Steppin' Out Live!; Excerpts; Part 3

Can you be back along with what and right now we're going to feature this modern percussion. And.

This is members supported WGBH 89.7 FM in Boston, and you're listening to Stepping Out Live, a benefit for the Dimmick Community Health Center. And we're here at the Hynes Convention Center bringing you tremendous jazz until at least one o'clock in the morning, maybe even later. With me now is Eric Jackson and Ron Della Chiesa and Tanya Hart, who just came off the stage. Totally out of breath. Hi, how are you? Hi, welcome. Well, we'll pass it to Eric for a minute. Tanya, we know what you're used to, running and grabbing a microphone to talk on the air and it of great to hear you up on stage two, as a matter of fact. How is it how is it wearing the two hats that you do? Well, you know something? I have been doing this for so long. People ask me that people who don't know that I've been singing all my life, I've been doing this so long, it's just what I do. And I'm sorry you start with the singing and then get into television. I started singing when I was 18 months old, so I've been singing about as long as I've been talking.

And I did get into television a little bit later, you know, baby pictures on TV. I love your rendition here. Try a little tenderness. Sent chills up. I did it. Oh. Thank you so much. Well, you know, we do a variety of things. I perform at several clubs around the Boston area and both Rond and in fact, the whole staff, Eric, Ron, everybody have been very supportive in terms of playing the tapes. And hopefully I keep telling them doing an album. This may be the year, guys, but we do. We try to do pop songs. We try to do standards. I try to do songs that are vocalese type songs because to me that's challenging. So I'd like to do things that please the audience, but I also like to challenge myself. We haven't really done any of that kind of thing tonight because it's, you know, this is not that kind of an audience. So tonight's to please the crowd. I'm glad you like that. Great thing about Tanya, I think, and Eric will agree is that she has the ability to shape a lyric phrase in her own very special way. So she gets inside a song and interprets it in a

in a way that's very, very unique. And that's an ability that jazz singers like you have to keep the American songbook alive and well, constantly recharging it with your own artistry. I think that's a great gift you have. I also think I hear church. Do I hear church? Yes. Yes. You do hear a little gospel coming through. Did you did you do that? Sort of. That's going up to the whole church singing gospel. That's where I sang. I mean, I you know, I was someone stood me up on a table in front of a church congregation when I was 18 months old and said, sing. And I sang, Yes, Jesus loves me. And they applauded. And I thought, I've been OK ever since then. Like a little applause. I love it. But I want to congratulate WGBH and Dimmick because this is the second year for this event. It was wonderful last year. It's even better this year. And I think with the support of WGBH, it just takes it another step higher. And besides, it gives you audience, like you said, such great music.

I mean, there's happening people here tonight. We hope so. We're really happy to be here tonight. We are stepping out live to benefit the Community Health Center, which is really such a vital, vital institution. It's been around for 126 years now, providing health and human services to the folks in and around the Roxbury area. And we are not only enjoying tremendous music and tremendous people like you join you, but but we're doing something to help all of our future. You know, it's it's really such a wonderful combination of things. I can't envision a community without a place like Dimmick or the community without the arts. And, you know, jazz is such a big part of the Boston scene, as we heard tonight in interviews with Tonya Savage Lewis and Freddie Taylor and the Savvy talking about the Pioneer Club. It was the only competition I know if you got there at two o'clock in the morning, you were early. Tanya, your heart is just a pleasure to talk to you and have you sing for us. You're going to run back and we literally grabbed you.

You get me off the stage, but we're going back in to do something with my friend Wanetta Jackson. We do it. We did a duet during the last set and we kind of tore the house down. So maybe we can do it again this time. To the Jazz Workshop is one of the clubs that we're recreating tonight, in addition to that, we have Louie's Lounge at the Pioneer Club, which, you know, used to open. Right. Used to start swinging at about two o'clock. We have Storyville and we have the hat. And we are going to be going back to to the jazz workshop where Tonya is going to be returning. Well, we'll let her get back to the stage with Wanda Jackson and Stan Strickland. So why don't we head that way now? Thank you. Thank you, Tonya. Well, I kind of said it is Saturday night, so we're going

to play some more blues for you. The song was actually written by me, but it could have been. Call me Mr. Clean just because my hair is about. Coming clean here. Just because my head is bald. But with the stuff I'm using.

I don't need no hair at all. It was it was. Many women. I have my like today. Wasn't for all the pretty women, I'd have my curly locks today. Aventis husband, Peter. Oh, my heavens. It's still getting to my hair. Kind of cool, I try to go a it ahead. I can't see my so I started getting

some I guess a pretty are. You can hear the winners I like. Where can I find. That bald, that man. Call me in, because I'm in the middle of a long, long time. I don't want to know about it, brother. You get to you and you know, I got have. It's tough to get into my head.

It's kind of cool. I try to give a little help, but I can't save myself. It starts to get in some, I guess, such a pretty tight end. And you can hear the women's holler book and I find. That man call me mythically wo. His album. I don't know that we're in trouble, you get your. And, you know, I'm going to give you mine. How do you band together?

What was it about that one more time? This one, not a Jackson. How are you doing? Somebody said, I wish they wouldn't take this back so we can dance. So you feel like moving them out? I don't care. It's all right with me. We got to do something for you. I was recorded by Anita Baker giving you the best. And I've got. It is something I can give. Read my mind, make me feel just fine when I think

my peace of mind is out every scales and sometimes on balance and we bear the weight and all that has to be. I hope you see that you lean on me and together we can call the storm. We love so strong. And so I found this and I. Now, I'm going to keep on giving you the. Baby, can I tell you that I'm going to keep on giving you the best that I've got? This is a drill. Everybody's going to have to think again.

We lost Solstar. Obviously, they don't bother me. Because I'm going to keep on giving you the. Maybe they don't bother me because I'm going to keep on giving you the best that I. Baby, I got everything on

my wedding ring, I. It is a wonderful night and we are members supported WGBH eighty nine point seven FM

in Boston, very happy to be bringing stepping out live in support of the Community Health Center here at the Hynes Convention Center. We are making the rounds from the jazz workshop to Louie's Lounge to the Pioneer Club, just like it was done back in the good old days, according to orchestra leader Sabby Lewis. People used to wait in line least to make the rounds used to make the rounds. Well, of course, we always had a line waiting, always even in the snow and rain. They had umbrellas and boots. You know, they'd wait and earmuffs, you name it. And if they couldn't get in there, then they'd go up the street, maybe to the high hat or even Wali's or or somewhere else, you know, they'd find somewhere to go and then they'd go over to George Williams. Well, I got so that they certainly took was what they call making the rounds. People used to come down on the weekend from up in Maine and New Hampshire and places like that and take a hotel room and they just go right through all the clubs. That whole weekend, they were filled with entertainment around. If you came out of your house by seven o'clock in the evening, you had a chance to make

at least four clubs during the course of the evening, Entertainer Maisonette adds. Then you could go on to the after hours scene at the Pioneer Club. Pioneer was it was great. It was down a little alley, but there was it was a row of houses and then a cross was some sort of a yard of some sort of a bus, a transportation yard or something. And you would knock on the door and it would be the legendary slide. And somebody who I and if you knew the right words, then you would come into like the the air chamber between the next door and as long as and you'd be sort of shaken down to a degree. And then if you passed muster and you entered the downstairs room, which was the bar and there was a big jukebox and that was the kind of and the hang out of all kinds of people. And then upstairs is where the the music room. And there was a little spinet piano and

little booths and and I remember and I don't remember a name, but she used to make the greatest fried chicken in life. And I mean, you could get something to eat and then people would just drop in the jazz workshops. Fred Taylor, I remember I mean, things like Erroll Garner being at that little spin and somebody grabbing a beer tray with a pair of brushes and off, we would go on to some great improvised little sessions that somebody had, though it was a very just happening. There was no such thing as anything being programed. It just happened. And if you happen to be there when somebody got through with a date, you know, at some club or some private organization or something, they'd fall by the pioneer at 1:00 in the morning or two in the morning and things would happen. And it was just classic. The personal experience in the Pioneer Club is one that is you'll never, ever forget because it was so lively and you you could be sleepy

or tired or a little loud when you after one o'clock in the morning, you know, you feel a little tired when you went through that door. I'm telling you, you were wide awake. It's like a new world. Everybody came in that every musician, every Billie Holiday each year that Billie would come in to town, she'd come to the Pioneer Club. And first, you know, you had the table right near the bandstand. This is where she would sit. She'd have a fur coat and the little dog underneath. And but she would never perform. And she would sit there. She would enjoy the music and she was getting sick. I think this was the last time that she was in Boston. She came to the club that night and she sat and she listened to the music and she asked me to play her favorite song all the time. These foolish things remind me of you.

Mabel Robinson was house pianist at the Pioneer Club and he said, You come, I want to sing. So this particular night, I don't know why, but she said told me she was going to sing Hi. Diggs was on piano. I had his trio. They also Billie Holiday sang and the place was Jam. She sang that night for about an hour, fifteen minutes. And the last songs and she was going to sing was no detour ahead. I'm telling you could it was quiet. And everybody I guess the. It was so emotional and the tears streaming down her eyes, and that was it. Now everything is concerts and and stadiums. There's no more intimate lounge. I don't know if it's just the changing of times, but hey, oh, 50 years. They had speakeasies, they had house parties.

And it's going to almost come back to that with people being put out of work. And one thing or another and a copy of the bill. We've got to go back to Housman put out and hang on to my piano. I learned my piano after two hours of it for you, but I really do hope they they open a club or two here because them it isn't a good thing it's still in town. Singer Maisonette adds that music has always helped people through the hard times. Mass Jazz Society founder Jean Shoenfeld agrees. I have a theory that if everybody like jazz, we wouldn't have any problems because it's a very people music and it doesn't matter who you are, what you look like or what you believe in, how much money is in your pocket. You have a common thread that is a people theory. And and that's an absolute fact as far as I'm concerned. Hi, how are you doing out there in Radio Land? This is Roy Haynes, drummer from Boston. And I'm here tonight. And a few minutes I'm going on at the jazz workshop and I'm very

excited. We'll see you there. Roy, first, we're going to go here, submenu McCord in Louie's lounge, and then we'll catch Roy Haynes at the jazz workshop. Now we know that. If we take another peek at one of those ladies that did so much to move professional, popular and jazz singers ahead, we have to look at Lady Day or Billie Holiday Archbishop. Wrote a song in tribute to her for a play that he wrote once, and I've been using it every year as a theme for a tribute that we do here in the Boston area. Usually I don't do this song except in the context of that show. But tonight being what it is and it just occurred to me that boy is a great song and I wanted everybody to hear it. If you haven't had a chance to get to one of our Billie Holiday tributes and perhaps it will inspire you to come next time. So Archbishop called his tribute.

I know about the life. Chozen. In the way. And I know when. And lives no longer sweet.

He Fitzjohn. For. He's not fit enough. They make me. I have seen those things. Just, you know.

It makes me want to cry. Winter surrounds you. He's not fit our.

You have seen those things. Just, you know. When death surrounds you.