From Harlem to Red Hook

Saturday night leaving home for Red Hook to listen to Jazz, to watch Jazz being performed, struck me as just a little ironic. As my girlfriend and I descended the subway stairs towards our Brooklyn bound A train I swore I could hear muffled horns sound off, sax, trumpet, trombone, like an aural shadow stretching down the street toward us from St. Nick’s Pub calling us back, pleading with us, with me, not to spend the money on a set in Brooklyn “keep it in Harlem” it said. “I would…” I sighed, “Sometimes it’s just not up to me.”
We were taking the A train just not in the direction Duke Ellington had prescribed to Billy Strayhorn. We were leaving Sugar Hill behind us to go to the Jalopy Theater & School of Music on Columbia Street in Brooklyn. The A train to the F and we were in Carroll Gardens, as we ascended the subway steps I pointed out to my girlfriend my first apartment in New York just caddy corner from us and away from our destination in Red Hook. As we walked along the calm tree lined street that led us to the Jalopy I reminisced about living in Brooklyn and the calm the neighborhood had granted me. As we entered the Jalopy my happy mood garnered through our pleasant walk carried with me and the Jalopy soon nurtured it.
The smell of fresh popcorn greeted us as we walked into the storefront “I feel at home already” I thought. Just inside the door on the right stood an espresso counter along with a stand-alone fridge stocked with beers and the commercial corn popper responsible for the scent that had greeted me. On the left hand side of the room was a wall full of guitars, banjos, mandolins, packs of strings, and other musical accoutrements for sale neatly hanging above the frantic workshop and the mess of some mad musical Geppetto.
The Jalopy stretches towards the back steadily getting darker as we move away from the front and towards the stage—a true stage at least two feet high—with deep red velours mimicking a proscenium arch. Before the stage sit about eight rows of New England Protestant pews promising to punish… all square angles. The pews are flanked by rows of wooden folding chairs and on the walls above the audience chairs are hung various types of folk instruments including a hurdy-gurdy, mailbox guitar, turtle back lute, glass crate guitar, fruitcake tin banjo, cigar box fiddle, hubcap resonator, and dozens of others all part of an exhibit curated by Pat Conte of The Secret Museum. We chose a pew in the middle and we sat. The majority of the seats were empty. On the stage already was Bryan Carrott along with Brad Jones on bass and Reggie Nicholson on drums. They were chatting on the dimly lit stage tapping their instruments gently, Bryan running his mallets along his vibraphone while Brad Jones absent-mindedly plucked his bass. Soon all of the available seats were filled by a true amalgamation of New Yorkers young and old black, brown, beige, and white. The trio started playing.
Brad Jones and his driving incessant bass lines guided the evening as Bryan Carrott and his vibraphone colored it into a tapestry of bebop which included a cover of what they called Max Roach’s Delilah. Reggie Nicholson’s drums played primarily with muting mallets filled the little void left by Carrott’s four mallets in all syncopating the repertoire into a virtual wall of sound yet each instrument remained distinct into itself. After an hour of feeling completely fulfilled and overwhelmed by virtuoso solos particularly Carrott’s they wound it down to allow the headlining act on The Rob Reddy Quartet.
The Rob Reddy Quartet consisted of Jef Lee Johnson on electric guitar, Dom Richards on bass, Pheeroan akLaff on drums, and Reddy on soprano and alto saxophones. Rob Reddy and his quartet provided a stark contrast to Bryan Carrott and his trio. The Reddy Quartet seemed to feed off of each other as opposed to the feeding into each other I felt with Carrott. Reddy’s sound seemed almost schizophrenic with the bass not leading the way but struggling to catch up to a tempo led by akLaff and fueled by Reddy’s rousing sax. While Carrott and his trio painted Reddy and his group ran full tilt up and down a musical ladder for an hour. It was admirable hearing in Reddy’s compositions room for all the voices of his quartet particularly the guitar and drums while he stepped away fully content to just listen.

Leaving Harlem and trekking to a quiet corner of Brooklyn to listen to a frenetic White saxophonist play a gig did not sound appealing to me at first. My idea of where it was acceptable or genuine to listen to Jazz had been tainted by actual experiences which involved the ubiquitous small bolted down tables, two drink minimums, votive candles, and the perpetuation of those images in films like Mo’ Better Blues. At the beginning of Reddy’s set I was also resentful that a quartet that was fifty percent White was headlining over the caliber of musicians represented by Carrott’s more “genuine” trio. I have seen Art Kane’s A great Day in Harlem and the scattered Gerry Mulligans, Pee Wee Russells, Chubby Jacksons, and Miff Moles amongst Dizzy, Mingus, Monk, Bassie, Allen and Blakey. These seemed more genuine to me than leaders like the Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz’ of the world whose records I actually have bought and enjoy. More importantly I thought that today in ever increasingly gentrified urban centers White Jazz composers or bandleaders could be ill afforded while the nature of Jazz instruction has been high jacked by academics and those privileged enough to afford to live the life of “Jazz musician.” When listening to Reddy and questioning the validity of my recreating him as a racialized Jazz musician I decided I needed to grind my lenses. I walked to the fridge and pulled a Yuengling and stood at the back of the “house” to listen away from Reddy’s increasingly pink face as he strained against the alto sax. I stood and listened as the electric guitar continued keeping a rhythm as Reddy riffed on his sax again. I closed my eyes absorbing and relishing in the freedom and comfort of the Jalopy and the appropriateness of Reddy’s Jazz filling the room. I listened more and realized that perhaps this place this urban-post-modern-honky-tonk was what and where Jazz was meant to be or needed to be, free of static fetishized ghettoizations, away from European tourists seeking authenticity or jaded transplanted New Englanders seeking the same and also free of hyper commercialized Coca Cola sponsored spaces. This was American music after all an entity as dynamic as we hope this country itself to be. Reddy won me over maybe simply because you could tell he genuinely loves the music or because he dared to bring it to a folk/ country venue in Red Hook Brooklyn and because he brought Bryan Carrott with him.