The Old Timers Corner
Article by Eli Rochlin
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  Live Music, and plenty of it! Where? Sarasota, Florida!!?? What is so special about Sarasota? First of all, there are several clubs scattered around town featuring live music. Secondly, there is The Jazz Club of Sarasota. The Jazz Club performs once or twice a month in a local High School, or Sarasota' Concert Hall, and for various charitable functions in the community. My wife and I attended the most recent Jazz Club concert and had a wonderful time.

The Club is comprised of a group of players from all over the country who have settled in Sarasota, as well as local folks. The musicians rotate from concert to concert and also some changes occur during the same concert. This keeps the music flowing, changing and adapting to the new players. This makes each concert different and unique. The concert we attended was pure fun!

The starting group included a pianist, a trumpet player, trombonist, two clarinets, a bass and one percussionist. The starting set included "Undecided Now", "Time After Time" and also "The Nearness of You". Each player had a solo part within several of the tunes. This gave each the opportunity to express his own musical feelings and interpretations. Luck us as the amplification system was not working so we had to listen to all this music live and unamplified.

We had a wonderful tap dance performance by Shirley Goodman, who is also a member of The Zipper Club. This refers to the scar left by open heart surgery. Her performance was great as was the music backing up her dance. Shirley is one heck of a dancer and a great role model for many of the senior citizens in the audience. Shirley's dance was followed by several vocal performances by Diane Linscott who gave us "When I Fall In Love", "My Blue Heaven" and a few others. The group swapped out piano and percussion players, added a sax and rolled on with "Bye Bye Blackbird", "Lonesome Road", "Lady Be Good" and several other oldies but goodies. Before we realized it two hours had passed!

The concerts usually last three hours and this last hour was filled with vocals by featured guest Joan Goodman. The amps and speakers arrived in time for her performance but only the bass and voice were amplified. Joan sang "What's New?", "Don't Get Around Much anymore", "Pennies From Heaven" and several selections from My Fair Lady. Joan regularly performs at one of the local clubs and is well worth hearing again. The group closed with "There Will Never Be Another You" and we realized there will never be another concert exactly like this one. That is one of the best features of Jazz. Originality, and yet, togetherness.

The Jazz Club of Sarasota is one of the wonderful attractions of the town. It's fun, ever-changing, and provides a of of bang for very little bucks. Credits for a great time go to Billy, on Bass; Bob Dorn, Sax; Bob Howland and Dr. Paul on Clarinets; Elliot Phillips on Trombone; Danny Negri on Piano; Chuck Parr on Drums. Fred Williams also took over on Piano and I missed the names of a couple of people who sat in on drums and piano. It is especially great to know these folks are performing for the joy and fun of it - the Club is operated as a not-for-profit entity. Live Music! Try it, you might like it! How else can you tell how well your gear performs?