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Bebop Spoken There

Art Blakey: "You [Bobby Watson] don't want to play too long, because you don't know they're clapping because they're glad you finished!" - (JazzTimes, Nov. 2019)..

The Things They Say!

Hudson Music: Lance's "Bebop Spoken Here" is one of the heaviest and most influential jazz blogs in the UK.

Rupert Burley (Dynamic Agency): "BSH just goes from strength to strength".

'606' Club: "A toast to Lance Liddle of the terrific jazz blog 'Bebop Spoken Here'"

The Strictly Smokin' Big Band included Be Bop Spoken Here (sic) in their 5 Favourite Jazz Blogs.

Ann Braithwaite (Braithwaite & Katz Communications) You’re the BEST!

Holly Cooper, Mouthpiece Music: "Lance writes pull quotes like no one else!"

Postage

15848 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 15 years ago. 855 of them this year alone and, so far, 53 this month (Sept. 18).

From This Moment On ...

September

Thu 21: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 21: La Malbec Orchestra @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm.
Thu 21: Merlin Roxby @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Ragtime piano. A 'Jar on the Bar' gig.
Thu 21: Linsday Hannon: Tom Waits for No Man @ Harbour View, Sunderland. 8:00pm. Free.
Thu 21: Ray Stubbs R & B All Stars @ The Schooner, Gateshead. 8:30pm. Free.
Thu 21: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman's Club, Middlesbrough. 9:00pm.

Fri 22: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Fri 22: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 22: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms, Monkseaton. 1:00pm.
Fri 22: Brief Encounter @ Bardon Mill Village Hall, Northumberland. 7:00pm. Tickets: £10.00. adv from 07885 303166; £12.00. on the door. Chris & Veronica Perrin improvising to a screening of the 1929 'Jazz Age' silent film Piccadilly (Dir. Ewald André Dupont).
Fri 22: Paul Edis & Graeme Wilson + Three Tsuru Origami @ Jesmond United Reformed Church, Newcastle. 7:30pm. A Newcastle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music event.
Fri 22: Crooners @ Tyne Theatre, Newcastle. 7:30pm.
Fri 22: Abbie Finn's Finntet @ Traveller's Rest, Darlington. 8:00pm. Opus 4 Jazz Club.

Sat 23: Tyne Valley Big Band @ Tanfield Railway, Gateshead. 2:00-4:00pm. Free. A '1940s Weekend' event.
Sat 23: Jason Isaacs @ Stack, Seaburn. 3:30-5:30pm. Free.
Sat 23: Andrew Porritt & Keith Barrett @ Cullercoats Watch House, Front St., Cullercoats NE30 4QB. 7:00pm.
Sat 23: Michael Woods @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free. A 'Jar on the Bar' gig. Country blues.

Sun 24: Musicians Unlimited @ Park Inn, Hartlepool. 1:00pm. Free.
Sun 24: More Jam @ The Globe, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free.

Mon 25: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Mon 25: Michael Young Trio @ The Engine Room, Sunderland. 7:00pm.

Tue 26: Paul Skerritt @ The Rabbit Hole, Hallgarth St., Durham DH1 3AT. 7:00pm. Paul Skerritt's (solo) weekly residency.

Wed 27: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Wed 27: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 27: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm.

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Observations on a book: Pete Hamill - Why Sinatra Matters.

There are books, and then there are books and then there are more books.

Some books you read, enjoy, then  put on the shelf where they gather dust until, eventually, they go into the charity bag.

Other books you wonder why you bought them in the first place, maybe an unexpected, unwanted gift. Whatever. However, there is also that magical moment when, you stumble across a book that may have begun life in one of the former categories but, like the moment when you discover the girl whose pigtails you once pulled at school no longer has braces on her teeth and is now wearing a bra, things change.

This is that book. there have been countless books on Sinatra, I have a shelf full of them, most of which are gathering dust.

Not this one. Written just after Sinatra's death in 1998 it's about the great man and yet it isn't. The highs and lows, the loves and the Mob are in there, neither glorified or brushed over, more as a dusky background to an amazing life.

The book opens in 1970, or thereabouts. The author is sitting in the backroom of a late night bar, with Frank, sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, Jilly Rizzo and a few of the few who ever got close to the greatest singer of his era. Outside it's raining and such is the power of the author's descriptive powers that you are there with him in a rundown bar on Third Street in Manhattan. You can taste the Jack Daniel's, smell the rain.

So yes, the book is about Sinatra but, unlike any other biography (if this is indeed a biography) you've ever read. Hamill  attempts neither deification nor vilification but places the man, his life, his music in relation to the times.

Today, when the Black Lives Matter movement is so justifiably in the forefront, the author also points out that the early Italian immigrants were also being lynched and quotes the infamous Sacco and Vanzetti cause célèbre. Sinatra, when asked why he contributed to the NAACP said it was because he knew what it was to be a member of  a minority group.

Hamill quotes from an interview he did with Dizzy Gillespie: "The professional is the guy that can do it twice."

"Wow, is that true" said Frank.

The author goes on to say "The world of my grandchildren will not listen to Sinatra in the way that four generations of Americans have listened to him. But high art always survives. Long after his death, Charlie Parker still plays his version of the urban blues. Billie Holiday still whispers her anguish. Mozart still erupts in joy".

By coincidence, I talked with a cousin whom I'd never had contact with for some years. During the course of our telephone conversation she told me that her 22 year old grandson had just discovered Sinatra ...
Lance.

Pete Hamill: Why Sinatra Matters. Published 1998 by Little Brown & Co. Ltd. ISBN. 0-3316-34796-5

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