West Coast Revivalists

[Chuck Nessa]

This is an interesting resource sent by a friend: https://exhibits.stanford.edu/sftjf

[jeffcrom]

Thanks - I'll be spending some time there. I can't say that I love most West Coast trad, but I sometimes am in the mood for that particular flavor and pull out my Lu Watters or Turk Murphy discs.

[JSngry]

I was in either Disney World or Universal StudiosOrlando and there was some area of the park recreating SF wharfworld or whatever it was. The ambient music in the area was all Watters/Murphy or thereabouts until for some reason there was a crack in time & Brubeck/Desmond happened for a few minutes. And then it went back, went like it came. Didn't take me too long to realize that the park had partnered with Fantasy at some level. That was a fun thing to have happen!

[lipi]

49 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I was in either Disney World or Universal StudiosOrlando and there was some area of the park recreating SF wharfworld or whatever it was. The ambient music in the area was all Watters/Murphy or thereabouts until for some reason there was a crack in time & Brubeck/Desmond happened for a few minutes. And then it went back, went like it came. Didn't take me too long to realize that the park had partnered with Fantasy at some level. That was a fun thing to have happen!

Some history no one asked for:

Walt Disney picked Dixieland/New Orleans/West Coast Revival/whatevs music for (part of) DIsneyland. New Orleans Square (with the Blue Bayou and the entrance to Pirates of the Caribbean) had trad bands from the very beginning in the mid-fifties, and still has some form of early jazz playing over speakers most of the time. The trad bands have mostly moved to Disney California's Adventure or to Downtown Disney—I know The Reynolds Brothers play there.

And Fantasy makes sense. Good Time Jazz eventually ended up in the Fantasy catalogue, and GTJ was founded to issue music by the Firehouse Five Plus Two, which was a trad band made up of Disney Animators.

 

The Stanford archive has some really cool things; one of the curators is a friend and he's waxed poetic. I have the impression that the choice of materials presented on the site isn't entirely up to the curators (oh irony), though.

Edited January 28, 2019 by lipi

[medjuck]

IIRC Kid Ory played at Disney Land.  (And I definitely remember seeing Count Basie and his band there. )

[ghost of miles]

13 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

This is an interesting resource sent by a friend: https://exhibits.stanford.edu/sftjf

Wow, thanks much for posting this.  I did a bit of digging into this history a couple of months ago when I was working on that Night Lights San Francisco episode and will add this link to the web-post.

[king ubu]

18 hours ago, medjuck said:

IIRC Kid Ory played at Disney Land.  (And I definitely remember seeing Count Basie and his band there. )

Art Pepper as well -- there's an audience recording in circulation (rec. Sep 1980 from what I could find online).

[Big Beat Steve]

18 hours ago, medjuck said:

IIRC Kid Ory played at Disney Land. 

Didn't Jack McVea have a VERY long "residency" there? From 1966 into the 90s

[paul secor]

5 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Didn't Jack McVea have a VERY long "residency" there? From 1966 into the 90s

I recall reading that - perhaps in the liner notes of an Ace release or one on Juke Box Lil.

[lipi]

If we're throwing out names of people who have performed at Disneyland we'll be going for a while. Anyway, here's Kid Ory, and Johnny St. Cyr and some guy on trumpet playing on the riverboat at Disneyland: