a blue note in a minor key: 2012

Thursday, October 25, 2012

this reminds me...

It's a bit of a cliche to call the Hot Music of the early 20th century the Punk Rock of its era but I can't articulate it any better. Listen to some old 78s and you may agree. The first Indie labels were Jazz and Blues labels. Red Hot Music. All of the cats from those nascent years are gone. Some like Buddy Bolden never recorded while others like Bix Beiderbecke died too way young and the likes of Jack Purvis simply faded away. We're lucky to have such artifacts as Louis Armstrong's first sessions witt King Oliver Creole Jazz Band and Bix's recordings with the Wolverine Orchestra.

But there's nothing like live music (there I go again with the cliches) and we're fortunate the have some outstanding archivistic minded musicians keeping this style of Le Jazz Hot alive. Vince Giordano & His Nightwawks Orchestra play every Monday and Tuesday night at Club Cache which is below Sofia's Restaurant adjacent to the Edison Hotel in lovely Manhattan. Vince and the band are the best Jazz Age band in the land, bar none. Watch them Shake That Thing:

Vince has recorded music for a variety of film and television projects including Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road & HBO's Boardwalk Empire, for which he won a Grammy. As Phil Schaap has often said, Vince & The Nighthawks are "the greatest modern exponent of Jazz Age music." Well worth seeing.