Dan Levinson: A Profile

IF IT WOULD BE POSSIBLE for a virtuoso reedman to step out of a jazz 78 in a kind of “Purple Rose of Cairo” move, that person would be clarinetist Dan Levinson. He has been performing for over 30 years, but he has been performing music that dates back to the ‘teens (the 1910s, that is), faithfully recreating the original styles even as he adds his own original voice to the mix. That’s why the New York-based musician has been in international demand, a jewel in any ensemble that hires him.

Dan Levinson
Photo by Dino Petrocelli

He’s also a leader in his own right, his versatility proved by recordings with his Canary Cottage Dance Orchestra, specializing in “rag-a-jazz’ from the early 1900s; the Roof Garden Jass Band, saluting the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the Louisiana Five, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and others from that era; “At the Codfish Ball,” with a Swing-Era reminiscent of Tommy Dorsey’s Clambake Seven; and CDs saluting Bix Beiderbecke, Artie Shaw, and other notables. Many of these recordings feature vocalist Molly Ryan, whose deft way with a song is also in keeping with vintage jazz traditions. But let’s let Dan tell that story:

“Molly is from Roseville, California, which is about 20 minutes outside of Sacramento. And I was performing with the Reynolds Brothers Rhythm Rascals, which was led by Ralf Reynolds and John Reynolds, who are the grandchildren of Zasu Pitts. I performed with them from the late 80s to the early 2000s. This was at the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, where Molly’s father was a volunteer sound engineer. She’d been coming to that festival since she was about ten years old. And the Reynolds brothers knew her and had invited her to sing with the band. So I met her when she was sitting in with them.

Waste Not . . .

SO DISGUSTING AND PERVASIVE is the odor of hog waste that a researcher who was hired to take measurements of particulate evidence in and around a number of massive hog barns is still exuding the noxious stink for many days after he returned home. He obsessively washes himself and his clothing, but even after two weeks there’s a lingering smell. Until he realizes it’s clinging to his eyeglasses, which he then has to throw away.

Novelist Corban Addison turned to non-fiction in his recent book Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial, but it has all the edge-of-your-seat pacing of a crime thriller. Which, in effect, it is, although you know the outcome if you’ve paid attention to agricultural news during the past couple of years. Even so, you’ll find yourself sharing the uncertainty of the participants as you’re taken through a series of some of the most momentous trials Big Ag has gone through.

By rights, a story like this should be shaded in greys. Few human conflicts ever can be seen as purely black and white, yet this one, pitting pork giant Smithfield against a group of North Carolina residents, not only clearly marks its villains as such, but also reveals that the lawsuits divide plaintiffs and defendants by race.

Four counties in southern North Carolina – Bladen, Duplin, Pender, and Sampson – have a human population of about 200,000, most of them poor and Black. As the state’s hog-farming industry grew and consolidated during the ‘80s and ‘90s, this became the livestock epicenter, cramming some five million hogs into the area. 

Touching the Classics

TENOR SAX ICON SCOTT HAMILTON seems to lead as relaxed a life as his playing suggests. He’s based in Florence, Italy, playing festivals and club dates throughout Europe, occasionally visiting the U.S., where he was born in 1954. By the time he hit Manhattan in the 1970s, you’d have sworn he was born a few decades earlier, so much did his sound conjure the world of Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins. He took up residence at Eddie Condon’s on 54th Street, recording on Chiaroscuro and Famous Door before being swept up by Concord Jazz both as leader and sideman.

He worked alongside so many jazz greats that it’s unnecessary to list them – it’s a history of the last half-century of jazz with some seeming anachronisms, like Scott’s stint with a late-career Benny Goodman band. But he’s always sounded at his best in a small-group setting, and that’s where he is in “Classics,” his latest international release. Pianist Jan Lundgren and bassist Hans Backenroth are both from Sweden; bassist Kristian Leth is Danish, as is the Stunt Records label. And the title acknowledges the fact that each of the nine numbers is based on a tune from the classical-music world.

As “Theme from Swan Lake” swings into a dark-hued, agitated beat, you’d swear it was a 40s standard, in the vein of “On Green Dolphin Street.” But it is, in fact, a familiar tune drawn from the Tchaikovsky ballet. After some ominous bass build-up, courtesy Backenroth, Hamilton states the theme in his trademark dark, breathy tone, giving the bridge to pianist Lundgren. Then it’s a nearly seven-minute exploration of the variation possibilities, including some bop-tinged choruses by Lundgren before Backenroth gets out his bow and channels his inner Paul Chambers.

Digging Further

WHAT’S MOST REMARKABLE about Jonathan Ward’s Excavated Shellac collection – a project he began on his website and which now has been issued as a four-CD, 100-track collection by Dust-to-Digital – is the familiarity of the music. Mind you, this is typically lo-fi material, recorded and pressed in countries untroubled by pop-market best-seller lists. Which means that the familiarity is scant to nil. Yet these songs were somebody’s favorites, and they’ll soon be yours.

The recordings have stories to tell, and, as an extra layer, Ward’s excellent liner notes tell fascinating stories about the recordings. The set kicks off with Reuben Caluza’s Double Quartet, a South African ensemble that was recorded in London in 1930, which Ward describes as “(a) sublime combination of traditional South African choral song, ragtime piano, and American-influenced minstrelsy ... from one of the first substantial sessions of black South African music ever recorded to disc.” Even more remarkably, considering the repression building in that country at the time, it’s a protest song, penned by Caluza, complaining of the brutality of the white South African police force.

From there we travel to central Mexico for Huasteco music, thence to Okinawa for a 1957 harvest song. Most of the songs have translated lyrics; all bear study for the internationally appropriate poetry and passions. Mozambique was still a Portuguese colony in 1953, when “O Ta Nikona” (“Come, I’m Available”) was recorded, a courtship song celebrating the accompanying music.