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Bebop Spoken There

George Porter Jr.: ''To me, syncopation is like jazz. It wasn't meant for the masses. It was meant just for a hip few". (DownBeat, May 2025).

The Things They Say!

This is a good opportunity to say thanks to BSH for their support of the jazz scene in the North East (and beyond) - it's no exaggeration to say that if it wasn't for them many, many fine musicians, bands and projects across a huge cross section of jazz wouldn't be getting reviewed at all, because we're in the "desolate"(!) North. (M & SSBB on F/book 23/12/24)

Postage

17985(and counting) posts since we started blogging 17 years ago. 306 of them this year alone and, so far, 62 this month (April 26).

From This Moment On ...

April 2025.

Sun 27: Musicians Unlimited @ Jackson’s Wharf, Hartlepool. 1:00pm. Free.
Sun 27: Andrea Vicari Trio @ Central Bar, Gateshead. 2:00pm. Vicari (piano); Andy Champion (double bass); John Bradford (drums).
Sun 27: Paul Skerritt @ Hibou Blanc, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free. Vocalist Skerritt working with backing tapes.
Sun 27: Vasilis Xenopoulos-Paul Edis Quartet @ Queen’s Hall, Hexham. 3:00pm. Xenopoulos, Edis, Paul Susans, Russ Morgan.
Sun 27: Ruth Lambert Trio @ Juke Shed, North Shields. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 27: JustKing Jones @ Cluny 2, Newcastle. 7:00pm (doors). £17.50. JustKing Jones (alto sax, soprano sax); Jordan Williams (piano); Jason Clotter (bass); Malcolm Charles (drums). Ace NYC outfit!
Sun 27: Jazz Jam Sandwich! @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. Free. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Sun 27: Swing Manouche @ Warkworth Memorial Hall. 7:30pm. £15.00. Tickets from 01665 711388.
Sun 27: Vasilis Xenopoulos-Paul Edis Quartet @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Xenopoulos, Edis, Ken Marley, Russ Morgan.

Mon 28: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.

Tue 29: ???

Wed 30: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Wed 30: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 30: International Jazz Day @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. £16.00.; £14.00. adv.. Feat. Guido Spannocchi, John Pope & Steve Hanley + Take it to the Bridge participants + Open Mic Night participants.

MAY 2025

Thu 01: Jazz Appreciation North East @ Brunswick Methodist Church, Newcastle NE1 7BJ. 2:00pm. £4.00. Subject: Member’s Contribution.
Thu 01: Alabaster de Plume @ Gosforth Civic Theatre, Newcastle. 7:30pm.
Thu 01: Living in Shadows + OUTRI @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm.
Thu 01: The Shayo Experiment @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig. Shayo Oshodi & Liam Oliver.
Thu 01: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman’s, Middlesbrough. 8:30pm. Free.

Fri 02: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 02: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 02: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ The Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 02: Anna Reay & Deon Krishnan @ STACK, Seaburn. 4:30-6:15pm. Free.
Fri 02: Nauta @ Central Bar, Gateshead. 7:00pm. £7.50. A ‘Nauta’s House’ gig featuring Nauta & guests Shayo Oshodi & David Gray.
Fri 02: Spilt Milk @ St James’ STACK, Newcastle. 7:00-9:00pm. Free. Nolan Brothers (vocal harmonies).
Fri 02: Dom Pipkin @ Cluny 2, Newcastle. 7:30pm (doors). Solo piano.
Fri 02: Abbie Finn Trio @ Saltburn Community Hall. 7:30pm. £12.00. + bf.

Sat 03: Hot Fingers @ St Augustine’s Parish Centre, Darlington. 12:30pm. £10.00.
Sat 03: Play Jazz! workshop @ The Globe, Newcastle. 1:30pm. £25.00. Tutor: Steve Glendinning. Summer Samba Enrol at: learning@jazz.coop.
Sat 03: Jason Isaacs @ STACK, Exchange Sq., Middlesbrough. 4:00-6:00pm. Free. Vocalist Isaacs working with backing tapes.
Sat 03: Edison Herbert Trio @ The Vault, Darlington 7:00pm. Free.
Sat 03: Postmodern Jukebox @ The Glasshouse, Gateshead. 7:30pm.
Sat 03: NUJO Jazz Jam @ Cobalt Studios, Newcastle. 8:00pm (7:00pm doors). £3.00. + bf.
Sat 03: Eva Fox & the Jazz Guys @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Sat 03: Rendezvous Jazz @ Red Lion, Earsdon. 8:00pm. £3.00.
Sat 03: Ray Stubbs R&B All Stars @ The Black Bull, Blaydon. 8:30pm. Free.

Reviewers wanted

Whilst BSH attempts to cover as many gigs, festivals and albums as possible, to make the site even more comprehensive we need more 'boots on the ground' to cover the albums seeking review - a large percentage of which never get heard - report on gigs or just to air your views on anything jazz related. Interested? then please get in touch. Contact details are on the blog. Look forward to hearing from you. Lance

Monday, July 11, 2022

Book review: Billie Holiday – The Graphic Novel by Ebony Gilbert, David Calcano and Lindsay Lee

That word ‘novel’ carries a lot of baggage here. Of course the most famous fictionalised account of Billie Holiday’s life is her own autobiography Lady Sings The Blues with it’s famous opening, Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was seventeen, and I was three.

Cartoonist Keith Knight provides a raison d’etre for this book in his foreword. It’s about teaching history through comics. ‘Dynamic stories like this need to be told in dynamic ways….Comix do that’ a teacher says.

Like Lady Sings The Blues this biography aims to capture a milieu rather than presenting the life as a series of events and it is graphic in both senses of the word in that it’s a picture book and it doesn’t shy away from depictions of drug use, overt and secondary racism, violence, imprisonment and alcoholism . All of the major musical characters are in there, (Lester Young, Artie Shaw and Count Basie) along with the predators who profited from her talent.

We follow her from prostitution in the back streets to Carnegie Hall through all of her ups and downs, her loves and losses, her adulation in France and being made to ride the hotel’s freight elevator back in the USA because ‘the guests are uncomfortable with negroes taking the public elevator’.

Billie is front and centre in most of the frames; several pictures fill a whole large (25cm x 25cm ) page with full page portraits of Young and Basie in particular. Billie’s in concert pictures are striking, with her surrendering to the music, reaching out, eyes closed. The dominant tones are purple and lilac with occasional splashes of red. Reminisces and flashbacks are in shades of brown sepia.

It is a book that repays a second look. There aren’t many words in it, (probably as many as are in this review) but the images reward a revisit. Whilst the detail is often limited there is an energy and movement to many of the images, not least those covering the violence inflicted on Holiday, both by her manager/lover, Louis Guy, and during her time in prison.

Throughout the book there are listening suggestions highlighted within the story (Easy Living, Them There Eyes, Strange Fruit, God Bless The Child, Good Morning Heartache, All of Me) which should send the reader to their online music provider to help them realise what Lady Day was all about, and why we still care about her, though I cheated and listened to an extended edition of Lady in Satin.

It’s a good idea to represent black icons in a way that makes their lives accessible to new generations and I enjoyed this book more than the last book I read about Billie Holiday (John Szwed’s Billie Holiday – The Musician and the Myth, which is a bit hit and myth). The bibliography at the end of The Graphic Novel refers to With Billie by Julia Blackburn and I would recommend that tome along with Stuart Nicholson’s biography of her if you want a more detailed, and true, telling of the story. Dave Sayer

Billie Holiday – The Graphic Novel by Ebony Gilbert, David Calcano and Lindsay Lee published by Fantoons; Illustrated edition (2021) (ISBN-10:1970047135, ISBN-13:978-1970047134)

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