Don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing
The Eddie Reed Big Band keeps swing alive and cooking for the new millennium at Pasadena Jazz Institute
By Bliss 08/13/2009
When’s the last time you saw 17 musicians onstage at once? At a time when clubs are going under, the feds are handing out cash for clunkers and Broadway theaters are scaling back the number of musicians in orchestra pits, you’d think the big band concept would survive only in history books. But while the 1930s Great Depression years were indeed the golden age of big band music, the genre lives on. Just ask Eddie Reed, who’s bringing his 17-piece orchestra to Pasadena Jazz Institute.
“It’s an important American musical art form that needs to be brought into the new millennium,” Reed declares while taking a break from helping friends move. “The big band isn’t just nostalgia. I think it’s a big part of the future of American music.” A lifelong musician, Reed was born in Montebello in 1957 and relocated to Shady Grove, Texas, with his family when he was 7. At 15 he ran away and returned to Los Angeles. Proficient on several instruments — clarinet, piano, guitar, drums, bass — he peppers his conversation with names of long-gone bastions of the ’80s rockabilly revival and ’90s swing scare where he found his way to big band music: the Derby, original King King, Café de Grand, Palomino, Anti Club, Raji’s, Jack’s Sugar Shack.
“The New York bands of 1938 and ’39 to me were the most inspirational,” he says, before citing Charlie “Scotch and Soda” Barnett, Gene Krupa and especially Artie Shaw as huge influences. In fact, Shaw became something of a mentor after Reed was tapped to lead a Shaw tribute for a 1994 KPCC fund drive. The notorious clarinetist made his personal library and archives available to Reed, and over subsequent years offered recommendations and support.
“If somebody would have asked me who I would like to meet of all the people in history, I would have passed up on meeting Jesus to meet him,” Reed recalls gratefully. “He was so kind to me and so supportive — which was not like him. He was a pretty hard guy.”
This Friday’s show will reunite Reed with a buddy from his swing days, Eddie Nichols of Royal Crown Revue, who’ll share vocal duties with Reed and Mather Louth. Originals composed in the spirit of pre-World War II greats fill their repertoire, along with standards and obscure works by the likes of Shaw, Barnett, Jimmie Lunceford, Count Basie and Duke Ellington. Reed hopes the music will move people — literally.
“The common denominator for me is and always will be whether or not the music appeals to people’s feet,” he says. “If it makes people want to dance and fall in love, then I will have accomplished what I set out to do.”
The Eddie Reed Big Band returns to Pasadena Jazz Institute at Paseo Colorado, 280 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, at 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 14; $10. Info: (626) 398-3344. www.eddiereed.com.
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