Jazz, blues and nostalgia, by Sjaak Roodenburg.
Today we will hear Ruby Smith – the unknown niece of Bessie Smith -, a trumpet player who played like the early Miles Davis all his life, a tragic second Charlie Parker, and a big band legend who dissapeared into thin air.
Furthermore, the melancholic Tony Fruscella – the trumpet player who was called ‘the Bix Beiderbecke of modern jazz’ and who is said to have showed guided Miles Davis and Chet Baker the way to ‘cool jazz’ – , and Jabbo Smith, once a threat to Louis Armstrong’s hegemony, but booze and women reduced him to a footnote in history. Also one of the most important white New Orleans jazz musicians, clarinet player Leon Roppolo – for the last 27 years of his life his brilliant solos were only to be heard within the walls of the institution where he was admitted.
Next we will go on with clarinet and baritone saxophone player Ernie Caceres – in the trio of his brother, violinist Emilio Caceres, playing a swing version of Dvorak’s ‘Humoresque’-, blues singer Lil Green – with a moving version of a song outshined by the million-seller Peggy Lee made of it-, the ‘top hatted tragedian of jazz’ Ted Lewis, Earl Bostic, Frank Morgan, Frank Trumbauer, Dick Wilson, Bob Gordon, Brew Moore and Hot Lips Page. Perhaps these are forgotten names, but their music is unforgettable.
