1. Messin' Around
2. Tell Me
3. Hindustan
4. Ain't Nobody Got the Blues like Me
5. It Had to Be You
6. My Honey's Lovin' Arms
7. Mecca Flat Blues
8. Bugle Boy March
9. Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me
10. Forever More
11. Dreaming the Hours Away
12. Wildman Blues
13. Oh Baby
14. Linger Awhile
15. Oriental Man
16. I've Been Floatin' Down That Old Green River
Personnel:
Earl Scheelar - Leader, 2
nd cornet, clarinet, vocals (tracks 4,
11, and 16)
Tom Barnebey - Music director, lead cornet, trombone, vocals (tracks 3, 9,
10, 11, and 16)
Pete Main - Clarinet, alto sax
Glen Calkins - Trombone, bass clarinet
Virginia Tichenor - Piano
Jeff Green - Banjo, plectrum guitar, vocal (track 6)
Jim O'Briant - Tuba
Lisa Gosnick - Ukulele, vocals (tracks 2, 5, and 9)
Recording details - none given.
Playing time: 78m. 48s.
The leader of this group, Earl Scheelar, has been living and playing
clarinet and cornet in the San Francisco Bay Area for many decades now. A
dyed-in-the-wool New Orleans stylist, at one time he opened a jazz club in
Berkeley, California, the "New Orleans House," serving New Orleans cuisine
and featuring his own band for the entertainment-a venture which lasted for
only about a year, unfortunately. For some 16 years he also owned an
apartment building in the French Quarter of New Orleans, visiting there each
year and relinquishing ownership of it prior to Hurricane Katrina, and
during that decade and a half he organized an instrument-give-away
foundation for needy New Orleans kids. Since the 1960s he has led several
bands in the San Francisco area. Given all of that, it would be fair to say
that he has paid his dues.
Scheelar's musical organizations during the last half century, most of
which recorded once or twice, include the New Orleans House Jazz Band, the
Funky New Orleans Jazz Band, and the Zenith Jazz Band, as well as the Zenith
New Orleans Parade Band. This current band, the New Zenith Jazz Band, is a
slight departure from the old, having no drums, two cornets, and, of all
things, a ukulele, along with the more usual instrumentation.
Almost all of the musicians in the band are well-known in the San
Francisco Bay Area traditional jazz scene, most playing with other local
bands-several with more than one-as well as this one. A brief CV is given
for each in the liner notes. The band currently has a weekly residency at
The Hornbill Restaurant, which features Burmese cuisine, in El Sobrante, an
East Bay suburb of San Francisco. It has a pleasant ambience and boasts a
commodious dance floor. Unsurprisingly, therefore, most of the tunes on this
CD are appropriately taken at dance tempos, but then again, such tempos were
also the norm for New Orleans bands as they played for dancing, not just
listening, at such venues as Luthjens Dance Hall, Artesian Hall, San Jacinto
Hall, et al.
Other than
New to Me (which has lyrics composed by Tom Barnebey),
the tunes on this CD will probably be familiar to most fans. As well as
being danceable, they are all eminently listenable as well. In true New
Orleans fashion, emphasis is given to collective improvisation-no written
scores for this band-but attention is also paid to some of the finer points,
such as dynamics-witness
Messin' Around,
Hindustan, or
Linger Awhile-and varying textures. The latter can be seen and
heard in an interesting trading of fours between the two cornets on
Hindustan and in engaging duets of the two clarinets in
Mecca
Flat Blues and
Oriental Man, as well as that on
Ain't
Nobody Got the Blues like Me between the cornet and banjo, all the
others dropping out,.
Some half of the tracks contain vocals, but fortunately the quality of
these is quite good, which is not always the case when musicians lay down
their horns and reach for the microphone. A particularly enjoyable moment
comes with the harmonized duet on the infrequently heard lyrics of
Dreaming the Hours Away. The band's featured vocalist, Lisa
Gosnick, has a pleasant voice, not heavily laden with vibrato but with just
a touch at the end of phrases, as can be heard on her three tracks. (Since I
was unable to discern her uke playing, I cannot comment on it.)
For me there were several high points on this disc. One was hearing one of
my favorite tunes,
Ain't Nobody Got the Blues like Me, composed by
the late San Francisco Bay Area cornetist and banjoist. Dick Oxtot, which
sadly is not often given an outing by trad bands.
Mecca Flat Blues
is another, for the clarinet duet mentioned above and also the
guitar-plus-stop-time solo. The following track,
Bugle Boy March,
taken at a sprightly tempo, is a solid rendering of this march and, even
without drums, comes off well. To mention just one other, hearing the seldom
offered lyrics for
Dreaming the Hours Away, and their being given
such an interesting harmonization in the duet, was a delight.
This disc provides a very entertaining 78-odd minutes of music and song
and gives a good glimpse of what is currently available in trad jazz circles
in the San Francisco area. The contact information for Earl Scheelar is
aescheelar@lmi.net or 510-843-9862.
Bert Thompson
CD Reviews
Own label - no number
