Doc Evans Ramblings

Help! My blog is being overrun with spam comments. 

Really, I get a new spam comment every two to three minutes. It’s crazy. The text is typically garbage with a ton of buried links. 

So, why are they spamming me? 

Apart from because they can, the need to raise page ranking in search engines gives rise to the need to create a lot of links to a web page so the search engine thinks that page is important. 

It’s bad enough the spam that I get through email. (If I were to believe that each piece of spam I receive addressed a legitimate need of mine or (ahem) a perceived shortcoming, I would be clinically depressed.) The internet could be such a better place, if we all played by the rules. 

Enough of my whining—go out and make this world a better place. 

Paige VanVorst knows jazz and can he write.

Paige is the editor of Jazzbeat magazine, which is published by the GHB Jazz Foundation of New Orleans. As you may know, Jazzology Records has released many of my father’s LPs on CD. They do what they do out of love for the music and do a fantastic job of remastering the original masters.

A quote:
“Evans was also a perfectionist—he knew what he wanted and he hired the men that would give it to him. He had routines worked out for most tunes and anything new or difficult would most likely come with a written arrangement, except for the solos—more or less the way Jelly Roll Morton organized his Red Hot Peppers sessions. He was also unlike many musicians of his generation in that he usually picked the tunes—he’d listen to requests but if he didn’t like a particular number he’d say so, which didn’t endear him to clubowners.”

See the whole article here.

I came across this photo in an old family photo album that my mother had recently given me. It had been my grandmother Ethel’s album—Doc’s mother—that chronicled my father’s early years.

On the back in my father’s handwriting was this:

“On the boat Donna Mae—a riverboat that we chartered one night—sold tickets at $5.00 a couple and split among the band 5 ways. We made $47.60 apiece and turned away a lot of people.”

This was probably written to his mother. I don’t know the date, but do recognize drummer Eddie Tolck in the background. That would most likely put the date as somewhere in the mid-fifties.

I like the story that the caption tells—it gives us a slice of life of a musician that was in demand. It would have been fun to be on the Donna Mae that night, gently cruising down the Mississippi, listening to the sweet sounds of Doc Evans.

My father, Doc Evans, lived and breathed music. It was his work, it was his relaxation. He had firm opinions on what was good music and he definitely had his opinions on what he didn’t like. Pianist Frank Gillis said that “if Doc was on the stand and somebody came up and requested anything not in the jazz line–like a polka or a waltz–Doc would just turn his back and walk away.”

I recently came across a book that had been in his library. I found it in my mother’s collection in Grand Marais, Minnesota. The book was titled, “Jazz: A People’s Music” by Sidney Finkelstein. Published by The Citadel Press in 1948, it is dog-eared with a cracked spine, but most interestingly: it has many notes in the margin written by my father. Some examples:

Doc wrote “good” next to this paragraph: “Creative jazz has style. It Applies the test of economy to every note and instrumental sound. It doesn’t use a dozen notes where three will do; it doesn’t use a dozen instruments when one will adequately handle the melodic line; it doesn’t use chords where the melodic feeling fails to call for them. Any element, to be included, must have a meaning, something to say, that would be lost if omitted.”

In the chapter, The New Jazz, a mention of “polytonal music” has Doc noting, “a fancy word for bad notes!”

In the same chapter, modern jazz’s appropriation of the blues is addressed: “But the modern blues are enriched and transformed.” Doc writes: “with all the lyrical form gone.”

Dizzy Gillespie’s “I can’t Get Started”: “One of the worst records ever cut!”

Stan Kenton: “Chaotic, trivial. The product of an overambitious small mind.”

My own recollection: I was playing the trumpet in our high school jazz band in the mid-seventies, and had a variety of artists that I was listening to. One of them was Bill Chase, the high note player that had a jazz-rock group named Chase. I had on the group’s final LP, Pure Music. Bill Chase was taking a screaming solo, that I was really digging. My father came into the room, listened for a brief moment, and pronounced them to be playing like “a bunch of Australian bushmen.”

Although I didn’t always share his opinions at the time, I came to realize that his adherence to his high musical standards is what set him apart from other musicians playing jazz. I’m sure there are many out there that are glad he did.

Greetings, fans of Doc Evans!

I am Allan Evans, Doc Evans’ middle son. I reside in Woodbury, Minnesota. It has been my mission to keep his music alive by re-issuing his recordings, holding the annual Doc Evans Jazz Festival and maintaining the DocEvans.com website. This blog will help keep you informed of what’s going on in the world of Doc Evans music.

Kind regards,
Allan Evans

Jazzology Records from New Orleans will be re-issuing some of the original JOCO recordings from 1949 and 1950. The new release will be titled “Jazz Heritage.”

Parker Dinkins from MasterDigital did the digital transfers. He does a marvelous job with the original master tapes, which have started to decay. The liner notes are the original notes from Jack Lucas. The design is by Allan Evans (me!).

The release should be in early November of 2007. Keep watch on the website for information.

This is something new, after having sold whole CDs for years. I tried to keep it simple, just click on the track’s add to cart button. After paying through Paypal (they take plastic), I will send you an email with a link to the tracks you purchased.

After you download them, you can play the mp3 files on your computer, put them on your iPod (or whatever player you have) or even burn them to a CD. No restrictions at all.

To find the downloads, just visit the DocEvans.com home page and click the link to the downloads.

I would love to hear your feedback on this idea. Drop me an email at allan@docevans.com or post a comment below.