Recent Releases by Via Veneto Jazz and Jando Music

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Matteo Pagano is the owner-operator of Via Veneto Jazz, a Jazz record label that began operations in 1993. He works very closely with the producers at Jando Music You can locate more information about their respective backgrounds by visiting their websites - http://www.viavenetojazz.it/index.html www.jandomusic.com  

Through the medium of compact discs, Matteo, along with his colleagues at Jando Music, helps bring the work of Italian Jazz musicians to a wider audience

For Jazz labels such as Via Veneto Jazz, which is based in Rome, Italy, distribution can be a real issue, but Matteo and Jando Music have taken a number of steps to make his recordings more widely available: their  latest releases can be acquired through
http://www.forcedexposure.com/Labels/VIA.VENETO.JAZZ.ITALY.html  you can also find his music at Amazon.com both as CD’s and Mp3 downloads and through Marco Valente online retail source - www.jazzos.com. With the Euro falling back to Earth in relation to the US dollar, buying CD’s from European retailers is not the pricey proposition it once was.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles celebrated “Via Veneto Jazz Week” in March of 2015 by posting a series of reviews and audio files of that label’s latest releases. Here’s a follow-up highlighting CD’s they have issued during the second half of 2015.

Enzo Pietropaoli

Yatra Vol. 3

Via Veneto Jazz - VVJ-100

Enzo Pietropaoli| double bass

Fulvio Sigurtà| trumpet

Julian Mazzariello | piano

Alessandro Paternesi| drums

Bassist Enzo Pietropaoli Yatra Quartet’s  latest album Yatra Vol. 3 features more music by a quartet that was formed in 2011 to play a series of concerts in India. The name “Yatra” derives from the Hindu-Urdu word  meaning “journey.”   

The group’s two previous works have earned high praise:  "Yatra" was named by the JazzIt readers  as  "Best Album of 2011", Enzo Pietropaoli "Best Bassist of 2011" and  Fulvio Sigurtà "Best New Talent of 2011" for Musica Jazz and lastly, in 2013,  Yatra Quartet was voted by Musica Jazz  - Jazz Awards as "Best Italian Group of the Year".

Yatra Vol. 3  is based on a repertoire of ten pieces with five original tracks written by Pietropaoli and five tributes to old and new musical "experiences", specifically: Stevie Wonder, Janis Joplin, Tom Waits, Blur and a song co-written by Gianni Morandi and Daniel Bacalov.

Ameen Saleem

The Groove Lab

Via Veneto Jazz - VVJ-103

Ameen Saleem | electric bass - double bass

Cyrus Chestnut|piano - rhodes – wurlitzer - organ

(David Bryant on tour)

Jeremy Clemons | drums - percussions

(Gregory Hutchinson on tour)

Stacy Dillard | tenor and soprano sax

(Marcus Strickland on tour)

Roy Hargrove|trumpet - flugelhorn

(presence on tour to be confirmed)

Gregory Hutchinson|drums

Craig Magnano| guitar

Mavis Swan Poole| vocals

Ramona Dunlop | vocals

(Mavis Swan Poole on tour)

Ameen Saleem stands out as one of the most talented bassists on the international jazz scene, widely recognized for his passionate style and unique sound. Although grounded Mainly in Jazz (Ameen is a member of the Roy Hargrove Quintet and Roy Hargrove Big Band), his music cannot be strictly defined as pertaining to a particular genre but, rather, as a uniquely personal style that spans a vast musical geography.

"The Groove Lab" explores new sonic territory,  incorporating a broad range of sounds and influences that blend to form an eclectic musical palette; a sort of neo-soul, where jazz, soul and funk come together. Ameen embarks on this musical journey with a stellar cast of musicians, all of whom are characterized by a creative, individual and expressive musical talent, stretching out beyond the boundaries of jazz.

The band includes two female vocalists with varying approaches, trumpet and flugelhorn, tenor and soprano, different pianos (acoustic piano, Wurlitzer, Rhodes, organ), guitar, electric bass and double bass, two drummers, both remarkably talented and with unique styles. The richness of colours and instruments allow Ameen and The Grove Lab band to freely glide into funk beats and jazz vibes, bluesy solos and rock electric guitar solos, bound together by remarkable empathic group interplay and innovative ways to work within jazz idiom.

Luca Nostro

Are You OK?

Via Veneto Jazz - VVJ-102

Luca Nostro|guitar and arrangements

Donny McCaslin|tenor sax

John Escreet|fender rhodes

Joe Sanders|double bass

Tyshawn Sorey|drums

Jando Music and Via Veneto Jazz present

Are you OK? was recorded by Luca Nostro in New York, together with some of the most innovative on the American and world jazz scenes: Donny McCaslin, John Escreet, Joe Sanders, Tyshawn Sorey.

The New York music scene is a constant source of inspiration for Luca, whose compositional approach focuses on building lively, flowing musical structures, interwoven with short and punchy themes, bordering on pop. The improvised performance develops from a flow of fresh and simple melodic patterns and rhythmic riffs, elaborately entwined with an exalting interplay between the musicians.

The music of Are you OK? is also inspired by works of Steve Reich, Frank Zappa, John Adams, Michele Tadini and Jacob TV, that Luca performed together with the Parco della Musica Contemporanea Ensemble (PMCE) to which he belonged for five years. Luca Nostro has also collaborated and recorded with Scott Coley, Antonio Sanchez and Mark Turner, among others.

Allesandro Galati

On A Sunny Day

Via Veneto Jazz - VVJ-105

Alessandro Galati  – Piano

Gabriele Evangelista – Double Bass

Stefano Tamborrino – Drums

On a Sunny Day, the new work by Alessandro Galati, features piano trio music that is structured around simple and melodic and singable songs. Yet, each time you listen to them, you’ll discover sensations because the melodic themes allow for an ever-changing underlying harmony.

The charm of On A sunny day" is its duality between simple and complex, between the familiar and innovative."

Michael Rosen

Sweet 17

Via Veneto Jazz - VVJ 104

Michael Rosen – Tenor Sax

Lage Lund – Guitar

Ralph Alessi - Trumpet

Domenico Sanna – Piano

Matt Penman – Double Bass

Bill Stewart – Drums

At 17, one’s dreams are alive and vivid and there’s always hope that one day these may come true, as they did for American saxophonist Michael Rosen. Rosen began studying the cello at the age of seven for two years before moving to the piano, and later at eleven he moved to the saxophone.

In the following years, he was first alto saxophone with the Middle School and High School Big Bands and received numerous state and local "best Soloist" awards. Initially, his interests lay more towards “progressive” groups such as Yes, Led Zeppelin, and Talking Heads, but when in 1985 Michael Rosen moved to Boston to study at the Berklee College of Music with renowned teachers such as Gary Burton and George Garzone, where he started to cultivate his soaring passion for the music of Charlie Parker, Joe Henderson, Miles Davis, Stan Getz and John Coltrane, and many other jazz artists who since then have been the main source of his inspiration.

Rosen has been living in Italy for almost 30 years and spends most of his time between Rome and London, highly active in the musical circles of both capital cities.

Today, after 35 years of international success with 9 CDs as a leader, over 200 as a sideman, and having collaborated with leading artists of the day such as Bobby McFerrin, Sarah Jane Morris, Mike Stern, the Orchestra della Scala, and countless other American and European musicians, the seventeen-year-old boy with long and disheveled hair, now at the height of his artistic career, returns to New York, his hometown, to record his new music together with a stellar cast of jazz musicians.

Sweet 17, as with all albums of the saxophonist/composer, leaves ample room for melodic beauty, fluidity and expressiveness, and introduces the more dynamic, modern and evolved compositions that Rosen has written so far, reflecting all the experience gained from the late 80s to date. Accompanying him on this musical experience are highly-acclaimed musicians such as: Lage Lund (guitar), Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Domenico Sanna (piano), Matt Penman (double bass) and Bill Stewart (drums).

It can be truly said that Michael Rosen’s dream, his "Sweet 17", came true and this album is the evidence.

Saxophone legend David Liebman’s comment about the CD:

“Michael Rosen has produced a very high level recording with wonderful sidemen and great tunes. The immediate feeling I got was of complete honesty and conviction, traits that we all look for in the best art. Good job!!”

Tap Dancing - As American As Apple Pie, Baseball and Jazz

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Louie Bellson, Buddy Rich and Papa Jo Jones are three of my favorite drummers - all were excellent tap dancers during the early years of the careers in music. There were probably a number of other fine tap dancers among the drummers who came out of the Swing Era, too.

The discerning ear could often pick up aspects of the basic drum rudiments in the tap dancing of Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor.

If you are interested in the origins and history of tap dancing and, like me, always wondered why one of America’s great creative inventions fell into obscurity, I think you’ll find Brian Seibert’s What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing [ Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 612 pages; $35] to be a great read. Here’s the November 21, 2015 review of the book which appeared in the November 21, 2015 edition of The Economist.

“It is not the world’s most sophisticated art form, but tap dancing is a big part of American history. Closely associated with jazz music, tappers use the sounds of their shoes hitting the floor as a form of percussion. According to one dancer, tap was “one of [America’s] two really indigenous forms”, with jazz the other. As late as the 1950s that statement certainly held true. Tappers like Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Ginger Rogers are icons of America’s economic and military strength of the 1940s and 1950s. But tap also has a dark side: for many people, it has clear racist overtones.

This complex history needs unpicking. However, studies of tap dancing are few and far between. It is a tall order to write about any sort of dance from before the 20th century; the historian must rely on drawings and eyewitnesses, rather than videos. Tap and its ancestors are particularly difficult to research. They have typically been the preserve of the poor and downtrodden, about whom there are fewer historical sources than for rich folk. A history of tap dancing is thus what E.P. Thompson, a Marxist historian, called a “history from below” at its most extreme.

Enter Brian Seibert, a dance critic for the New York Times, who offers a sweeping tour of tap in What the Eye Hears. He looks at how tap grew out of dances brought over by Irish immigrants and African slaves. An early form originated in Lancashire, England, where plenty of Irish people lived. During the industrial revolution, factory workers wore clogs to protect themselves from the cold. Inspired by the beat of pistons and pipes, “they rattled their feet to keep warm,” Mr Seibert writes — and liked the sound.

Tap also drew inspiration from slavery. Africans, transported across the Atlantic alongside Irish people who had been press-ganged into naval service, swapped moves and rhythms on deck. Plantation-owners in America’s south organised “jigging contests” to improve morale, recalled James Smith, a slave in the 1860s. One of Smith’s companions could “make his feet go like trip hammers and sound like [a] snare drum”. His jigging “sure sounds like an ancestor” of tap, suggests Mr Seibert.

As tap dancing became more popular, it held an ambiguous relationship with American racial politics. On the one hand, tap dancing (and an associated act, minstrelsy) could reinforce the subjugation of black people, especially when whites used burned cork to darken their faces and then impersonated them. Discrimination ensured that white performers (like Astaire, Kelly and Rogers) took the lion’s share of the fame, even though, in the words of Miles Davis, a jazz musician, “they weren’t nothing compared to how [black] guys could dance.”

On the other hand, black performers, excluded from most well-paying jobs, could make decent money by tap dancing. And when they stood up straight onstage, points out Mr Seibert, they were not only assuming the correct posture for a dance but challenging the notion that they should look servile in the presence of white people.

Such interpretations are helped along by Mr Seibert’s excellent writing. He liberally employs the lingo of whatever period is under discussion. He describes one actor in the post-Depression era as specialising in playing “hayseeds” (a derogatory word for a yokel); later he uses the word “co-ed” (an outmoded term for a female university student); and he could raise modern eyebrows by talking of “coloured folk” and “Negroes” in eras when those terms were standard. This may be risky, but Mr Seibert’s writing is so engaging, transporting the reader back in time, that the linguistic tricks seem justified.

However, the book is not without its flaws. It has no theoretical backbone, though at times Marxism bubbles through. Indeed, for large chunks of the book Mr Seibert seems to have no argument whatsoever. With more than 600 pages at his disposal, he has plenty of space for rich historical descriptions. But after the umpteenth biography of a now-forgotten tap dancer, the reader may feel a little tired.

The latter part of the book discusses an interesting conundrum. You might have thought that tap dancing, a generally cheery art form with more style than substance, would have been perfectly suited to the television age. In 1948 less than 1% of American households had a TV; by 1957, two-thirds did. But at almost exactly the same time, tap went into terminal decline. Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (pictured), perhaps the greatest “hoofer” ever, died in 1949, and by 1955 journalists were asking: “What happened to the great tap dancers?”

Mr Seibert’s book helps solve this puzzle. Unlike the music of Elvis Presley and the Beatles, tap cannot be blasted into people’s homes and across stadiums. Instead, like jazz, to be any good it requires an intimacy and an edginess that is hard to sustain in an era of mass consumerism. You need characters like Robinson, who danced with a bullet from a cop’s gun lodged in his arm; the filthy nightclubs where they tapped to fund their next heroin fix; and where the regulars loudly mocked dancers whose technique was a little off (“you’re hurting the floor”). Mr Seibert’s study has its limitations, but you would need a heart of stone for his enthusiasm not to rub off on you.”

The New [Jazz] Couriers

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Born in Northampton England in 1944, Martin Drew was a powerhouse drummer who performed with the original Jazz Couriers, a quintet fronted by tenor saxophonists Ronnie Scott and Tubby Hayes in the late 1950’s. Over the years, he was a fixture at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club and worked with many American Jazz musicians who played at the now-famous London nightspot.

Martin also put in a stint as pianist Oscar Peterson’s drummer in the 1990’s.

From about 2000 until his death in 2010, Martin led The New Couriers, a quintet made up of Mornington Lockett on soprano and tenor saxophones, Jim Hart, vibes, Steve Melling, piano and Paul Morgan on drums.

Alyn Shitpon logged this review of the group on the Online Times and Martin uploaded the video at the conclusion of this piece which was made by the quintet during a 2007 performance at the Pizza Express in London.

“New Jazz Couriers

by Alyn Shipton

Jazz

Pizza Express Jazz Club, 3 May 2004

****

For less than two years, between 1957 and 1959, the tenor saxophonists Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott fronted one of the most powerful and innovative groups in British jazz. As well as providing a platform for some celebrated jousting contests between the two, the Jazz Couriers generated a sizeable library of original arrangements that have largely gone unheard since.

Hayes died in 1973, but before his own death in 1996, Scott found another sparring partner in the shape of Mornington Lockett, whose tenor playing has something of the same fiery brilliance as Hayes.

In 2001, Lockett and Scott's former drummer Martin Drew, put a band together to revive the Couriers repertoire. Initially, the quintet used a similar two-saxophone front line, but recently this has changed, and at its first Pizza Express appearance of the new year, with vibes player Jim Hart teamed with Lockett.

Hart is more familiar to audiences as the most recent drummer with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, but his vibes playing is a revelation. Not only does he have the speed and dexterity to shadow Lockett through the fastest hard-bop tempi, but he combines the precise mallet-work of a masterly percussionist with free-flowing invention. Many vibraphonists are stylistically in thrall to Milt Jackson, Bobby Hutcherson or Gary Burton, but while Hart occasionally uses Burton's four-mallet approach, his phrasing owes more to the saxophone playing of Scott and Hayes than to other vibes players.

Hart's best playing was on a lovingly transcribed arrangement of Stella by Starlight, where he took what had once been the lead saxophone part, and stretched it into a long, fascinating vibes solo. He was on equally good form on Azule Serape, a piece written by another British vibes player, Victor Feldman, for the 1950s Cannonball Adderley band.

What transforms the New Couriers from being just another tribute band is the intensity of its playing. The dark-suited Lockett, the muscles of his face knotted in concentration, projects energy and fire. His dexterity and rapidity of fingering suggests not only the sound of Hayes but, on Clark Terry's Opus Ocean, brought to mind the high-speed pyrotechnics of Johnny Griffin.

Such playing draws out the best in Drew, who is such a ubiquitous feature of the London scene that he can be forgiven for coasting from time to time. But there was no sense of coasting here. His forceful beat, lightness on the cymbals and subtle turnarounds propelled the band with a vigour that would have done the original Couriers proud.”

My Man George, Wettling ... that is: A Tribute

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"George Wettling had great enthusiasm for life and for music. And, undoubtedly, he was the most important drummer in the Chicago style of jazz."

—JEFF ATTERTON

"A good band is based on good drums and good piano. Give me a good piano and George Wettling and I'll give you a good band any

time."

—EDDIE CONDON

“George Wettling had his own way of doing things. But his roots were quite apparent. Like a number of his contemporaries, he was genuinely inspired by the music of the New Orleans jazz pioneers. His love for jazz in general — the New Orleans style and its Chicago offshoot in particular — was so intense that he built a life around them. Even in his last days, the fire burned brightly. ‘Some guys get old and tired and get out of Jazz,’ he noted. ‘I'll never do that. Hell, man, Jazz's been my whole life.’

His favorite drummers were Baby Dodds, the classically inventive New Orleanian who also influenced Gene Krupa and Dave Tough; Zutty Singleton, another marvelous New Orleans drummer; and others, including Harlem's George Stafford, Benny Washington (who played with Earl Hines), Tubby Hall, Ben Pollack, Chick Webb, and Krupa. But Dodds was his man; you could hear it in his playing.

Wettling began in the manner of most drummers — he heard the drums and was captivated. ...

Wettling had a fine touch, ample technique, and a distinctive sound on the snare drum. He was a good listener and responded inventively to ensembles and solos. He would change the background behind each soloist, adapting, giving and taking, building, serving as the time center and as another interesting voice in the ensemble. …

Because he was a fine reader of music, a very flexible drummer, and an excellent tympanist, Wettling held a variety of jobs, including several in radio and TV. For approximately ten years, 1943-1952, he was a staff man at ABC Radio. But he devoted the major portion of his time to bringing fire and intensity to small bands, most of which were traditional.”

-BURT KORALL, Drummin’Men

“De même que Dave Tough était un amoureux de la littérature, George, lui, se passionnera pour la peinture - d'où sa grande ouverture d'esprit. Il est, en effet, très important pour un artiste de pratiquer d'autres modes d'expression que le sien afin d'élargir le champ de ses connaissances et d'affiner sa sensibilité. Cette culture à maintes facettes est nécessaire pour alimenter et approfondir l'art dans lequel on est spécialisé.

“As Dave Tough was a lover of literature, George Wettling was enthralled with painting - hence his open mind. It is indeed very important for an artist to practice other forms of expression than his own in order to expand the scope of his knowledge and sharpen his sensitivity. This culture of many facets [i.e.: a broad background in arts and letters] is required to power and deepen the art in which one specializes.”

- Georges Paczynski, Une Historie De La Batterie De Jazz

I owe drummer George Wettling [1907-1968] a huge debt of gratitude, which may sound like an odd compliment from someone who is essentially steeped in modern Jazz drumming.

But if it hadn’t been for George’s tutelage, which I came by indirectly through countless hours of listening to his classic Jazz recordings, I would have missed out on one of the happiest gigs of my life

George was one of the young white Chicagoans [many of whom attended Austin High School in Chicago’s West Side] who fell in love with Jazz as a result of hearing King Oliver's band (with Louis Armstrong on second cornet) at the Lincoln Gardens in Chicago in the early 1920s. Oliver's drummer, Baby Dodds, made a particular and lasting impression upon Wettling.

Wettling went on to work with the big bands of Artie Shaw, Bunny Berigan, Red Norvo, Paul Whiteman, and even Harpo Marx: but he was at his best on (and will be best remembered for) his work in small 'hot' bands led by Eddie Condon, Muggsy Spanier, and himself. In these small bands, Wettling was able to demonstrate the arts of dynamics and responding to a particular soloist that he had learned from Baby Dodds.

Wettling was a member of some of Condon's classic line-ups, which included, among others, Wild Bill Davison, Billy Butterfield, Edmond Hall, Peanuts Hucko, Pee Wee Russell, Cutty Cutshall, Gene Schroeder, Ralph Sutton, and Walter Page.

Listening to George's playing, and to other “Chicago-style” drummers like Gene Krupa and Dave Tough, I realized that what they were doing was essentially phrasing 2-beat New Orleans or Dixieland Jazz with the 4/4 time feeling that came of age in the Swing Era. The music was so alive and I just really enjoyed everything about it.

So when the opportunity arose to join a Traditional Jazz Band at a club in Glendale, CA, a suburb of Los Angeles, I jumped at it.

As Grover Sales explains in his seminal Jazz: America’s Classical Music, provides the historical context for the evolution of Traditional Jazz:

“Five years before the arrival of bebop, a New Orleans revival was afoot, fueled by the mounting resentment of purist white critics and fans against the heretical sophistication of Ellington, Tatum, Hawkins, Teddy Wilson, and similar modernists who they believed had tainted the purity of jazz by injecting European antibodies into what had been an incorruptible native folk art. Since history assures us that jazz from its earliest beginnings was a mixture of every cultural transplant to the New World, European as well as African, such notions seem quaint today. But these notions were cherished as articles of faith by keepers of the flame like French critic Hugues Panassie, who insisted that bebop was "degenerate noise" and a short lived fad that lay wholly outside the "true" jazz tradition. This position found its fullest expression in The Heart of Jazz, by William L. Grossman and Jack W. Farrell:

Much of Dizzy Gillespie's bop ... is characterized by a nonsensicality of content, an end result Armstrong never intended but which came from an almost inevitable consequence of the departure . . . from traditional values and meanings. Ellington . . . might help find a way to perpetuate the eternal values in New Orleans jazz while expanding the idiom, but his musical imagination turns to the theatrical. He is, indeed a sort of jazz Wagner. He has the same sort of dramatic feelings about Negroes that Wagner had about Germans.

The New Orleans revival got off to a modest start in 1940 when collector Heywood Hale Broun issued recordings of veteran New Orleans blacks in quavering versions of blues and parade music of their youth around the turn of the century. The following year saw the beginning of white revival bands in San Francisco, when Lu Watters and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band copied the instrumentation, the tunes, and as far as they were able, the style of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band recordings made twenty years earlier. By the time bebop was in full bloom dozens of white revival bands were thriving throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and in England where a fever for "trad" (traditional) was rampant among the youth, including some of the founders-to-be of British rock.

The revival brought elderly blacks out of retirement—Bunk Johnson, George Lewis—and provided work for young whites — Turk Murphy, Lu Watters, and England's Chris Barber. It also forced modernists like Earl Mines, Jack Teagarden, and clarinetist Pee Wee Russell reluctantly into the dixieland camp during a doctrinaire era that split the jazz world into two warring factions. It is significant that, without a single exception, no young blacks could be found participating in the revival movement either as players or as listeners. They would as soon be seen chomping a watermelon on the front steps of city hall as partaking in what they scorned as "old-time slave, Uncle Tom, minstrel-man jive." Tempers ran high as lifelong friends and colleagues Hugues Panassie and Charles Delaunay stopped speaking because of bebop. Fistfights broke out in Parisian cabarets where Dizzy Gillespie performed, punctuated with cries of, "You dare to call this music!" The jazz press abounded with hate-ridden jeremiads about the "modernist degenerates of bebop" and the "moldy-fig reactionary revivalists," reminiscent of the doctrinal fury of sixteenth century Catholics and Protestants.

In retrospect, the revival produced foolish rhetoric but much also of lasting value, as did the ragtime revival three decades later; it rescued from obscurity a long-neglected style of collective improvisation and an imposing repertoire of excellent tunes. The best of these revival bands, Wilbur de Paris's New New Orleans Jazz (Atlantic 1219), exudes a vitality that bears repeated hearings today, but the same cannot be said for most revival players venerated to sainthood by their white idolaters, some of whom launched a serious campaign to run Bunk Johnson for the presidency. What seems most remarkable about the revival movement is the emotional heat and religious fervor it unloosed—and why.”

I didn’t know anything about any of these Camps or Schools or Schisms, all I knew was that for three nights every week from 9:00 PM until 2:00 AM, I got to play classic New Orleans tunes like That’s A Plenty, Muscrat Ramble, St. James Infirmary and some later adaptations of this style in tunes like China Boy, Hindustan, and Wolverine Blues in a hot Chicago-style or Traditional or whatever Jazz band made up of trumpet, trombone, clarinet, piano, bass and drums [aka Me!] and it was a blast.

At first I was greeted with some hesitation by the older guys mainly along the lines of “He’s too young to know much about this music;” He’s probably a Bebopper;” “He doesn’t know any of the tunes.”

But thanks to George Wettling, I more than held my own.

With few extended solos, most of the tunes lasted only 3-4 minutes so that meant that we played a bunch of songs each set, sometimes as many as 15 a set totaling around 60 a night. I had a ball. Loved every minute of it.

My chops loved it, too; as my hands got stronger, my wrists were able to relax thus increasing my speed and power.

I added some heat and sizzle to the the usual four-bar drum breaks or “kickers” that help serve as tags to take most tunes out, but I made sure that I kept my bass drum doing four-beats to the bar so that the “old timers” could count when to come back in.[Grins].

And I owe it all to George Wettling.

Mention his name today and all you get are blank stares; very few drummers have ever heard this style of Jazz drumming. But in fairness, when they are introduced to it they light up like the proverbial Christmas tree and make comments like: “Listen to what that Dude is doing with accents off a press roll;” “His time is so bouncy - he makes the music come alive!;” “What a snap and pop he brings to his back beats.”

Here’s more about George from Richard M. Sudhalter’s Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945.

“George Wettling had been (with Tough and Krupa) part of the original Chicago circle and, like them, spent most of the '30s playing in big bands. His were the brushes backing Bunny Berigan's vocal on the best-selling "I Can't Get Started," his the steady but non-intrusive beat that lifted the bands of Artie Shaw, Red Norvo, Paul Whiteman, and others. A well-schooled musician, he'd worked regularly in radio and commercial recording studios.

But Wettling seemed happiest by far in the small, unfettered jam groups which were Eddie Condon's specialty. Overshadowed to some degree by Krupa's flamboyance and Tough's sheer brilliance, Wettling more than matched them in his ability to unify and steer a rhythm section. Like Krupa, he'd learned by listening to Baby Dodds, Ben Pollack, and other pioneers and had retained the flavor, the ability to blend into an ensemble. Wettling's small-group work, with Condon and countless others, is remarkably subtle in its sense of mood and pace, its control of a finely calibrated sense of abandon. In Burt Korall's authoritative words:

"His time was firm; it bubbled and danced. His breaks had an inner life and logic. His solos were well-crafted bursts of energy. Wettling had a fine touch, ample technique, and a distinctive sound on the snare drum. He was a good listener and responded inventively to ensembles and solos. He would change the background behind each soloist, adapting, giving and taking, building, serving as a time center and as another interesting voice in the ensemble.”

His propulsive drumming enlivens hundreds, even thousands, of records, and (hose with Condon are among the best. It's Wettling's accented press roll, a Baby Dodds legacy, that carries Bud Freeman to the very edge of anarchy on the Commodore "Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland," Wettling's drive that sends the nor-I mally demure Bobby Hackett careering through the final ensemble of the uptempo blues "Carnegie Jump," Wettling's and Jess Stacy's quiet prodding that gets Pee Wee Russell rocking happily on "Rose of Washington Square."

Wettling was a master — some would contend the master — of that overused and frequently misunderstood hallmark of so many "dixieland" performances: the four-bar end-of-performance drum break. Following a final tutti, especially at faster tempos, it's a kind of eight-bar melody reprise, the drummer taking the first four bars and the band returning, all pistons firing, to finish out the cadence. In some bands it becomes a sixteen-bar reprise, drummer and ensemble taking eight apiece.

Done right, it functions as both tension release and "kicker" in the journalistic sense: the punchy last line that leaves the reader's senses sharpened, tingling. Some drummers — Cliff Leeman, Nick Fatool, Ray McKinley — have understood this and done it with masterly finesse. Depending on the player, that means either a display of technique, a witty or imaginative "four" in the bebop sense, or even (Fatool is outstanding at this) a melodic paraphrase.

But in George Wettling's hands this modest device became a small-scale work of art. Again and again he'd seem to hurtle out of an ensemble and into the break with a force, an irresistible momentum, that swept the band right along with it. There was no sense of an ensemble stopping for the drummer to do some little trick before the horns returned: a Wettling break was part of the action—in a way it was the action.

Examples, a few among dozens: "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise" (from Brother Matthew, ABC-Paramount), "I've Found a New Baby" (Eddie Condon's Treasury of Jazz, Columbia), "Runnin' Wild" (Dixieland in Hi-Fi, Columbia /Harmony)—which also offers a nimble full-chorus Wettling solo; "China Boy" (The Roaring Twenties, Columbia).

Perhaps the definitive example of Wettling's ability to energize a band is on a ten-inch LP issued by Columbia in 1951 under his own name. It's a Condon unit, of course, with "Wild Bill" Davison, Edmond Hall, and other regulars. Each of the eight titles works steadily, inexorably, to a climax of drive and almost demonic energy. Wettling's four-bar break at the end of a swaggering "Memphis Blues" employs a kettledrum to great and humorous effect. "Collier's Clambake" (basically the chord sequence of "St. James Infirmary" at a medium-bright tempo) starts at a high intensity level, Davison punching out the kind of virile, aggressive lead that earned him his nickname. Even by the standards of Condon groups, "After You've Gone" is extraordinary. Like "Clambake," it opens hot: "They sound as if they've been playing the number for five minutes, heating up to this pitch, before turning on the microphones," pianist Dick Hyman has remarked. That's largely Wettling's doing. He hits it hard and keeps cranking things up, through solos by Sullivan, Hall, and trombonist Jimmy Archey (Condon's guitar strong and audible behind them), to a stomping final ensemble.

This is no random collection of seven men playing together: it's a bond, a team, component parts fused into a splendid performance engine fueled by Wettling and cornetist Davison; bars 13-16, for example, are a furious ensemble explosion, Davison tearing up to his high E-sharp and cascading down over four bars, to be deftly caught by Wettling's bass drum "thwack" on the last beat of bar 16.

(Among Wettling's fans was the great American abstract painter Stuart Davis, whose brand of modernism was as stubbornly individualistic as the styles of the jazzmen he liked to hear. The two men struck up a friendship, and before long the drummer, a gifted amateur painter, had become a Davis student. By 1950 he'd mastered a style which, though strongly influenced by his teacher, was skilled and vigorous on its own, winning him several well-received exhibitions _ in the '50s. Adorning the Columbia album cover was a photograph of the band, superimposed on a Wettling painting representing the same scene. It's good work, strongly in the spirit of such jazz-influenced Davis canvases as "The Mellow Pad," 'Rapt at Rappaport's," and "Something on the Eight Ball," from the same period. Though Pee Wee Russell's paintings later attracted more publicity, it is Wettling who is the superior craftsman.)