**This class will be taught on Zoom**
Further investigating five decades of local Jazz and Popular music, highlighting the individuality, innovation and bawdy novelty of San Francisco entertainment. The Fillmore district was known as “Harlem of the West” and Jazz Casual television hosted the greatest names of jazz. Learn how Asian performers found new freedom of expression in local ethnic nightclubs like Forbidden City and you’ll hear unique rarities from lively Club Hangover radio broadcasts. Each class offers nearly 20 videoclips, many created expressly for the course, plus richly linked playlist and resources pdfs for further exploration.
Class One
An overview of the significant eras, venues and personalities of San Francisco music. The beating heart of The Fillmore was Jimbo’s Bop City, a true after-hours club where local saxophone prodigy Pony Poindexter and the greatest names of Bebop held forth until dawn. The pioneering Jazz Casual television series was produced by Ralph J. Gleason at KQED-TV (1961-68) presenting Dave Brubeck, Turk Murphy or Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines. We’ll celebrate Blues in the East Bay and the unincorporated hamlet of Russell City. In the Barbary Coast vice quarter New Orleans-style jazz was performed locally before 1920.
Class Two
Lu Watters’ Yerba Buena Jazz Band revived early jazz style beginning in 1940, launching a worldwide Traditional Jazz insurgency. During the 1950s, Dixieland music was ubiquitous in nightclubs, at jam sessions on the waterfront or the famed Saturday night live radio broadcasts from Club Hangover with Muggsy Spanier, Red Nichols and Kid Ory. The East Bay had a dynamic Blues scene during the Fifties, while Berkeley jazz dives, The Lark’s Club and Monkey Inn, were popular with college students. Singers Lizzie Miles, Barbara Dane and Pat Yankee performed in a wide variety of styles and settings. At his Earthquake McGoon’s nightclub bandleader and trombonist Turk Murphy was a San Francisco mainstay for a quarter century.
