Traveling Jazz Fans - Show Us Your Flyers

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Over the years, especially during the years 1995-1999, when I had a job requiring me to travel all over the world, I accumulated flyers/ads/schedules from Jazz clubs all over. I recently retired and was going through my old work folders and found a stash of them. I'll scan and post them and see if I was there with any of you.

First up was from one of my first trips to New York City, which was for vacation and not work.

Next up is a memorable one. It was the only time I got to see Teddy Edwards. It was a weird place... set up as a restaurant first & foremost (they required that I order a meal) and they acted like I was a weirdo for requesting the table near the stage. I was the only one clapping for the band, which was pretty sad as Teddy was playing his ass off.

Once you look at it, you can see why I tried getting my boos to let me go out a week earlier and make it a three week stay.  He didn't buy my story about wanting to visit some other customer sites in the LA area. I'm still kicking myself as I never did get a chance to see Horace Tapscott or Red Holloway play live. Heck, I would've liked to have made it 4 weeks and caught Maupin's band too..

This one is hard (impossible?) to read but I couldn't get the scan any clearer. It is a scan of a folded up schedule for the Goteborg Jazzdagar's October 23-28, 1996 schedule. Sadly, I was not able to go to the one show on here that I really really wanted to see and that was Arne Domnerus with Bengt Hallberg on the 28th, as work intruded and I had to go out with a customer (who was not into jazz).

[Kevin Bresnahan]

This next scan is near and dear to my heart... I loved traveling to Germany and it's one of the few things I missed during those many years of travel. I used to fly into the Munich Airport and stay in Freising, which is where the Munich Airport is actually located. The taxi drivers hated when I jumped in and had them drive me to downtown Freising instead of downtown Munich, as the fare was about $50 Euros cheaper.

Freising is a great little German town, with the Weinenstephan brewery/beer garden on the lonely hilltop in the town center and at least one time I visited in May of 1997, a little Jazz club that had a really good bari sax player playing with Victor Alcantara's quintet the night I stopped in.

This next shot is something I've posted on my Facebook account. It was from a trip to Taiwan and I managed to meet up with someone I had communicated with on the rec.music.bluenote newsgroup. He bought me tickets to see Zorn's Masada for two of the four nights they played at the tiny Crown Theater in Taipei. I had a blast.

My wife was really freaked out that I was going to meet someone I only knew from the Internet. She had nothing to worry about. I had so much fun with David Toman the first night that he asked me to crash at his apartment the second night to avoid the train fiasco of that first night. That was a story in itself...

What the heck, here's the story... So I was staying in Hsinchu, a city about 45 minutes by train from Taipei. I went to the first night's shows and David dropped me off at the train that would bring me back to Hsinchu. Three unfortunate things happened next. The first was that the signs for the stops changed from Chinese/English to only Chinese, which I don't speak. Luckily a young woman on the train with me spoke a little English, so she was able to tell me when to get off the train. The second problem was that when I got off the train at about 2:30 AM, the station was pitch black and there wasn't a taxi to be seen. I could see my hotel so I figured I could walk... which bring me to the third problem. As I started walking (in my leather work shoes), I saw a bunch of shady looking dudes start peeking out from doorways and alleyways. Once I saw a couple jump out and start following me, I put on the jets. Luckily I was still young then.  Scared the shit out of me, I tell you.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

By 2006, I had a job at Analog Devices which didn't require me to be on the road all the time. That said, I still had to make a few trips. One was to Hong Kong to visit one of Analog Device's assembly houses. While there, I caught the Tomio Morota Sextet at a really nice club.

As an added bonus, this Hong Kong Jazz club had Erdinger Hefeweiss on tap. One of my favorite beers.

[HutchFan]

These are really cool, Kevin.  Thanks for sharing!   

 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I picked up a CD from Tomio at the show.

There was a small club in Brooklyn that I went to several times during their short existence. I saw Trio 3 there. I saw James Spaulding there. And I saw Mike Ledonne with a killer quintet there. Great little club. Tiny really. I managed to grab their schedule the time I saw Mike Ledonne's band. I wish I had grabbed the one from James Spaulding's show.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I went to the Dallas area several times when I worked for ATN Microwave from 1995-1999. I was able to catch local legend Marchel Ivery quite a few times. One time was at the Sambuca Jazz Cafe in Addison, which was an extra cool place to see Jazz as it was at the end of the airport runway and there were these huge windows behind the stage, so the landing airplanes would light up the background of the performers every now & then. It wasn't as nice as the Jazz Connection, which was another tiny place with weird seating. I saw Marchel with Joey DeFrancesco on organ while sitting on a couch.

Jim would have to verify this... but I am almost positive I saw him with Quartet Out during this trip at a place called The Brick Room. I only remember that it was a brick room and it made the music very loud in there. I wasn't able to stay long and I never got a flyer from it.

Another thing I always tried to do when I went to DFW was go to the Flying Saucer Beer Emporium. I liked that place. Lots of interesting beers. I imagine it's got hundreds on tap these days.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

1 hour ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I went to the Dallas area several times when I worked for ATN Microwave from 1995-1999. I was able to catch local legend Marchel Ivery quite a few times. One time was at the Sambuca Jazz Cafe in Addison, which was an extra cool place to see Jazz as it was at the end of the airport runway and there were these huge windows behind the stage, so the landing airplanes would light up the background of the performers every now & then. It wasn't as nice as the Jazz Connection, which was another tiny place with weird seating. I saw Marchel with Joey DeFrancesco on organ while sitting on a couch.

Jim would have to verify this... but I am almost positive I saw him with Quartet Out during this trip at a place called The Brick Room. I only remember that it was a brick room and it made the music very loud in there. I wasn't able to stay long and I never got a flyer from it.

Another thing I always tried to do when I went to DFW was go to the Flying Saucer Beer Emporium. I liked that place. Lots of interesting beers. I imagine it's got hundreds on tap these days.

If you're curious what was on their beer menu back then, here it is... but might be tough to read.

In Seoul, there was (and still is apparently) a nice club called "All That Jazz". I was a little nervous going in to see a show there due to the name of the club, which is also the name of a movie which had nothing to do with Jazz (music). I didn't get a schedule from them, but I did meet the manager, Mr. Jin, who gave me a business card. I also grabbed a beer coaster.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Another club that I went to frequently but never got a slyer from was the Blue Note Club in Taipei. No matter the name, this club is not affiliated with the Blue Note chain of clubs. It's a cool place, which is why I went often, but the cigarette smoke back in the 90s was really bad. I don't know if they still allow it in there today.

I don't know what year this is from, but I think it's from 1994. I wish I could remember what show I saw from this list of great shows. For some reason, I think it was one of the shows Mike Ledonne did with Eric Alexander on Tuesdays. But looking at it, it may have been Harold Mabern.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

1999 was the one year I lived near enough to New York City that I could head in if I wanted to skip work the next day. This is from the Spring of 1999. I saw Andrew Hill and his sextet play there March 13, which I know because Andrew signed an LP and dated it. It was really one of my more memorable Jazz shows. They recorded it for release but there was some sort of technical glitch, so they recorded them again and that was what was released.

For a short time in the summer of 2004, Amesbury, MA had a nice pub downtown that offered live Jazz nights. You know I had to go when pianist Alex Minasian brought Curtis Fuller in for a show. This is timely finding this, as Alex is coming to Jimmy's in Portsmouth, NH tonight and I'm sitting right up front with my two daughters.

[Dan Gould]

Not quite on topic but I did receive a variety of West End flyers from Vanderbilt out of the Phil Schaap archive but if Kevin prefers actual saved flyers from venues visited, I will refrain from posting the best ones.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

2 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

Not quite on topic but I did receive a variety of West End flyers from Vanderbilt out of the Phil Schaap archive but if Kevin prefers actual saved flyers from venues visited, I will refrain from posting the best ones.

Post away... I tried making the thread topic have a "hook", but flyers are flyers, no matter where you get 'em. I think people would like to see them, even if they're not scans of shows you've actually attended.

I just happened to have a file folder full of them that I kinda tripped upon this morning, so I thought people here would get a kick out some of them.

And maybe the stories too.

[Dan Gould]

well what people would probably really enjoy are some of the 1940s-50s flyers found in Leonard Gaskin's Papers at the Smithsonian.

 

[Dan Gould]

A favorite, for obvious reasons - and it just dawned on me that the Phil Schaap Jazz Collection has two recordings from the October 1982 Rhythm 'n' Jazz group engagement, which was making its debut under that name and featured Bob Neloms.

And check out the Percy photo credit.

[JSngry]

I think it was called The Brick House? Loud as fuck and not always the best audiences.

Or maybe it had something to do with blood, the name? All I can recall is that it was not really fun to play there.

[Dan Gould]

 

 

 

[kh1958]

5 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I went to the Dallas area several times when I worked for ATN Microwave from 1995-1999. I was able to catch local legend Marchel Ivery quite a few times. One time was at the Sambuca Jazz Cafe in Addison, which was an extra cool place to see Jazz as it was at the end of the airport runway and there were these huge windows behind the stage, so the landing airplanes would light up the background of the performers every now & then. It wasn't as nice as the Jazz Connection, which was another tiny place with weird seating. I saw Marchel with Joey DeFrancesco on organ while sitting on a couch.

 

The Jazz Connection was pretty short-lived, located on Lovers Lane and Inwood.  I also saw Marchel Ivery there with Joey DeFrancesco. It may have been one night only so perhaps we were there on the same night.

Sambuca in Addison is also long gone. I recall seeing Marchel there, opening for David Newman, and another time, Terence Blanchard.

[JSngry]

The Jazz Connection was a trip. A serious fan ran it and thought it would be a great idea to combine a jazz record store and a jazz nightclub into one unit.

Well, it was a great idea, but not for Dallas.

But I did pick up a couple of Sonny Simmons CDs the one time I played there!

Sambuca can stay gone afaic. Whatever light they might have had when they opened died pretty quickly. NOT nice people. Musicians - WORKING jazz musicians, mind you, cats who need the work, actually organized a boycott of the place. So they went to smooth jazz soloists playing over tracks.

Not nice people.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

5 hours ago, JSngry said:

I think it was called The Brick House? Loud as fuck and not always the best audiences.

Or maybe it had something to do with blood, the name? All I can recall is that it was not really fun to play there.

I'm pretty sure the CD I have of "Welcome to the Party" was bought there that night. I couldn't stay long because it was late and just so loud in there.

[JSngry]

Hey. I had a hard time staying in there because of the volume!