I was a child weaned by jazz – my brother fed me. Album by Ondřej Suchý
02/12/2022
Photo: Courtesy of Ondřej Suchý
Description: With Jiří, both in balloons, we hold hands
This fuzzy photo was taken from a 16mm film that our dad filmed on us. Certainly Jiří and I didn’t just go for a walk, but probably for an afternoon screening in one of the Nusle cinemas.
Before my sibling became what he is in Semaphore to this day, he used to be at home, where I saw him either draw something or write something. He was working as an artist at the Promotional Creation company at the time, and once he was tempering a building poster with a field of ropes on it, he told me: Remember that place, and I’ll show it to you when the poster is printed. ”After a while, he really brought a rolled-up poster home and showed me that even my smudges were actually printed on it!
But not to run away from jazz. When Jiří was at home, he played his records on a gramophone. I liked the ones played by Australian dixieland Graeme Bella. Of course, I didn’t know who Bell was and where he came from, only when I took my mind, I found out that his hitherto unknown Dixieland Jazz Band celebrated its first great foreign successes in our country, where he also recorded a total of twelve songs from his repertoire. He came to Prague in 1947 for the first International Festival of Youth and Students and gave concerts in Prague in other our cities. Like Jiří, who already had a decent disco at the time, I had a few records on the album, but they were just spoken. I had Spejbl and Hurvínek by Josef Skupa (I loved you), Ferda Mravence (the film actor RA Strejka also spoke and sang on the record, among others In the 1980s, he had Jan Werich’s fairy tales and Karafiát’s Beetles as a guest on television (Café), which I didn’t play much of, but probably not because there was no fun there.
I once got this photo of the Graem Bell orchestra, playing in Prague. The leader Graeme Bell plays the piano and his brother Roger Bell (if he was not singing) plays the cornet.
Once, while we were living in Spořilov, Jiří, who already owned a simple bow banjo at the time, put me in a chair, sat down in a chair opposite me and said: “I will sing, and when I sing Hey Ba Ba Re Bop, you always Hey Ba Ba Re Bop, yes? ”I must say that I was about four years old and my older brother had always fascinated me. So I was happy to be able to sing with him. And so, after he sang my Hey Ba Ba Re Bop to me, I replied with my loud voice: “Hey baba fish!” The co-author of the song was a certain Lionel Hampton, a black jazzman, vibraphonist, drummer, pianist, singer and encyclopedia also listed as a showman, elsewhere as an actor (but he always played only himself, usually with his orchestra, in a total of ten films). I only heard Hampton’s name on the radio as a child, probably on a New Year’s Eve program, where a comedian told his name and said he would play “Linoleum” Hampton. Jazz was not very popular on our radio at the time, but I still knew what kind of music it was, and I drew jazzmen according to my imagination, because I had never seen them live until then: the musicians could play, of course I didn’t go, well and it wasn’t visible on the radio.
I wonder what inspired me to this picture, and the only thing that occurs to me that the banjo player in the middle of the three musicians is my brother Jiří, with whom I could see the first banjo. It was 1954 and I was nine years old.
There are so many unexpected coincidences in life that when one looks back at everything he has experienced, one often does not cease to marvel. It was 1977 and the orchestra of jazz legend Lionel Hampton came to Prague! “I have two tickets to Lantern. Don’t you want to come with me? ”Jiří asked me. I would be crazy to refuse! And so we both experienced something we could only dream of when we were young. The corpulent black guy, his mouth constantly open, smiled, played, sang, and danced back and forth across the stage. He sat down at the piano for a moment, stood by the vibraphone for a moment, sat down at the percussion instruments for a moment, and kept looking into the audience’s glowing eyes and laughing. The concert culminated in the addition of When the Saints Go Marchin In, when Hampton and a few of his musicians set out on a journey with the audience. He shook hands with some of the audience, and as he passed one bald gentleman, he couldn’t resist kissing the bald. The lantern stormed and on the left balcony two hoarse fans who had shouted the famous Hey Ba Ba Re Bop with their idol live could applaud. Their names were Jiří Suchý and Ondřej Suchý.
On You Tube you can watch a recording of the complete performance of the Lionely Hampton Orchestra in Prague’s Lucerna in 1977. If you are not interested in the whole concert, you can go for 1 hour and 17 minutes and just go to the finals of the concert, where I wrote here and where it sounded. even that famous song. For the sake of interest, Hey Ba Ba Re Bop was sung in the 1950s and 1960s not only by singers, but also by jazz singers, such as double bassist Luděk Hulan, or “uncrowned Czech king of rock and roll” Miki Volek. Lionel Hampton died of heart failure in 2002, but lived to a beautiful age of 94.
To a certain extent, our father was also close to jazz, whom we later approached Jášo at his request. As a young man, he played drums, sometimes the piano and also sang. In fact, he devoted his entire life to his puppet theater, to all the possible professions that he gradually went through in this hobby. But now there’s Jazz’s jazz. The last story I heard from him came from when he was almost ninety years old. The head of the brass band of a racing club lacked a big drum player. And May 1 was approaching, when the band was to play in a march procession. Jasha immediately agreed to the offer he received. As he marched, the bandmaster sometimes frowned back at our dad, who was drumming. After a while, he walked over to Jáš, snatched the drum from his hands, and fired him from the orchestra. Jasha came home, where he told us the whole affair with amusement. He ended his assessment of the bandleader: “Von did not understand that I was playing in syncope!”
One coffee trio playing to dance – our father is sitting in the middle of the piano. The year was 1928.
Continued next Saturday
Entered by: Ondřej Suchý