT SWING):

And since Ernie spent so much happy time in the company of his beloved Hesston, this double portrait is appropriate:

I’ve chosen not to delineate Ernie’s political stance here, frankly because I don’t want to hear from naysayers. But his ethical position was generous and open-hearted, like the man himself. He spoke out for freedom, fairness, and justice: the same virtues that shape the music and performance he loved and created.

I don’t know what anyone’s vision of an afterlife is, but I hope Ernie is surrounded by barking and wagging, and when the barking dies down, the best music, reunions with the people who he loved and who loved him, and good stories. In an odd coincidence, today, January 31, is Bobby’s birthday. So we celebrate both father and son today. And my gratitude to Michelle and Bob for so generously sharing their memories.

May your happiness increase!

This is my friend Julie, the Bold Explorer, on her trip to Antarctica at the end of last year. I share it to show that I know people who venture from the computer. But more to the point: she says that Antarctica was warmer than the Northeast United States, where we live now.

One reaction to the cold is the layering of clothing, even indoors. Another is wistfully inspecting travel brochures for places where the temperature is always in the double digits. A third is liberal applications of hot music to the afflicted areas. No prescription; no co-pay, no need to show an insurance card.

JAZZ LIVES offers three fine homeopaths, world-renowned in the heating arts: Marty Grosz, banjo, guitar; Frank Chace, clarinet; Bill Priestley, cornet. The first two will be familiar to my readers; Priestley, less so. In his formal occupation, he was William Turk Priestley, architect. If you look him up under that name, you will read about Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright (here). But musicians knew him as guitarist-cornetist Bill, his last name sometimes mis-spelled as Priestly, who with his wife Cricket (“Crickie”) held musical gatherings at their house in Lake Forest, Illinois. Happily, their friend John Steiner recorded some.

Take as needed.

I NEVER KNEW I COULD LOVE ANYBODY (late start) / SWEET LORRAINE / THAT’S MY WEAKNESS NOW / IT LOOKS LIKE RAIN IN CHERRY BLOSSOM LANE / YES, WE HAVE NO BANANAS //

This comes to us from the collection of heroic jazz enthusiast Joe Boughton, shared with us through the kindness of Bill Boughton and Sarah Boughton Holt:

Feel warmer now?

May your happiness increase!

The Sages knew that rushing to get anywhere leads nowhere. The Italian Sages say “Festina lente,” which is “Make haste slowly.”

Here is that wisdom in action: a leisurely Saturday-night session at Joe Boughton’s weekend musical cornucopia, Jazz at Chautauqua, featuring Scott Hamilton, tenor saxophone; Joe Wilder, trumpet; Bob Reitmeier, clarinet; Bob Havens, trombone; Keith Ingham, piano; Marty Grosz, guitar; Jay Leonhart, double bass; Kevin Dorn, drums. If you feel the gracious guiding influence of Count Basie and those who have learned his wisdom, you would not be wrong.

ALL OF ME / I’M BEGINNIG TO SEE THE LIGHT / YOU’VE CHANGED (Hamilton) / BLUE CAPER (Scott’s choice, by Blue Mitchell):

Only sophomores on the track team want to get “there” as quickly as possible.

There will be more from the treasure-box created by Joe, who loved this music so very deeply. We can enjoy this in his name thanks to the generosity of his children, Bill Boughton and Sarah Boughton Holt.

May your happiness increase!

I’ve been on many quiet crusades, but one that I’ve been carrying out in these pages is to encourage people to give Vic Dickenson his due. Too many listeners and writers have been content to place him in a series of confining definitions: a “Dixieland” musician with a “sly” talent for double-entendre growling in traditional ensembles.

Vic told Stanley Dance that he loved melodies, but his art transcended playing the notes on the paper with proper respect. I would have you hear him anew as a great passionate voice — I use the word ARIA intentionally — when he was given free room to do so.

Here he is playing Jerome Kern’s YESTERDAYS, not his expected feature, with a band he was leading (again, something unusual): the “Mahogany Hall All-Stars,” who appeared at George Wein’s establishment in the Hotel Copley Square in Boston, Massachusetts. They broadcast on radio station WBZ in early 1953 with Vic, Doc Cheatham, trumpet; Al Drootin, clarinet; Claude Hopkins, piano; Al Morgan, double bass; Buzzy Drootin, drums.

Please put aside all that you’ve heard or read about Vic for the next four minutes. He will reward your attentive focus:

I’ve heard that Jerome Kern disliked jazz improvisations on his melodies. I think he might have put that aside to glory in the passion Vic brought to YESTERDAYS.

This jewel comes to us from the late jazz enthusiast, producer, and collector Joe Boughton, and is shared here thanks to Bill Boughton and Sarah Boughton Holt.

May your happiness increase!