Silly Jazz Article of the Month

[Randy Twizzle]

Belfast Telegraph columnist Walter Ellis visits some exotic NYC Jazz Clubs and puts his dictionary of 1930's slang terms to good use:

Certainly, there are basement bars all over Manhattan where you can bowl in around nine and catch skilled performers as they strut their stuff.

The pattern is unrelenting. The trio, or quartet, starts into a number. The lead soloist takes it away half-way through, and when he backs modestly away (unless he is on piano, in which case he turns around and smiles), the audience applauds.

As the evening wears on, the bass player and the drummer get their time in the spotlight, and they, too, are applauded. There is a lot of congratulation in jazz. If there is a female singer, or 'chirp,' the applause for her is loudest of all.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/fea...sp?story=677313

[Rosco]

Chirp?!

[Kalo]

There are some real howlers here.

Like the part where he describes the performers at Preservation Hall as "looking as if they might only recently have emerged from slavery"!

He goes on to call Wynton Marsalis "the Andre Previn of riffs." I kind of know what he's driving at, but why not just say "the Andre Previn of the trumpet"?

[AllenLowe]

we might say that that Belfast guy is the white Scott Yanow -

[BruceH]

Chirp?!?

[Christiern]

Allen Lowe: "we might say that that Belfast guy is the white Scott Yanow"

...who, in turn, is the male Leslie Gourse.