Still Strummin' - and Hummin - at 100: celebrating Coleridge Goode

Jamaica-UK jazzer Gary Crosby  is presenting a special interactive concert on Friday 21 November at the Purcell Room as part of this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival – Coleridge Goode: A Celebration.

It’s a tribute to the legendary Jamaican double bassist, Coleridge Goode, who celebrates his 100th birthday at the end of this month (29th). The occasion will be marked by a concert combining live music, conversations, literary readings, photography and film, 

 

Gary Crosby(left) with Coleridge Goode

 Joining Crosby on stage will be Byron Wallen(trumpet), Aleksandra Topczewska (alto sax), Omar Puente (violin), Alex Ho (piano), Shirley Tetteh (guitar), and Moses Boyd (drums), and a panel of guest speakers including the beautiful vocalist Elaine Delmar, broadcaster and jazz historian Alyn Shipton, saxophonist Denys Baptiste, biographer Roger Cotterrell, and Goode family friend Colleen McIntyre. The speakers will offer insight into Coleridge’s career and, sharing personal memories, shine a light on a life in jazz that began a few months after the outbreak of the First World War.Chairing the panel, and weaving it all together will be journalist and broadcaster Kevin Le Gendre.

Goode is one of the most important musicians ever in the history of jazz and jazz bass. He worked with so many musical luminaries from Stéphane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, to George Shearing and Joe Harriott, Shake Keane to Leslie ‘Jiver’ Hutchinsonto John Mayer. He even played for the late British Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson at 10 Downing Street. He also featured in the Ray Ellington Quartet famed as the house band on BBC Radio’s irreverent comedy programme, The Goon Show that featured Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe.

In addition to his contribution as a player, Coleridge is credited as the person who came up with the idea of the double bass pickup to amplify the sound of the instrument, marking a major development in the evolution of bass performance.

Crosby first met Coleridge in Earl’s Court around 1980 when he was working in a West African restaurant across the road from a club where he used to play. 

He describes the bass man as incredibly generous towards us younger musicians, always happy to share information on the history of jazz in Britain. He  was especially excited about his work with the great Joe Harriott – "Coleridge is the last surviving member of Harriott’s innovative Quintet  – and my conversations with him inspired me to conceive a concert in tribute to the saxophonist as part of the London Jazz Festival some years ago."

"Do come along to Coleridge Goode: A Celebration on Friday 21 November and join me in celebrating the 100th birthday of the consummate Lord Of The Lower Frequencies. Sadly, he is now too frail to attend in person, but we hope to record the concert for Coleridge so he can enjoy listening back to it when we celebrate with him on his birthday. And guess what? Though age may have forced him to lay down his bass, you can still hear him scatting along to music whenever it gets to the bass solo!"

Sounding Dizzy

he was known to be a bit of a clown in his heyday, but John Birks Gillespie has left a serious musical legacy. Bebop. Afro-Cuban. The United Nations Orchestra are but a few of the gems. There was his uptruned trumpet bell, now copied by adherents the world over. And who could forget those bubblegum cheeks.

But beneath the jocularity was a master musician and a man with serious concerns for all humanity. Though his 1964 US presidential bid started out as a stunt, Dizzy soon took it seriously. His agenda did have some wacky items, but he was a champion for free health care (and free education)   long before anybody ever heard of Obama. see this link for more http://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/before-colbert-there-was-dizzy-gillespies-1964-run-for-the-presidency/

Our good friend, the Petchary http://petchary.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/dizzy/   did pretty all the legwork but kindly allowed us to share her post in honour of the late trumpet legend's birthday 

At the Monterey Jazz Festival there is a venue called “Dizzy’s Den.” It’s named after the one and only Dizzy Gillespie, who would have been 93 years old today (October 21). Dizzy died in 1993 at age 75. But today Google did something delightful, a great doodle with Dizzy’s famous inflatable cheeks, puffing out as he played his trumpet with verve and gusto.

Google's delightful Dizzy doodle

John Birks Gillespie was born in 1917 in Cheraw, North Carolina.  His father was a band leader and music was all around.  He learnt to play piano at age four, and trombone and trumpet by age twelve.  Music was fused into his being from a very early age.  He made his first recording, “King Porter Stomp,” with the Ted Hill Band in the late 1930s.  He went on to join Cab Calloway‘s band the “Cab Jivers”, but their relationship was sour, ending in a nasty little fight in which a knife “came into play” over a spitball thrown on stage.   Calloway was a bit of a bully, it appears.

Dizzy looking as sweet as pie with a cartoon picture of his boss Cab

But that’s just a naughty piece of gossip.  Let’s just state it plainly:  Dizzy was one of the “kings of bebop.”  No doubt about that.

One other nice fact:  He met his wife Lorraine in 1940 and they were together until his death.  Their only daugher, Jeanie Bryson, is a jazz singer and is currently working on a “Dizzy Gillespie Songbook” in honor of her Dad.

The lovely Jeanie, Dizzy's daughter

“Salt Peanuts.”  ”A Night in Tunisia.”  Jamming with Charlie Parker and John Coltrane in smoky jazz clubs.  There is too much to write about his career.  He became involved in Afro-Cuban jazz, a genre which is really still flourishing, and became close friends with the Latin trumpeter Mario Bauza.  He discoveredArturo Sandoval while traveling in Cuba.

In 1989 Dizzy gave 300 performances in 27 countries and 100 cities in the U.S.  Amazing energy.  Other little facts about the great Dizzy:

Did you know he became a follower of the Baha’i faith in 1970?  No more knife fights or drinking after that.

He was the inventor of the “bent” trumpet – which apparently came from someone sitting on it.  But he liked the sound.

The ineffable Dizzy, with his famous puffed cheeks and his bent trumpet

Above all, there was his serious musicianship mixed with a kind of brimming-over humor.  Just beneath the surface.