Jazz and Comedy, Part Two

The second in a series on my program The Duplex Mystery Jazz Hour on WZBC. The tough part about doing these shows is finding usable material for this time slot (6-7pm).  Many comedians-Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx, Moms Mabley and others-just don't have the same punch when they weren't "working blue." Still, there are laughs here and good sounds.

Listen here.

Red Rodney “Rhythm in a Riff”  (Fresh Sounds 1955)

Lenny Bruce “Marriage, Divorce and Motels”

Stan Getz “As I Live and Bop” (Classic 1946)

Patricia Barber “Gotcha” (Classic)

Nichols and May “A Little More Gauze” (Reprise)

Kurt Elling “The Very Thought of You” This Time its Love (Blue Note 1998)

Woody Allen “Standup on Jack Paar (1962)

Jack Teagarden “St James Infirmary” (1940)

George Carlin “Modern Man” 

Dick Gregory “Standup on Merv Griffin (1965)

Bennie Green “Rhumblues” from Go Ahead and Blow (Ocium 1954)

Jazz and hip comedy. April 11 Radio show

"What, me? Worry. Jazz and hip comedy." 6-7 PM WZBC 90.3 FM, stream: wzbc.org 
Featuring Lenny Bruce, Nichols and May, Shelley Berman.

My apologies for not posting the audio file. It was recorded with distortion. Ugh. Here's the playlist:

The Duplex Mystery Jazz Hour (Specialty) with Steve Provizer 04/11/2013 06:00PM to 07:00PM

Clifford Brown “Tiny Capers”

Bob Newhart “Abe Lincoln” from The Button Down Mind Of

Jack Sheldon “Contour”

Lord Buckley “The Train” 
Lambert Hendricks and Ross “Charleston Alley” 

Mike Nichols And Elaine May “Telephone” from An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May

Randy Weston “Lifetime” 

Lenny Bruce “How to Relax Your Colored Friends at Parties” 

Sonny Rollins "Rockabye Your Baby"

Shelley Berman “Woman Hanging From a Ledge” 

George Carlin “Modern Man”

Betty Carter “Frenesi”

The Return of Jazz Shtick-by Steve Provizer

Cymbal-Head

Why did Louis Armstrong's standing in the jazz scene plummet during his "Hello Dolly" era, as if he had not been The Man? The reason may be that 1964 was about the time that jazz lost its sense of humor. Not its sly, oblique sense of humor, but the acceptance of a broad style that included a slick dance and a straight-up belly-laugh. The change didn't happen with the Boppers, although it started to shift. Diz had one foot in the old school, one in the new. It was still acceptable for jazz musicians to sing, dance and entertain. Still hip, but increasingly less so.

To some extent, starting in the late 1950's, the entertainment part of a jazz presentation was farmed out to a new wave of comedians-L. Bruce, M. Sahl, B.Newhart, S. Berman, W. Allen, Nichols and May. The politics of the era made escapism a dirty word. We all took ourselves quite seriously.

The reason I'm on this jag is that I recently saw videos of the group "Mostly Other People Do The Killing" (MOPDtK). This is a group about which there is much to say. However, there was one particular video which featured drummer Kevin Shea doing just about everything to a drum set except eat it. And that's probably in the works. This is essentially the first time comedy and jazz have successfully been combined since the days of Pete Barbuti playing the piano with his nose and Lenny Bruce tapping on a cymbal during "To is a preposition, come is a verb;" and Lenny's bit was telling, but not funny.

In the video, deadpan all the while, Shea sticks an odd-shaped piece of paper on his nose and proceeds to straddle the drums, hump them, bump them, milk them, tangle with them, move them, disassemble them, pratfall over them and use them as a staging area for a finger puppet show. At one point, it looks like Laurel and Hardy moving a piano, but with the bass drum standing in for Ollie. The audience seems too intimidated by the 'seriousness' of the context to respond as I did-laugh out loud. It's just not done. Mr. Wooster.

After all this, Shea moves the band into a fiery "Night In Tunisia." His is a gutsy, funny and focused performance. I know, performance art, yadda-yadda, but this is essentially shtick and a little shtick never hurt anyone.