“Not so much reviving standards, as taking defib paddles to them and jolting them back to life.”
~The Patriot Ledger, on The Hot Sardines with the Boston Pops
As one who has long suffered from nostalgia for Paris in the ’20s, a space-time I’ve only occupied in my head, I completely lose it whenever I bump into cultural examples of that period. Actually, if the truth were known, the ’30s and ’40s have also had a grip on my lapels for quite a spell.
It’s a “hot jazz” malady that continually whirls about a musical nucleus of Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Bix Beiderbecke, and Sidney Bechet. Nearby, modernism explodes upon the canvas and silver screen with Picasso and Miro and Dalí and Buñuel while bullfighters and Josephine Baker sway to singular inner-rhythms only they can follow.
Then there’s the literature of Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and T.S. Eliot. Outside this nucleus, of course, orbit artisans of quite varied quantum-mechanical stripes. There must be something in both the “grain” and “grappa.”
There’s really no escape! After a while, the ’20s just seem to fold into the “’30s/’40s” and now the music’s all about, among others, Fats Waller, Django Rheinhardt, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk (there’s always Monk!).
The writers, no longer scribbling in notebooks in cafés along the Left Bank, now walk down alleys under blinking neon while sporting fedoras and wide-lapel suits. More often than not, they can be found toiling in crime-soaked and dame-rich hard-boiled noir.
But all that is sidebar for the moment! The main crux of this epistle will deal, most decidedly, with those aforementioned musical forms that evolved early in the past century and which now, in the hands of a most-creative younger generation, have been given a new lease on life.
And that brings us to “The Hot Sardines,” the hippest ensemble you could ever imagine or conjure up or conceive of or, well, you catch my drift. Actually, conceptualization of any sort will not be required. That is because they will be strutting their stuff on stage at the Eccles Center this coming Saturday night.
“Trad” and “Swing” and “Be-bop” and “Pop” all become one and a river of straight-up, foot-stomping jazz runs through it. They even have a tap dancer in the band and, let me tell you, this cat has got some spot-on, and casual, chops. He alone is worth the price of admission.
First of all, you got this bedrock of stride-piano-driven rhythms, not to mention some brassy and sassy horns and a chick that can slide up to a microphone and dish, in English or French, some Billie Holiday or Edith Piaf or Bessie Smith or Fats Waller. But that’s only part of their drill. There’s this nonchalance thing you got to deal with.
The coefficient-of-casual with this bunch is such that undue effort of any sort stands out like a throbbing opposable digit. Everything, from the manner in which they musically float you above Paris to the fashion by which you next find yourself in New Orleans, is offhand. Telegraphing punches is not their thing.
It should be mentioned, however, that, with the Hot Sardines, none of this repertoire from another era is sacred. Kid gloves are checked at the door. What they are up to, while paying utmost homage to the “songbook” in question, is revitalizing the work, infusing grit and passion to bring it into the 21st Century.
A piece concerning the postmodern passions of “The Hot Sardines” probably shouldn’t run its course without a mention of the tricked-out washboard played in hot-jazz fashion by vocalist Miz Elizabeth, “Miz Eliz” to her cohorts or a re-mention, for emphasis, of the flat-out “footuosity” of Edwin “Fast Eddy” Francisco, tap-dancer extraordinaire.
Keyboardist, bandleader, and co-founder, with Miz Eliz, Evan “Bibs” Palazzo, certainly deserves a shout-out in that his stride-piano is at the heart of the vibe generated by this exquisitely innovative ensemble.
Whether you bandy about terms like “Trad” or “Swing” or “Blues” or “Hot Jazz,” what you’ve got with “The Hot Sardines” is the “fun” component of rock and roll. More than most, I love this band for showing the world how hip and cool jazz has always been and continues to be! Check them out! Saturday night! April 11! Eccles Center!
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for more than 40 years.