Happy Birthday Charlie Christian: An organ-ized celebration - July 29

(Screenshot by Russell)

Facundo Tarella (clarinet); Fernando Montardit (guitar); Lucas Ferrari (organ); Eduardo Porfirio (drums) + Gus Lerado (piano); ? (vocals)

Yesterday, July 29, marked the birth of Charlie Christian all of 105 years ago in 1916. If the occasion escaped some in America and here in Europe, it didn't go unnoticed in Argentina. An organ-ized celebration in Buenos Aires streaming on Facebook featured a Goodman-style quartet which, later in the proceedings, would briefly be augmented by a pianist and an unannounced, off-screen vocalist. 

Tango, Maradona, Messi, that's all you know, or need to know, about Argentina, isn't it? Well, the South American nation boasts an annual jazz festival attracting tens of thousands of fans and Buenos Aires itself sustains several jazz clubs, including the Thelonious Jazz Club and the Bebop Club. It's on the bucket list...

Guitarist Fernando Montardit, a Charlie Christian man, sat to the right of Goodman clarinetist, Facundo Tarella, and for the next three plus hours didn't take a break. Perhaps Charlie Christian had similar stamina! Facebook is what it is...scheduled to begin streaming at ten o'clock (6:00pm in Buenos Aires) it was more like twenty past the hour when finally we got the audio. Lucas Ferrari (organ) and co. were ready to go. The visual element was more like looking at a still photograph, or, at best, a series of time-lapse photographs. Occasionally, only occasionally, we saw a moving image, although that didn't last too long! 

An off-screen, in-between-numbers female voice responded to online (Spanish language) comment.* As our host spoke mainly in Spanish your correspondent picked out a word or two...qué? No matter, as always, the jazz transcended any such barriers. Seven Comes Eleven, Memories of You, the 'organ-ized' quartet put in a good shift, a three hours plus good shift. A Smo-o-o-oth One purred, Stardust shimmered (drummer Eduardo Porfirio's exemplary brushwork), it was gone 1:00am (BSH time) and Señor Ferrari and our Buenos Aires friends were still going strong.

                         

* An online comment in English from Tyneside prompted the moderator to respond, in English: Ah! Mike Durham's Whitley Bay Jazz Festival...the best jazz festival in the world!

Russell