Jazz and Blues Fest 2017 Preview
One hundred years ago, on Feb. 26, 1917, the Original Dixieland ‘Jass’ Band shuffled into a dusty room in New York City and produced a record for the Victor Talking Machine Company.
That record, a Victor 78 with “Dixie Lass Band One Step” on one side and “Livery Stable Blues” on the other, would go down in history as the first jazz record.
Today, Beaumont residents with a love of jazz and blues tune into KVLU’s “All That Jazz” Sundays, visit Suga’s Deep South Cuisine and Jazz Bar or listen to local jazz and blues acts such as the Night and Day Orchestra, the Lamar Jazz Band or traveling blues troubadour Silas Feemster.
“This is like a blues city, anyway, a blues town,” said blues singer and guitarist Barbara Lynn.
Lynn and other musicians will highlight the area’s musical roots Saturday at the the 11th Annual Kinsel Lincoln Jazz and Blues Festival at the Jefferson Theatre.
The festival will feature Nashville duo Muddy Magnolias, Barbara Lynn, Paul Childers, Lisa Marshall, Flava Band, Barelands, Silas Feemster and the Lamar University Jazz Band with Jimmy Simmons.
Barbara Lynn performs during the Black History Month event held Tuesday night at the Theodore Johns Branch Library. Music, poetry and dance were among the cultural highlights celebrating the expressions of local black artists.
Photo taken Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Kim Brent/The Enterprise
Lynn, who has performed with a Who’s Who of classic R&B, including Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Gladys Knight and Jackie Wilson, remembers listening to jazz and blues at Beuamont’s Dairy Club, the Chenery Auditorium and Club Raven when she was growing up.
“I’ve always been into blues myself ever since I was a little girl, because I used to listen to the radio back in the day when I was coming up here.”
Long before she hit it big with “You’ll Lose a Good Thing” in 1962, Lynn has childhood musical ambitions.
“I went to school here at Blanchette (Elementary), and I formed my own girl’s band, Barbara Lynn and the Idols,” she said. “Every day at lunch time we would go to the side of the building and play. Play and sing. And I’d be winning a lot of talent shows, too, me and my group.”
“I’ve traveled everywhere else, but I always come back home,” she said.
Rick Condit, associate professor of music at Lamar and member of the LU Jazz Band, said the appeal of jazz is its improvisational nature.
It’s not bound to rigid rules of practice like other forms of music.
“I spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe, and the jazz musicians there, before the fall of communism and the Iron Curtain, when they would hear jazz music, to them it represented freedom,” he said. “They realized that the musicians had the ability to express themselves without fear of being imprisoned. I’ve
met musicians over there that a lot of the time learned English by reading pirated copies of jazz magazines and listening to the Voice of America. They had a nightly radio broadcast by a guy named Willis Conover. Conover was the most-recognized English-speaking voice that they heard on the radio. They didn’t recognize American presidents or British prime ministers, but they all knew Conover’s voice because he was very well-spoken and spoke very clearly. He was like a national hero.”
Emily Wheeler, Division Manager for City of Beaumont Event Facilities, said she thinks the draw of the festival is the way jazz and blues are able to bring together different walks of life.
“The area just welcomes music and the arts,” Wheeler said.
The Muddy Magnolias will perform at the 11th Annual Kinsel Lincoln Jazz and Blues Festival at the Jefferson Theatre on Saturday, January 28, 2017. Photo by Mary Caroline Russell. Provided by Sacks & Co. Nashville.
The festival is headlined by Muddy Magnolias, which features Beaumont native Kallie North and Jessy Wilson. North said she is excited to perform in her hometown after touring the country.
“I was talking to my mom when we got booked, and I said, ‘Mom, we’re playing the Jefferson Theatre!’ She said ‘Oh, the last time that I was at the Jefferson Theatre I was opening up for Charley Pride,’ and I thought that was so cool,” North said.
Wilson met North while the two were in Nashville, and the duo has toured the country, recorded videos with VEVO and released an album, “Broken People,” last October, but Wilson said the most rewarding part of the process is performing.
Paul Childers & The Black Tie Affair
“We live to get back on stage,” she said. “We love writing, we love recording, but the live show is where all of the energy comes from. It’s the excitement. It’s the passion. It’s like a high that you chase from one night to the next. Performing live, you think, ‘Oh my God, that was the most amazing feeling.’ You chase that. You want that every single time.”
Paul Childers is a Nashville rising star with a self-produced album, “Naked Poetry,” due out in April. Childers writes his own material, something he said is an all-or-nothing passion with him.
“I don’t want to write something unless it makes me lose sleep, you know?” he said. “Otherwise why write it if you have nothing to say? When someone tells me they have writer’s block, I always think there’s two reasons why. Either you have nothing to say, or you’re too afraid to say the real thing, and I think a lot of people are too afraid to say the real stuff. That’s why there aren’t any really good love songs anymore.”
Childers said the last time he was in Beaumont, he was surprised by how friendly the crowd was.
“I was actually there in October playing the Oktoberfest, and that was one of the most fun shows of the year,” he said. “Most people didn’t know me, I wasn’t the headliner or anything, but I shook so many hands afterwards. My Beaumont quote-unquote market is not a bunch of numbers that come to a show, it’s friends, now. I get comments on Facebook, people are talking about coming back. That goes back to the feeling of being on the stage and saying, ‘Oh my gosh, this is do or die.’”
Weather permitting, there will be two stages, one inside the Jefferson Theatre and one outside. The festival will feature food and craft beer provided by Two Row Distributing, including Sweetwater Brewery out of Atlanta.
Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at ticketmaster.com.
11th Annual Jazz and Blues Festival
When: 5 p.m. Saturday Cost: $10
Where: Jefferson Theatre, 345 Fannin St, Beaumont
Info: discoverbeaumont.com
Tim Collins is a freelance writer.
