![]() ![]() Scott's marriage to another great saxophonist, Stanley Turrentine, also pushed her name to the side. "You could be as good on your instrument as the next guy, but because he was a man, he got better treatment than you got." "Of course, the men would say, 'Oh, they're ball busters,' they were just looking out for themselves," Fowler said. Scott was an influential jazz artist, but as Fowler put it, she received less attention due to her gender.Women had to be harsh to make their way through the industry, he said, demanding respect and appropriate pay. She opens up the recording with John Coltrane's 'Impressions,' but there's also some pop music and things from the day," Feldman said. Then there's the record titled Queen Talk: Live at the Left Bank, recorded when Shirley Scott performed at the Famous Ballroom in 1972. But, you know, you couldn't find anything better." "And once in a while, he would let one or two of them come up on stage. They all stood at the back of the Ballroom, like listening to the master," he said. "When he came to town, every local horn player in the city showed up. Fowler said the organization booked the saxophonist nine times: "In Baltimore, you say Sonny Stitt, you got a packed audience." The newly-released record is called, Boppin' at the Bank: Live at the Left Bank. "He was someone who was one of the most amazing gunslingers, if you will, in jazz, with dexterity in the way he played," Feldman said. Take, for example, the recording of a 1973 performance by Sonny Stitt – a pioneer in the industry who hailed from the bebop jazz movement. ![]() That's what he found in these recordings, after shifting through many boxes in Fowler's basement in Baltimore. And it started here."įeldman said he wanted to honor the history of the Famous Ballroom and the Left Bank Jazz Society in producing these records, but also recognize these three artists that don't always feature in the jazz conversation.įor him, the raw material he digs up can't simply be good it has to be great. "We're talking about artists that traveled the whole world, but this is Maryland history," Feldman said. So once he had the opportunity to dive into the Famous Ballroom's, he took it. suburbs, and has become a jazz detective, making a career out of finding archival jazz recordings. Feldman grew up less than an hour from Baltimore, in the Washington, D.C. These releases come after years of work by producer Zev Feldman and musician Cory Weeds. Three albums came out last month featuring performances by saxophonist Sonny Stitt, organist Shirley Scott, and pianist Walter Bishop, Jr. But now, thanks to a couple of producers, three more recordings are out for the public to hear. Those recordings had been stored away for decades and only about a dozen had been released commercially. Still, hundreds of those live shows were recorded, mostly for the private listening of the Left Bank and for the artists themselves. We've had 1,200 people in that room."Īfter hundreds of shows, the Ballroom deteriorated and the organization moved out by the early '80s. You could bring your kids the word got out that a woman could come to the Ballroom and not be bothered if she didn't want to be bothered," Fowler said. It was a dance hall, but everybody knew: on Sundays, come to Charles Street."įrom the mid 1960s into the early '80s, nearly every Sunday starting at 5pm, the Famous Ballroom was reserved for concerts put on by volunteers from the Left Bank Jazz Society. "It was a canopy that looked like a circus tent. "There were plastic stars and plastic moons and plastic clouds in the ceiling," Fowler said. It's where Fowler spent most Sunday evenings decades ago, helping put together jazz concerts with some of the genre's giants: Art Blakey. The building in downtown Baltimore used to be known as the Famous Ballroom. And the two flights of stairs that had previously led to a ticketing area and a stage had disappeared. The building that used to have a library now consisted of popcorn machines and movie posters. The restaurants and shops around the street had changed. There was no marquee outside announcing the next performer. John Fowler sat in the lobby of the Charles Theater comparing it to the place he used to know. ![]()
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