Chicago Cellar Boys

Chicago Cellar Boys – Winter’s Jazz Club – January 25, 2020

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How could little Red Ridin’ Hood have been so very good and still keep the wolf from the door? It’s a question we’ve all pondered, but who knew there was a song about it written in 1926? Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs – maybe. The Chicago Cellar Boys – definitely.

This is my second time seeing the Boys.  I loved their whole set, but their revelation about that “modern child” “runnin’ wild” was one of my favorites, among a set list that included songs from the 1920s and 30s written by Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, George Gershwin, and others.

My other favorite was Waller’s Truckin’, covered in 1973 as Everybody’s Doin’ It by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (Truckin’ by The Grateful Dead is a whole different song), though it made me wish I could have seen Ina Rae Hutton and Her Melodears perform it live, even though Ina’s dancing was more tap than truckin’ (about which I’m not complaining), which, of course, led me to a short clip of a jazz dance instructor demonstrating truckin’ steps along with some others.

Seeing the video of Ina and her all women band also made me thing of Some Like It Hot, but, returning to reality, I also thought about the Boys’ clarinetist/trumpeter giving the beat at the start of each song, which is all fine and good, except it seems like too much to ask of everyone to play the correct notes and contemporaneously maintain the same beat for more than about three measures. I think playing very short songs is the answer.

I also noticed that the piano player held his right shoulder slightly higher than his left, which led me to a website about posture and piano playing. With all these distractions, it’s amazing that I was able to enjoy the music, but I did.

Chicago Jazz Festival – Chicago Cultural Center and Millennium Park – August 30, 2018

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The Chicago Cellar Boys played my kind of music at the Cultural Center – Fats Waller, Count Basie, and Jelly Roll Morton, among others. (I may have to check them out on a Sunday night at the Honky Tonk BBQ in Pilsen.) When I saw Andy Schumm take one hand off his clarinet and pat his head, looking like he was trying to keep a toupee on, I was mildly amused, until I realized he actually was signaling the other musicians about something, I knew not what. So I looked it up. I found “8 Jam Session Hand Signals That Every Musician Should Know”, which explained to me that a head pat “denotes a return to the beginning.”

This is one of the many reasons that I could never be a jazz musician. Isn’t it enough just to be able to improvise on your instrument, which I can’t? You also have to memorize signals as if you were a third base coach waving off the bunt and implementing the hit and run. It’s one thing to be able to pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time, after years of practice, but pat your head and play an instrument, way out of my league. I don’t chew gum either, unless I’m seated.

I slid over from the Cultural Center to Millennium Park for the Second-line Procession led by Mystick Krewe of Laff, featuring the Big Shoulders Brass Band. it wasn’t quite like the Krewe du Vieux I once witnessed in New Orleans (here there was no float with a keg on it serving the crowd and nobody in the group was borderline naked), but it was fun to join with them as they marched around the park, playing traditional Dixieland jazz, leading an entourage of people like me making videos with their phones. Next year (or maybe tomorrow) I’ll bring some beads.