Jazz in Detroit: Labor Day Weekend, 2009

Utilizing its public social spaces, Detroit hosts a number of festivals and events. One of my favorites is the Detroit International Jazz Festival, which focuses on jazz but includes an eclectic variety of other music, plus food and drink and miscellany. This year is the 30th DIJF; it will be held from September 4th through 7th. Here's a link to the official website:

http://www.detroitjazzfest.com/

Sample photos are from the 2007 celebration.


The Detroit International Jazz Festival is highly civilized, cultural, and mostly free . . .


The Detroit International Jazz Festival is truly international. Indeed, until abut a decade ago, it was called the Detroit-Montreux Jazz Festival.

During the festival, it's hip to flock to a Detroit square. And let's not forget Baker's Keyboard Lounge!

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Acoma: Pueblo in the Sky

Off the top of my head, the two most interesting places I've visited in the past year have been Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit (celebrating its 75th anniversary this month, but on the verge of closing due to a tragic lack of sufficient interest even among Michiganders, I guess) and The Acoma Pueblo, autonomously inside the borders of what is now called New Mexico.

Baker's has a rich history and has the most positively relaxed and life-affirming "race relations" I've ever experienced in my life. Acoma is even more fascinating -- it has a continuous tradition going back more than 900 years.

I love them both and recommend them both to anyone and everyone with an open mind and open heart. More on this again soon, I suspect. They are exceptionally world class places to see and experience.

Until then, here's a link to Baker's in Detroit: http://www.bakerskeyboardlounge.com/

And one for Acoma: http://www.skycity.com/

Here's a cultural advocacy contest: I'll send a $25 money order to the first two people who spend time at either Baker's Keyboard Lounge or Acoma Pueblo and can prove it with photographs and a date stamp of some kind (holding up a newspaper would work, for instance). And optionally, I'd be happy to post the results or retain privacy -- your choice.

Today's Rune: Defense.

National Treasures: Elaine's

Like Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit, Elaine's in Manhattan is an international treasure highly recommended for its ambiance and cultural charge.

Opened in 1963 by Elaine Kaufman (b. 2/10/1929) Elaine's is a medium-priced Upper East Side restaurant and bar located at 1703 2nd Avenue -- between 88th and 89th Streets --New York, NY 10128; (212) 534-8103. Reservations taken. Writers very welcomed. Old school, low-key, sweet. I've been there twice in the last ten years and no one bit me. Given that Elaine Kaufman is eighty now, I'd like to get back before anything major changes at Elaine's. Because as we all know, everything does change, sooner or later.


Related books: A.E. Hotchner, Everyone Comes to Elaine's: Forty Years of Movie Stars, All-Stars, Literary Lions, Financial Scions, Top Cops, Politicians, and Power Brokers at the Legendary Hot Spot (2004). An anecdotal recounting of goings on at Elaine's over the past near half-century.

Brian McDonald, Last Call at Elaine's: A Journey from One Side of the Bar to the Other (2008). Memoir by a sometimes self-destructive but resilient son of a cop and bartender turned writer.

Today's Rune: Signals.

A Kaleidoscope of Changes

Bye bye, Rick Wagoner. That Hummer, those Big Trucks were a real cool time. GM better get cracking. So, too Chrysler with Fiat. But what of the old Axis powers of Italy, Japan, and Germany -- the original Big Three? Maybe science fiction writer Philip K. Dick was right about the victors and losers of that one, the great World War Two. Fiat! Daimler! Mitsubishi! Ein, zwei, Zufall!

Management of the American "Big Three" is long overdue for a good shake-up. With a brief respite before gas prices surge again, kick out the jams, Detroit. And save Baker's Keyboard Lounge, too!


Today's Rune: Possessions. Glad to see both MSU and the UNC Tar Heels will be in the Final Four next weekend, in Detroit. Yeahdawg!

Detroit, Jazz & The Revolution: Big 50th and 75th Anniversaries

1934-2009: Baker's Keyboard Lounge, the world's oldest continuously running jazz venue, celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. The Baker's team, braving hard economic times, recently announced Baker's presence on Facebook and invites fans to join the movement. For anyone who loves jazz, music, Detroit, culture, and warmly intimate venues, sound the alarm, it's Paul Revere time! For the sake of Detroit and global culture, check out Baker's Keyboard Lounge . . . on Livernois, just below Eight Mile (20510 Livernois Ave Detroit, MI 48221) . . .

1959-2009: Miles Davis, Kind of Blue at 50. I just picked up the special two-disc Columbia Legacy Edition. I know it's old school to get the discs, but for this fine set, it makes sense.


Motown, 1958/1959-2008/2009. More than one 50th anniversary release to choose from. but I'm aiming to pick up the mother lode, the one with a nifty-fifty façade of Hitsville USA. It's all good -- and let's not forget the real Hitsville USA: Motown Historical Museum, 2648 W. Grand Boulevard, Detroit, Michigan 48208.


In the USA, a quieter nod to the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. Need I say more?

Today's Rune: Signals.

This Is Boston, Not L.A.

For anyone living in or traveling to the Boston USA area, there's a beautiful cultural complex, the Coolidge Corner Theatre, at 290 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA 02446. The Coolidge is celebrating its 75th anniversary (and remember it's also the 75th anniversary of Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit!). Part of the festivities include an airing of one of the frankest and most enlightening films I've ever seen (despite some horrible dubbing, but featuring Ennio Morricone's eerie cool soundtrack), a parable of colonialism and post-colonialism, as valid for the US role in Vietnam and Iraq as it is about the European sugar plantations and slave/worker uprisings of the Caribbean -- Gillo Pontecorvo's Queimada / Burn! (1969), with Marlon Brando and Evaristo Márquez. It's brilliant on a large screen -- first got to see it that way in Philadelphia in 1992 at the Rittenhouse Square branch of the Free Library.



The Coolidge began operations during The Great Depression -- and it's still going strong. The Coolidge, in a wonderful setting that showcases intelligent and often cutting edge films, has a milieu comparable to the various Angelika Film Centers and also The IFC Center (323 Sixth Avenue at West 3rd Street, New York, NY 10014).

For more, please see the official Coolidge website: http://www.coolidge.org/

From the Coolidge website: "Best-selling historian Howard Zinn introduces his favorite film as part of our 75th anniversary celebration."

That's right -- the influential historian Howard Zinn, 86-year old author of A People's History of the United States (1980+), You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times (1994), and many more, would be worth hearing in his own right.

When? March 9, 2009 at 7:00 p.m.



Finally, today's post title comes from this 1982 compilation, which I bought at the time in vinyl in Chapel Hill. For hardcore/post-punk enthusiasts, you can't go wrong with bands like Jerry's Kids, The Proletariat and Gang Green. You betcha . . .

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Detroit After Dark: Baker's Keyboard Lounge

By far, my favorite club in Detroit and just about anywhere I've ever been in my whole life is Baker's Keyboard Lounge. It's the longest-running jazz venue in the world and will celebrate its first 75 years in 2009 (beating out the Village Vanguard in NYC by a thin reed). It's small (seats 99) but full of warmth and simple beauty.

You enter right into the front area, a mirrored bar, then walk into a separate dining and performance area where there is a small elevated stage and tables intimately small and regular; seating depends on your party's size. The mostly Southern-style food is affordable to most wallets, and the vodka martinis are knockouts for those who like such things. Bring a designated driver if you do drink or stay a while, believe me. Entirely unpretentious, Baker's Keyboard Lounge must be near the height of contemporary civilization as far as I'm concerned. Of course, it certainly enhances the experience if you like jazz and the blues.
















[Photo credits: Boston Globe above, 2007; Detroit News below, 2008].

Today's Rune: Initiation.

It's Showtime at the Apollo!

Happy 2009, everybody! Rather than another account of The Great Depression, here instead is a scanned artifact from a memorable show. 1991 was a good year for me in the way of cultural absorption. While doing an adequately paid internship in London for English Heritage, I probably saw more plays and small venue concerts for cheap than I have in all the years since. Siouxsie & The Banshees at the Town & Country Club in Kentish Town London NW 5, June 29, 1991 was certainly one of them. Man, they even had a nifty coat room and a nearby tube stop, so no car needed. Got to see The Pogues and Kraftwerk at the Brixton Academy, and a memorable play about Édith Piaf and Billie Holiday, and another one at a micro-theatre based on Dostoevsky's / Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground.

Anyone have a favorite concert or artist they loved to see? Since London '91, the ones I'm happiest to have experienced include Iggy Pop, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Kraftwerk (again), David Bowie, The Lords of Acid, Irma Thomas, The Pretenders, Dwight Yoakam, James Brown, The Gap Band, Wilco, The Old 97s, Jim Carroll, The Guess Who, Eric Burdon & The Animals, Maria Muldaur and just about anyone playing jazz at the Detroit International Jazz Festival or Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit. In fact, every one of these shows was in Michigan, most of them in Detroit or environs.

Besides losing about ten pounds or so and travelling around, one New Year's resolution for me is to see at least a few cool shows of this calibre. Seek and find, seek and find . . .

Here's a courthouse lawn that obviously doesn't adhere to any separation of church and state rules . . . Not surprisingly, I saw this in Palinist country in the American South. No joke!

Today's Rune: Joy.

A Love Supreme: the Philadelphia-Detroit Summit

I love Philadelphia, Detroit and jazz, so am pleased to plug "A Love Supreme: the Philly/Detroit Summit," aka The 29th Detroit International Jazz Festival over Labor Day Weekend (8/29-9/1/2008).

John Coltrane, orginally from North Carolina, lived for a while in Philadelphia and played in Detroit at places like Baker's Keyboard Lounge and the Blue Bird Inn.


While still going through old papers and shredding most of them, I came across my first (1992) address in Philadelphia: 1225 Spruce Street, Apt. 6, right across the street from the Café Diva at 12th and Spruce, where I worked part time for a gracious and elegant soul, Nga Mai (born in Vietnam during the US-Vietnam War).


Big sports evening in Motown, so I'm soon off to raise hell for Detroit. Hats off to my pal Joe McGeary in Philadelphia, and to my other Philly pals from back in the day.

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Suffragette City

It's almost time for the 2008 election. Should women keep the right to vote? Should anyone in the 18-20 bracket be able to vote? If there's really a Hundred Years War underway, should everyone between the ages of 18 and 25 be drafted into universal military service?

Birthday musings a la Emmeline Pankhurst, Woody Guthrie and Jerry Rubin.



Friday the 13th turned out to be a good day for showing a visiting friend around Detroit. We lucked into the Motown Museum while avoiding a traffic jam on I-94. I've been there several times, but yesterday learned a lot of new stuff about Studio A -- and the surrounding buildings. The day's adventure ended at Baker's Keyboard Lounge and smokefree jazz. They don't make a big deal at Baker's about not smoking inside (i.e. subtly clear), but now that I've quit, such indoor policies make it a lot easier to stay clean.

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Birthdays: Emmeline Pankhurst, Gustav Klimt, Irving Stone, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Northrop Frye, Woody Guthrie, Gerald R. Ford, Jr. (b. Leslie Lynch King, Jr.), Ingmar Bergman, Harry Dean Stanton, John Chancellor, Nancy Olson, Rosey Grier, Jerry Rubin.

That's My Story: John Lee Hooker

No matter how exhausted I am, John Lee Hooker never fails to cheer me up. His music is primal and saturated in the blues, and comes from every side of every social situation. It's good to see him in action, too, though the actual man has been gone for nearly six years now (8/22/1917-6/21/2001). Just before Johnny Lee died, German filmmaker Jörg Bundschuh made John Lee Hooker: That's My Story a tidy 90-minute documentary that provides glimpses into his roller coaster life and times.


Fellow artists spill out their celebratory thoughts, especially how much they admire him and his independent style (Peter Wolf notes his predilection for Ballantine's Scotch and Kool cigarettes). Family members touch on his warmth and endearments. Given that Johnny Lee was married and divorced three times, their sustained attachment is remarkable. Third wife Maudie, nephew Archie Lee Hooker, Jr. (cook, driver, assistant -- sweet job), Zakiya Hooker, and John Lee Hooker, Jr., and the man himself not long before his death -- collectively provide the strongest portraits. The film interweaves contemporary footage with shots of the Mississippi Delta, Memphis, Cincinnati and Detroit, where he first made it big.


Archie Lee Hooker, Jr., shows off some of his uncle's "toys," guitars and Cadillacs. "It's not really for him," he notes of the cars. "It's for the ladies. . . in his own way, he's a lady's man." Robert Cray makes a number of insightful remarks. Perhaps the most succinct is, "He was hip." Bonnie Raitt: "He's as scary and as sexy and as dark as his music is . . . He just makes me smile every time I see him."

Eddie Kirkland was working at the Ford Motor Company when he started playing with Hooker at bars and house parties in the 1940s. He loved Hastings Street: "It was like Baker's, you know," referring to one of the few places still showcasing music from that era -- Baker's Keyboard Lounge up on Eight Mile. The only thing left of Hastings Street is a small stretch by abandoned factories that ends in the middle of nowhere. There's something about the name Henry's Swing Club that gets me every time. It, and the whole scene, thrive in Johnny Lee's first breakout hit, "Boogie Chillen.'"

All in all, John Lee Hooker: That's My Story is a little gem. Can't ever get too much Hooker living in Detroit.

Today's Rune: Growth.

Birthdays (now here’s quite the Taurus crew): John Wilkes Booth, Ariel Durant, (b. Chaya Kaufman), Donovan (Donovan P. Leitch), Mark David Chapman, Sid Vicious (John Simon Ritchie/Beverley), Bono (b. Paul David Hewson), Lisa Nowak (b. Lisa Marie Caputo).

And the war drags on.

At Baker's Keyboard Lounge

Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit is always worth checking out. It's got all the live ambience, relaxed hepcats, and smooth acoustics any jazz fan could want in an intimate venue. Plus soul food, Southern fried, and good drinks -- all very affordably priced. The oldest running jazz club in the business, Baker's is very accessible on weeknights; not surprisingly, weekends can be more crowded, with a wait.

The other night I dropped in to hear Kris Lynn, a Motown-connected singer, cover standards and tell little stories. Introducing "For Once in My Life," she recalled being on site when it was written. She also introduced the nattily dressed Maxine Powell, a key Motown talent agent now in her early nineties, creator of Maxine Powell Finishing and Modeling School. A dapper gentleman friend accompanied her (he was not introduced).

Naturally I was curious and did a little research later in the week. Turns out that Maxine Powell (b. Texarkana, Texas, 5/30/1915) first visited Detroit in 1945. She opened her school in 1951 and ran her own talent agency. One of her models, Gwen Gordy Fuqua, hooked up a deal between Powell and Barry Gordy, head of Motown, in 1964. Ms. Powell then trained the Motown performers how to dress, act and behave -- everyone from Martha Reeves to Marvin Gaye, The Temptations and The Supremes.

After a break with Gordy in the late 1960s, Powell taught classes at Wayne County Community College, did consulting work; last I checked, the Maxine Powell Finishing and Modeling School was located in a suite on East Jefferson Avenue in Detroit.

On any given night, Baker's Keyboard Lounge is sure to have nice surprises like Powell in the audience. Dig it, man!

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Birthdays: Edward Gibbon, Mary Wollstonecraft, Samuel Morse, Herbert Spencer, Ulysses S. Grant (b. Hiram Ulysses Grant), Cecil Day-Lewis, Yórgos Theotokás, Jack Klugman, Coretta Scott King, Anouk Aimée, August Wilson, Kate Pierson, Arielle Dombasle .

Happy Weekend to all!

A Jazz Triangle

This past year I've tried to soak up as much jazz as I can right at the source. From Detroit to New York City to New Orleans, it's all been mind-blowingly good. My sister Linda, a sax player turned archaeologist, had a helpful jazz record collection that I dipped into as a kid, coming up with big names like John Coltrane and Miles Davis, among others. Linda took me to my first jazz show in the 1970s (Herbie Hancock in Chapel Hill), and I've loved it live ever since. Not that I'm by any means an "expert," but to my ears, what sounds good sounds good by any measure and in any form. I can't even read music, and only briefly (and comically) played electric bass before selling it back to travel to Europe.


New Orleans seems to have the oldest jazz tradition, going back to the nineteenth century with much earlier roots. But I'm pretty sure now that the oldest two continuous jazz venues in the USA and in the world are in Detroit and Manhattan. Though there is and has continuously been great jazz aplenty in the French Quarter and other parts of New Oreans since the beginning, the earliest clubs there were closed or dozed long ago.


In fact, Baker's Keyboard Lounge -- just below Eight Mile Road at 20510 Livernois Avenue in Detroit -- really is the oldest jazz venue still running, with a starting date of 1934. Next in line is the more famous Village Vanguard -- at 178 Seventh Avenue South near West 11th Street in Greenwich Village -- it opened in 1935. The acoustics at both places are fantastic, the settings as intimate as anyone could hope for. For any jazz fan who hasn't checked them out, I highly recommend them both. Jazz in New Orleans is an extra treat, too, whether out in the streets or inside a small club with good sound qualities. All three cities have jazz festivals, as well.

Todays Rune: Harvest.

Birthdays: Pearl Bailey, Terrence Hill, Eric Idle, Michael Brecker, Amy Sedaris.

Can you dig?