Website review: OctoJAZZarian Profile: Clark Terry...
Thamus discovered this in Jazz
•1 reviews since Feb 24, 2008
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•jazz.com/features-and-interviews/2008/1/11/oc...
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Thamus discovered 4 months ago- Mumbles stumbles time, travel, and all that jazz
The winter, like time itself, grows long and tedious. So I took a cab, leaped on a plane and traveled for 12 hours, like a squashed sardine in a box, to New York, where February ice and snow soon make you appreciate the Mediterranean you left behind. I've parked myself on the ninth floor of the Waldorf=Astoria (of which more anon) and set out to brave the icy wind swirling around Lexington and 50th in search of emergency supplies. Being the Waldorf, the mini-bar may be tiny compared to Fort Knox, but it's about equal in value. So I found a wine and spirits store where a bottle of Black Label was about the same price as a packet of cashew nuts in the room mini-bar. The $15 a day Internet connection charge is not so easily circumvented, but a man's gotta stumble what a man's gotta Stumble. Now the fun begins. I team up with B., a friend just in from London and then we run into an old colleague, F. from Athens. She's a Greek woman with attitude who thinks jet lag is a mosquito to be crushed, not succumbed to like a limp lemur. She steers us to the Fat Black Pussycat in the Village where we start lubricating the evening. Across the road is the ultimate objective - the legendary Blue Note jazz club. We note the freezing line outside diminishing, and dive in. Arriving last is good and bad. Bad, because the dark place is already packed to the walls. Good, because we find a place no one wanted - a table for three right by the bandstand. I'm not saying we were close, but the 2nd trombone slide kept missing my knee by a millimeter, and B. complained of trumpet spittle targeting his whiskey. F. raised her glass and yelled "Great!" The big band was loud and astounding. Well it should be - it was the band of Clark Mumbles Terry, still scatting and blowing on stage for a solid two hours at the age of 87 - just as he did with the great Duke of Ellington all through the 1950s, when he ceased to be a jazzman and became a legend. This is big band jazz you rarely hear performed anymore. You don't just hear it - you live it, applaud it, yell "right!" and feel its vibrations right to the bones and marrow. Man - this is living. Clark Mumbles Terry, old father time, and three friends at a tiny table in a crowded Village club, clinking Black Label glasses. And ALL dat JAZZ! [PICTURE, top: It was last night at the Blue Note club in Greenwich Village, but last year Clark Mumbles Terry performed at the White House with singer Nnenna Freelon. He has performed before seven U.S. presidents.]- Mumbles stumbles time, travel, and all that jazz
