Post 468: SHAKE 'EM UP JAZZ BAND AT ABITA SPRINGS

Molly Reeves

In the summer of 2016, Shaye Cohn put together in New Orleans a traditional jazz band comprising only ladies. We are lucky to live at a time when so many of the greatest traditional jazz musicians are ladies and when so many of them happen to have settled in that city.

And in this band, you find SIX of them making up what may well be one of the greatest all-female bands ever.

Another interesting feature of this band is that Shaye Cohn is playing trombone - something I've never seen her do before. Is there nothing that young lady can't master? Even before this, she had become established as one of the finest trad jazz piano and cornet players of all time, as well as being very good on violin, string bass and accordion. The other ladies are of course Chloe Feoranzo, Marla Dixon, Dizzy, Julie Schexnayder, and Molly Chaffin Reeves - every one a heroine of our musical times.

Shaye's original purpose was to give a demonstration of traditional jazz at the Girls' Summer Band Camp in New Orleans. But the all-ladies band - once formed - was too good to waste and fans pleaded for them to play elsewhere.

At first, the band had no name but somebody (John Dixon, I believe) had the idea of calling it The EQP Jazz Band (EQual Pay). However, by November, Shaye seems to have decided to call it The Shake 'Em Up Jazz Band.

Whatever the band's name, the Good News is that they were invited to play at the famous Abita Springs Opry on 19 November. 

The concert they gave was traditional jazz of the finest kind - tasteful and yet always exciting and full of intelligent ideas. They opened with Some Day Sweetheart and then continued with Root, Hog; or Die!, Sugar Blues, When You Wore A Tulip, Make Me A Pallet on the Floor, and - to finish - Hindustan.

Having done the good work behind the scenes, Shaye gave herself a secondary role in performance, leaving Marla to play the trumpet, lead the band and do the announcing.

Everyone was interested to see how Shaye would fare playing her newest instrument, the trombone.

What she did was exactly what we might expect of her: she played a perfect and accurate though simple and basic line, fully conscious of the harmonising and rhythmic responsibilities of the trombone in our music. On Sugar Blues (played in the rarely-used key of G) she took a complete solo chorus and the audience loved it.

Root, Hog; Or Die! - played in C minor - romped along, with plenty of mini-solos and Marla providing the vocal.

Among the highlights of the concert were a beautiful two-chorus solo by Chloe on Make Me a Pallet (which they played in F) and an exquisite vocal duet at the end of When You Wore A Tulip (played in Ab) with Chloe singing the melody and Marla perfectly harmonising on lower notes. Chloe was also the vocalist on Sugar Blues, which she sang with great passion.

(I am mentioning keys because they differ from those sometimes used for the tunes in question.)

Pumping the band along, Molly on guitar and Julie on string bass provided the chords very solidly, four to the bar; and Dizzy as ever maintained metronomic gentle percussion on the washboard, and took very neat solos, including a full chorus on When You Wore a Tulip.

Molly is, of course, also a fine singer and gave a lovely rendition of Make Me a Pallet.

In fact, I am coming round to the opinion that Make Me a Pallet is my favourite performance in this video. Molly reminds me of Carol Leigh singing with Kid Thomas; and every member of the band plays it beautifully, with terrific teamwork.

Chloe's clarinet was stunningly eloquent throughout and Marla was her usual exuberant self – passionately singing and also playing some wonderful stuff on the trumpet. On this occasion she did not use her famous Derby mute but her playing with the plunger mute on Sugar Blues and Pallet on the Floor was outstanding.

What a treat for us all! Let's hope this band will continue to get together from time to time and that there will be many more videos for us to enjoy all over the world.

You can watch the Abita Spring's video of the performance by going to Abita Spring's own site and then clicking on the name of the band:
http://www.abitaopry.org/html/AO2016-11.html
It is also to be seen here:
https://vimeo.com/201161078

I am deeply indebted to my blog-reading friend and Louisiana resident Michael Brooks for supplying me with information.

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Here are extracts from two emails I received shortly after the above was published:

(1) As you and I have said before, we are living in a new golden age for traditional jazz.  These aren't just the best female musicians that our music has to offer but among the best no matter the gender.  I wonder what the old timers from the early days of New Orleans jazz would say?  Women were relegated to piano back then.

(2) Well, I read your blog over breakfast, and then watched the band ...

... and I just had to have another breakfast.

WHAT A WAY TO START MY DAY ... SIX VERY LOVELY AND TALENTED LADIES, TWO CUPS OF COFFEE AND A PLATE FULL OF CROISSANTS.

Life doesn't get any better!

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Post 402: DIZZY

About three years ago, on YouTube, I first spotted Dizzy, playing with Yes Ma'am, the string band, and also deputising for Robin with Tuba Skinny. Immediately I could tell I was watching a young lady who was not only a great washboard player but also the world's most beautiful musician.

I wrote a Blog Post about her and noted from my sitemeter that it had thousands of readers in the weeks that followed.

When I travelled the 4,500 miles from my home to New Orleans for the French Quarter Festival in April 2015, I was disappointed that I did not come across Dizzy, though I heard later that she had been busking in the streets when I was there.

However, visiting again in April 2016, I bumped into the great video-maker codenamed RaoulDuke504 and he gave me a tip-off that the band Yes Ma'am was playing at that very moment in The French Market. I hurried over and sure enough there they were. They were brilliant - even better in person than in their many YouTube videos.

I introduced myself to Dizzy and had a lovely chat with her. As I had expected, she turned out to be a very articulate, good-humoured and warm-hearted person. An important piece of information she gave me was that she would be touring in Europe during the Summer of 2016. Arrangements were still vague. She did not know what the Band would be called or who the other musicians would be, though one of them was certainly Ryan Baer (a truly great player of the banjo and other instruments, and a former member of Tuba Skinny) and she knew they would be performing at some stage in Ghent, Belgium.

I told Dizzy I had once written a blog article, illustrated with photos, telling everyone she was the world's most beautiful musician, and I jokingly said I had no idea why so many thousands of readers had been attracted to that post. She replied, equally joking, that it must be because of my good writing!

This young lady has now been settled in New Orleans for several years. She plays sublimely and prolifically with a number of bands. Mostly, she is with Yes Ma'am. You can find plenty of their videos on YouTube.

If you think playing the washboard is easy, you are wrong. It takes some doing to maintain the strict tempo and to decorate properly the music being played by the rest of your group. You have to know the tunes really well, especially to be aware of 'breaks' and rhythmic changes. It's hard work on the fingers and wrists, too. You need a lot of energy.

Dizzy is a brilliant player of the washboard. My favourite video of her is this one. Click on to watch:

CLICK HERE.

Isn't Dizzy sensational (as well as beautiful)? Incidentally, that great song - Caffeine - was composed by the gentleman singing it - Aaron Gunn.

But if you would like to see Dizzy playing in a more conventional traditional jazz band, here's one of her in Mexico with Tuba Skinny. Watch out for her enjoying a solo chorus at 2 minutes 41 seconds: CLICK HERE.

And to see her playing a super solo (at 1 minute 45 seconds) with Tuba Skinny on Dallas Rag, CLICK HERE.

Since April 2015, Dizzy has frequently turned up in The Sluetown Strutters: Click here to view.

Dizzy has a Turkish background and speaks both English and Turkish fluently. As a child she had piano lessons and also started to play the saxophone. (She told me she is still playing the piano quite a lot.) She went on to be a high-flying graduate in English and American Literature and Creative Writing at New York University. Then in 2009 she chose to go to New Orleans to 'collect material' to write about. It seems she is still collecting it!

What she obviously did collect was washboards and she chose this happy if unconventional busking life-style. I made a video of her playing in Yes Ma'am on 7 April 2016 - the date when at last I met her. I hope you will watch it. To do so, CLICK HERE.

For a bit of fun from Dizzy's earliest days in New Orleans (showing she can sing well too!) click here.

On 10 June 2016, Dizzy took part in the first performance ever by the amazing all-female Shake 'Em Up Jazz Band that performed at The Dragon's Den in New Orleans (photo below courtesy of a New Orleans-based friend, who wishes to remain anonymous). What a group of stars! She went on to become a permanent member of the band, and played with them at The Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy during July 2017.

And in January 2017, Dizzy expanded her horizons till further. She took up full-scale drumming, with Max Bien-Kahn's band Max and the Martians.