Dee Dee McNeil, born in Detroit, Michigan, spent her early musical life as a contract songwriter for Motown Record Company. Her music has been recorded by Nancy Wilson, Jonah Jones, Diana Ross & the Supremes, Gladys Knight & the Pips, David Ruffin, The Four Tops, Edwin Starr and the wife of late, great Reggae master Bob Marley, Rita Marley, to name only a few. Although she is successful commercially, McNeil's roots and real passion have always embraced jazz music. She's a diverse writer, poet, plays piano, sings professionally and has written a number of plays and children's stories. Her freelance articles & CD reviews have appeared in Essence, Pathfinders Travel Magazine, Cadence Magazine, All About Jazz and many more publications, both in this country and abroad. She was the original lady who recorded with the historic Watts Prophets spoken-word group in the early 70's. Their "Rappin' Black in a White World" LP was nominated for an NAACP Award long before rap became popular. Her original song, "What Is A Man" (sampled from that LP) was used in the motion picture "Higher Learning." As part of the first spoken-word group to put danceable music to poetry, she became opening act for Roberta Flack, Les McCann, Richard Pryor, and many others. Ms. McNeil is currently producing jazz concerts in hopes of keeping jazz music alive; raising the pay scale for jazz musicians; introducing jazz to a younger audience and at the same time, sharing historic facts about some of our great jazz artists, who are too often taken for granted. In 2001, Dee Dee won the National BET (Black Entertainment Television) Jazz Discovery Contest, competing with vocalists all over the country. When she is not performing at jazz clubs, she is a part-time vocal coach at the California College of Music and also teaches Songwriting and Artist Development. www.deedeemac.com
There are two long-running jazz clubs in the United States that are famous worldwide. One turned 75 years young recently and that one is New York's Village Vanguard, still going strong and featuring some of the greatest jazz talent in the world. The other is Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit, Michigan. Edging out the Village Vanguard by a few months and prestigiously regarded as the oldest jazz club in the world, Baker's Keyboard Lounge has stayed open consecutively for the past seventy-six years in May. Happy birthday to both establishments and may they have many more jazzy b-days to come.
The Village Vanguard was founded February 23, 1935 by Max Gordon in the basement of a building located at 178th Street and 7th. His widow, Lorraine Gordon, recently released a book entitled, Alive at the Village Vanguard: My Life in and out of Jazz Time. A young Max Gordon dreamed of opening a nightclub, but his parents sent him to college, expecting he would become an attorney. Instead, he found a deserted speakeasy and opened it up as a jazz room and stage for spoken word poets. It became a New York hangout for actors, writers, blues and jazz lovers. Harry Belafonte, Josh White and Eartha Kitt helped build the popularity of the Village Vanguard in its early years. It featured great guitarists like Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and even troubadour Richard Dyer-Bennett. Enid Mosier and her Trinidad calypso musicians and Maya Angelou billed as Miss Calypso showcased the open-mindedness of Gordon. Variety and art kept Gordon's establishment growing and going all these years.
Baker's Keyboard Lounge is not much different. Clarence Baker's dad had him as a sidekick from age 15. When his father (Chris Baker) had a stroke, Clarence took over the sandwich shop at the young age of twenty and introduced music as part of the menu. It started with a single piano player. Thus the name changed from Baker's Lounge to Baker's Keyboard Lounge. Soon there was a line around the block trying to get in. The place moved from sandwiches and beer to jazz in the blink of an eye. The club's seen the likes of Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck on its tiny stage. Art Tatum, Eddie Jefferson, Marlena Shaw and Spanky Wilson packed the place. It was Art Tatum who picked out the grand piano and had it shipped to Baker's from New York. During its heyday the nightspot entertained Ella Fitzgerald who popped in to hang out with Tommy Flanagan and Nat King Cole who sat-in on jam session night. It was no big thing to walk into Baker's and enjoy an evening with Yusef Lateef, Kenny Burrell, John Coltrane, Donald Byrd or Barry Harris. When Baker sold the club in 1996 to John Colbert and Juanita Jackson, Juanita brought her soulful cooking to spruce up the jazz scene. The food is so good that it became a big draw for multi-cultural audiences, who love not only the jazz but love smothered chicken, macaroni and cheese, greens, cornbread and other soulful Southern cuisine to tempt the palate. It's that mixture of down-home cooking, and the jazz cats burnin' up the stage, that endears Baker's to me and makes it my favorite jazz room of all time.
One of the saddest things about the Los Angeles jazz scene today is that we do not have one African-American owned jazz room in this city. The days of Marla's Memory Lane and the Parisian Room on La Brea and Washington (now a post office) are dead and gone. We are in dire need of a soulful room in our own community where we can get a home-cooked meal, a stiff drink and hear some amazing jazz seven nights a week.
I don't want no drummer. I set the tempo.
– Bessie Smith
Q: What do clarinetists use for birth control?
A: Their personalities
