Chicago Smooth

Labor Day, Lakefront and Duke Ellington?

Chicago loves its jazz.  We celebrate it over the Labor Day weekend every year with a public festival on the lakefront.  And we have Duke Ellington to thank for it. 

The Duke’s death in the summer of 1974 sparked several Chicago musicians to stage a festival to honor his legacy.  They held it at the southern end of Grant Park near the museums in the old band shell.  The crowd was ten thousand strong.  It became an annual event, but by 1978 there were three different August jazz events being planned.  When confronted with the dilemma of issuing overlapping permits, a solution was proposed by the city to combine them all into a full week festival.  Starting with two days called Jazz Panorama, a tribute day for Ellington, one for John Coltrane and Wes Montgomery, the 29^th celebrating Charlie Parker’s Birthday, followed by a day for Blues and Swing and ending with a day without a title that featured Benny Goodman and Mel Torme, the Chicago Jazz Festival was born.

The Petrillo Music Shell was new and over 125,000 people attended the first Jazz Fest.  Putting it on Labor Day weekend and broadcasting portions of it on WBEZ and WDCB have helped it become a worldwide draw for fans of jazz.   

Grab your sunscreen and head to the Jay Pritzker Pavilion for this year’s edition of the Jazz Fest, now held in Millennium Park.  It’s some of the best free music around.  Hope to see you there!

For a full schedule, click here.

~Lydia Barnes ([email protected])

The Smooth Video of the Day:  The promotional video for the 2015 Chicago Jazz Festival.

 

Life in Middle August

They call this part of the year the "dog days."  When I was a kid, I thought it was because of the heat, when the only things dogs would do was find a shady spot, stick out their tongues and pant.  But that’s not the case.  It’s because of the influence of Sirius, the brightest object in the constellation Canis Major (Latin for the big dog).  Rising and setting with the sun and visible to the naked eye, Sirius was believed by ancients to have added its heat to that of the sun to make the days sultry. 

Here are some stars who have added their heat to the constellation of Jazz with birthdays in August. 

I want to start on Saturday, the Ides of August (the 15^th), but if I do I miss Karen Briggs on the 12^th.  She is the wonderful violinist who played with Yanni in the 1980s.  So we will cut cake in honor of her, Bobby Caldwell’s great vocals, Everette Harp’s sexy saxophone, David Benoit’s twinkling keyboards and Nick Colionne’s grand guitar.  

Or we could ask birthday boys Branford Marsalis and Gerald Albright to play a new arrangement of "Happy Birthday" that we will ask Wayne Shorter to write for the flumpet, a trumpet–flugelhorn combination that was specially designed for the late Art Farmer, between bites of cake and spoons of ice cream. 

Then, we need to get some pretty flowers for the late Oscar Peterson, Isaac Hayes, Count Bassie, Art Farmer, Diana Washington, Charlie Parker and Michael Jackson, the August born musicians who have left behind their music for us to enjoy. 

Then, just like that, the month is over.  The dog-star has trotted off to play in the sky for another twelve months and we have to look ahead to September.

~Lydia Barnes ([email protected])

The Smooth Video of the Day:  August 18 birthday boy David Benoit teams up with veteran vocalist Jane Monheit on a new track.

 

A Lion in Music

We think about them frequently, even write songs about them.  Just ask Andreas Vollenweider while he’s "Dancing with the Lion" or Gregory Porter when he sings "Be Good," which is subtitled "Lion’s Song."  You can stretch the point with Warren Berhardt’s "Felinicity," because a lion is a really big cat.  I can even argue that an entire form of music is named for one.  Reggae music come from the Rastafarian religion of Jamaica, which worships his highness Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia, who was known as the Lion of Judah.  Bob Marley, one of the most famous proponents of both Rastafari and Reggae wrote him a song called "Iron Lion Zion."

And why is this important to jazz fans? Because August 10^th is World Lion Day.  It’s getting a lot of publicity this year because of the Cecil the Lion tragedy, and that is a good and bad thing.  Bad because Cecil is dead and the remaining lions in the wild are endangered, good because it is raising our consciousness.  The range of the Lion was once this entire planet.  He was absolutely the King of the Beasts.  Today, they are confined to a small patch of Asia and several places in Africa.  Sad legacy for such a magnificent creature. 

And what is contributing to the endangerment of the Lion, the Tigers and the Bears?  Sad to say, it’s the growing population of man.  We tipped the scale in our favor decades ago without providing large enough places for the wild things to live.  Now we are lamenting their demise. There are over thirty organizations fighting to turn the tide for all the big cats, especially the Lion.

Hopefully, we will be able to continue to sing to them (from a safe distance) and not to their memory. 

~Lydia Barnes ([email protected])

The Smooth Video of the Day:  We all know the tune, but how many of us have actually seen Andreas Vollenweider play "Dancing With the Lion?"

 

I'm Late, I'm Late

Patti Austin, one of several August birthdays

For four very important dates!

I missed the birthdays of some very influential people (jazz and otherwise) who were born in the early days of the month of August. 

On the 1st of August, we needed to acknowledge Francis Scott Key.  Not jazz, I know, but you have to admit that "The Star Spangled Banner" is one of the best songs to hear.  It reminds us that we are living in the land of freedom, the place where jazz was born, raised and perfected.  Without his song, we wouldn’t be talking about our songs.      

Then, on the 3rd, Tony Bennett celebrated his 89th birthday, crooning his way into our hearts.  Keep singing Tony, we love you.  

These days the 4th of August is newsworthy because it is the birthday of our Commander in Chief – President Barack Obama.  But if he were alive today, I am sure that it wouldn’t edge out the fact that this day is shared by the great Louis Armstrong (1910 – 1971).  If he were still around, I'm pretty sure Louis and his golden horn would be blowing out a chorus of Happy Birthday to the President while POTUS did the same thing to the candles on a big White House cake.    

Luckily, there isn’t another birthday to mention until the 9^th, when Whitney Houston (1963 – 2012) shares the date with Jack DeJohnette, a Chicago jazz man who switched from piano to drums and played with Miles Davis, Sonny Rollings and Pat Metheny.  Or the 10^th of the month Patti Austin shares the date with Leo Fender, the inventor of the solid body Fender guitar, but I have done a blog piece on her, so that gives me some wiggle room.  Looking at my Jazz Birthday Calendar, it means I have between six and sixteen days to catch up with the other August artists that I want you to know about.  

So, here are my best wishes to them all and my sincere apology for being late.  Like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, I’m off to do my research because I’m late!   

~Lydia Barnes ([email protected])

The Smooth Video of the Day:  Pat Metheny, who'll be blowing out candles on August 12.