Word: jazzing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...insular world of jazz, all roads lead to New Orleans, and in 1971 Sancton and Allen crossed paths at the Jazz and Heritage Festival. One night they both sat in on a jam session at Bonaparte's Retreat, a smoky riverfront club on Decatur Street. Last year, when Sancton started playing at the Cajun, a Manhattan night spot, he discovered that his pianist occasionally filled in with Woody's group at Michael's Pub. The pianist later told Allen about Sancton's return to the bandstand. "I met him in 1971," the filmmaker responded. "Do you think he remembers...
That unscheduled appearance prompted New York Times music critic John S. Wilson to hail Woody's playing as "one of the most invigorating and encouraging evidences of the continuity of the New Orleans jazz tradition." Other critics have not been so effusive. "I wouldn't rate him as a professional," says Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. "It's cute; it doesn't do any harm...
...fact is that Woody, by his own admission, is "obsessed" with jazz. Not Dixieland, not swing -- definitely not bebop. He is devoted to the pure New Orleans style that developed early in this century and was recorded by his pantheon of clarinetist heroes: Sidney Bechet, Johnny Dodds, Jimmie Noone and George Lewis. Woody is so passionate about jazz, in fact, that he says he would have preferred to be a full-time musician if only he "had been born with a massive talent" for it. "It's the best life I can think of if you're a really talented...
...Orleans dance halls and parades until his "discovery" in the mid-'40s. Yet he had something that touched people all over the world. Wherever his records were available, young musicians strove to copy his sound. Woody first confronted this phenomenon in 1971, when he went to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage ! Festival and sat in on some French Quarter jam sessions. "There was a Japanese George Lewis and a British George Lewis and a Jewish George Lewis. It was really hilarious...
Cute is the last thing Woody wants to be. Though he calls jazz his hobby, he pursues it with the utmost seriousness. He practices religiously -- up to two hours a day -- usually in the bedroom of his two-story Fifth Avenue penthouse. But even when he's working on location, he makes time for the horn. "There have been times when I would film all day long and wouldn't get to my hotel room until 10:30 at night," he says. "So I would get into bed and pull the quilt over my head so I wouldn't offend...