Last Roundup at the Catalyst

Tonight may have been my last night playing music at the Catalyst. No, the venerable Santa Cruz institution is not closing its doors, although you'd wonder how they keep them open with the underutilized space, especially on the weeknights.

My history with this place goes back a long way, to the year I came to town. I had hitched a ride up here from Orange County on my way into the newly-opening College V dorms with a load of stuff, when the guy who gave me the ride asked me if I'd like to stop for a cup of coffee at the Catalyst. This was not the same Catalyst we know now, but the garden dinging room of the St. George Hotel that had been converted into a bohemian hangout. The St. George was on Pacific, but the Catalyst with its indoor, fern-covered fountain chugging away faced Front St.

That cup of coffee was the first one I'd ever really enjoyed in my life. It was a bottomless beige mug of pure pleasure. I don't know—maybe it was the beans or the roast or the way the drip was made, but there was something very substantial to the Catalyst's coffee.

A couple months into my College V experience got an unexpected phone call from Nick Robertson, who was in my jazz workshop class. He said he had a gig for me the following Saturday if I could make a rehearsal in Capitola. Not having explored the territory, I didn't know where Capitola was, but Nick offered to pick me up on campus and haul me to the rehearsal. I guess I did all right, because I played the gig on Saturday. The band was Dave Molinari, a piano player who taught at Soquel High School, his brother Jim Molinari on bass, Dan Sabanovitch on drums, Nick on vibes, a short tenor player whose name I can't remember, and me on alto.

I knew most of the tunes, which was a stroke of luck, because in 1969 making a tape to practice from was akin in its complexity to brain surgery. Fact was, I had most of the records which the repertoire was dawn from in my vinyl collection, which I'd schlepped up from Orange County to room B411 in the College V dorms. I can't remember exactly the tunes we played, but I know we played Tom Thumb and Footprints by Wayne Shorter. I do remember I wrote down some melodies on manuscript paper at the rehearsal, which served me well at the gig.

I remember the stage being small, and crowded with musicians and their equipment. Putting vibes in a band is not a trivial matter, and I suppose that Dave played a Fender Rhodes, because that's what you did in 1969. I was on stage right, and on my right  were the windows that opened to Front Street, next to the tenor player and Dave, the bandleader/pianist.

When we started playing, most of the packed house got into it, settling down to a quiet roar. I recall that they were all hairy, for after all this was the sixties and the counterculture was in full bloom. At that time, there was no cable TV in Santa Cruz, and with three over-the-air stations coming from Salinas and Monterey, the at-home entertainment options were limited, so naturally folks went out a lot more than they do now.

I remember the rough but fair owner of the Catalyst, a constant presence day and night at the club, which began life as a co-op occupying the Redwood Room–where the fountain was–and moving gradually into the former ballroom of the St. George, which served in the early history of the Catalyst as a storage area for paperwork for the nearby County Bank of Santa Cruz. Randall came up to the stage and let Dave know it when he thought the decibels were creeping up. Adjustments were made.

Most of all that night, I remember a gal sliding past the stage and smiling up at me named Jan Gillespie, who would leave UCSC in December of 1969, but never leave my heart.

Seven years later finds the Catalyst in new digs on Pacific Avenue. It finds me back from being on the road with Stan Kenton's band, back in Santa Cruz collecting unemployment insurance.

I am invited to the Catalyst for Friday Happy Hour with the Abalone Stompers. Jake Stock was a legendary clarinetist from Monterey who famously had two sets of false teeth, one for speaking and one for playing the clarinet. The pair not in use were in a glass of clear fluid which may well have been water next to his clarinet case.

Jake was a kind soul with a mean streak, but I mostly dealt with his son Jackson, one of the best trombone players I know, who taught me the repertoire of Dixieland music by gesture and gentle prodding. It's served me well over the years.

This is a picture of me at the old bowling alley we oldtimers will always choose to call the new Catalyst. Jake and Jackson had a gig elsewhere.

From the top left we have an unknown banjo player, Bill on guitar (who was the president of the local of the American Federation of Musicians and was here playing from the beginning of the Happy Hour gig regardless of being paid out of a tip jar, which Jake had a volunteer pretty girl circulate with protestations that we needed "a new roof on the church"), an unknown drummer, Daryl O'Day on tuba, front row is me, an unknown clarinet player, cornetist Lewis Keizer (still active in the 10th Avenue Band), and a guy named Moe who played trombone.

These were the good old days, around 1976. The crowds were into Dixieland as an accompaniment to the mating ritual provided by the Catalyst every Friday from 4 to 7. Then, sufficiently beered up, they'd go out to one of the two Mexican places on Pacific Avenue for something with tequila in it and a plate of enchiladas.

It was one of those Happy Hours that, in the recombining of the strands of life, I would for the first time go out for a plate of enchiladas with the women who is the mother of my children. Around the same time decide I wasn't good enough for the attention that a certain icy wise-mouth blonde was offering me, leading to all sorts of complications down the road three decades.

In that Bicentennial year, Randall was still prowling the premises with a dish towel, making sure that none of his customers had a dry glass, his employees weren't ripping him off, and the band didn't exceed his decidedly unscientific method of determining sonic excess on the part of the musicians. (There was a double standard at work here. In the Atrium, an open, boomy room, the musicians had to keep to down so that the customers could talk to each other. In the back room, where I played with Sofrito several times, the sky was literally the limit on loudness.)

Cut to the last couple years.

This is a view of the same area where we used to play Friday Dixieland on a Monday night when we had a Jazz Jam at the Atrium. The only identifiable constant is the staircase, visible through the door that wasn't there in 1976. The picture is from winter 2012, and the jam is in full swing. The room isn't what you'd call welcoming, and when people looked through the door they'd often turn tail.

Why? The Catalyst has changed hands with Randall's demise. The new owners are not identified, don't show up to keep track of how things are going, to supervise and make sure their employees aren't ripping them off. Nonetheless, saxophone player extraordinaire Kurt Stockdale booked us for Monday night jam sessions that start upstairs and gradually move into the Atrium, now with a permanent stage across the room from where we used to play Dixieland.

You can't buy a mug of that Catalyst coffee anymore, because the kitchen's been leased to an outfit that sells pizza by the slice to mostly homeless people out a window onto Pacific Avenue.

There's a dark deli counter where they used to sell the best sandwiches in town.

Behind the stage is a fancy fresco of the Bar at the Folies Bergere. But the bar is closed while we play, and, eventually, an ominous black curtain is pulled on the work.

The club does nothing to support our efforts, and does not pay the musicians. We get drink tickets, for which, for all I know, we'll be receiving a 1099 come tax time. Their website says nothing about the Jazz Jam on Monday nights for two years. We are seldom in their marquee. If you're one of the few people who show up, you're met with a dark, and, most seasons, cold room with a closed bar and no waitstaff. If you want a drink, you climb to the upstairs bar and get your own. Forom time to time, they rent the place out to promoters of Young People's Music. Sometimes they tell us, more often we show up and find a crowd of Rastafai have taken over the room.

It was a noble experiment, but it's done. Tiring of our red-haired stepchild status, Kurt's session moves next Monday, April 15, 2013, to the Reef on Union St.

Goodbye, Catalyst. At the important junctures of my adult life, you were there for me.

Thanks, Randall, wherever you are. Listen, the music is not too loud.

Well, here we go again . . . Only it's my hope that I'm stitching some of the scattered threads of this 30+ year old project into something that actually represents a business now.

We've had a couple very successful gigs at Bocci's Cellar since I last posted. Stella has proven to be an tremendous asset, unlike a lot of singers I choose not to name. I've been writing like a fiend. The band never seems to need rehearsing, and we've been so well received at Bocci's that we have steady second Fridays of each month until the place closes for party season come December, 2013. Nancy Carr, the ball of fire who took over running the Friday Swing Dance Happy Hours, suggested we might make it a goal to resurrect the spirit of the old Catalyst Happy Hours with Jake Stock and Wally. Thinking this was a pretty good idea, I put together this press release, which I am mailing out to press outlets today:

. . . and here we are, almost three weeks out, with plenty of time to get this ball rolling. The big news, as may be inferred from the poster, is that Art Baron is going to play trombone with us on the 8th of March. While we didn't go to the same school, I was in 8th grade across town from Art in Fairfield, Connecticut when we played together in the first big band either of us was in, the Fairfield Police Athletic League Dance Band. (Shout out to my Irish twin sister Noreen, who also played in it!) My family returned to California when the next year, but Arthur and I stayed in touch, and when my dad got another job in Connecticut and we returned to Fairfield, we were both seasoned pros of many dances and jam sessions, me a sophomore in high school, Art a junior. We got to fill in whenever my dad's various bands needed personnel (and when do big bands not need personnel?) and remember well the great times with my dad and his friends that Art and I had.

When my dad suddenly died, the family packed up and headed back to California. Art and I never lost touch, though. I was a high school senior when he entered Berklee (my dad's alma mater) in 1968. He studied with Phil Wilson, who took a shine to him, and befriended a trombonist-arranger from Monterey called Jackson Stock, who would later be the guy sitting next to me at the Catalyst that taught me the forms of Dixieland tunes. Art hung up his spurs at Berklee for a road gig with Buddy Rich, followed by and extended association with Stevie Wonder.

I remember there were only two soloists listed on Stevie's album Music of my Mind, which I bought when I was a freshman at UCSC. One was guitarist Buzz Feiten, whose brother, photographer-trombonist John Feiten, shared a mailbox with me at College Five, UCSC because of the alphabetical proximity of our surnames. The other soloist was Art Baron on trombone. Coincidence?

During his Stevie tenure, Art came out to Santa Cruz a couple times for a hang with me, Jack Stock, Jim Baum, and may others. Here's a shot of us playing music Jack and I put together behind the pre-earthquake Bookshop Santa Cruz.

Then, as I was graduating from UCSC, word came that Art, aged 23, had been hired by Duke Ellington. THAT Duke Ellington. He'd been hired to play the Tricky Sam plunger parts. I mean, come on, really? I knew Art was great, but there usually was an old guy standing in the way from any of these fantastic road gigs! How was this possible?

I remember walking on the beach one night at 26th Avenue after I heard the good news with Dian Smith, my girlfriend and fellow saxophonist. I was comfortable living on the cheap in Santa Cruz, playing in the Cabrillo band, occasionally doing gigs, but this was seriously challenging my world. I decided that night that I too would get a glamorous road gig (Ah! If I'd known then what I know now!). The Cabrillo band was soon to open for Stan Kenton's band at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, and I decided that this was a big chance for me. I was playing baritone (a niche market instrument, much like Art's plunger trombone), and I knew Lile would feature me on a number or two. So when the band arrived in town on their glamorous bus (except for Glen Stewart, whose son drove him in his Porsche) with their leather jackets and their hangers-on, staying at an otherwise drab motel on Ocean Street, there I was, waiting in the weeds.

Tony Campise, a hero of this blog from my days in Austin, had just been married, so rather than schlocking onto him, I fused with baritone saxophonist Roy Reynolds. When Roy grew weary and switched to a vacant tenor chair in the band, about six months later, I got the call for the freed-up baritone slot. Off I went, January 5, 1975, 23 years old for another 24 days until my 24th birthday, which we spent crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a PanAm 747.

What happened next doesn't bear repeating, but suffice to say that I did my term with Stan, and I trace all of it back to the feelings I had when I was walking the beach with Dian that night, trying to make sense out of Art getting a gig with Duke Ellington. That feeling still spurs me on from time to time when I waver in my resolve.

In other news, I put together a new band website, http://newflamintoswing.com. I joined Gigmasters for a trial six months, and you can find us by searching for Swing Bands in Santa Cruz. I'm toying with the idea of an organ trio, because how much better is it to call two guys instead of 11?

I got a replacement road bike, but I still miss my Bruce Gordon BLT, which was stolen in September. I'm trying to get serious about biking, although serious at 62 and serious at 22 are two way different things. Still, I am putting in the miles.

Oh, and I am, I guess, somehow retired, as my main income stream comes from my Social Security benefits. I opened my account at my 62nd birthday. All those years of working for The Man finally pay off!

The Catalyst: Learning Dixieland the Besotted Way

From Historical Artifacts

Friday afternoon in Santa Cruz meant Dixieland music, and I can prove it. Every Friday there was a ritual, a subtext to the mating ritual that we had back before the AIDS and before the Kahoutek and even before the Herpes. The center of all this pre-ritual ritual was the Catalyst, on lower Pacific Avenue, which used to be the dining room at the Palomar Hotel, which was on upper Pacific Avenue. The Catalyst was the scene of my first jazz gig, with Dave Molinari’s band, and also the first time, on that very gig, that I “hooked up” with a girl after I played. That girl was Jan, and nearly 30 years later . . .

Well, that was not where I was heading with this, although it’s instructive.

So after college when I went to Cabrillo College rather than Los Angeles or New York. Cabrillo had a great jazz ensemble. When Sofrito burst onto the scene, I had my fifteen minutes of fame. Every Friday, though, I sat in with Jake Stock and the Abalone Stompers at the Catalyst. Above is a photo, taken by Laigh Langley, of the regular gig at the Catalyst. Laigh was in town to play with the Glenn Miller band, which I had left a half year before. I was there to learn tunes and styles from Jake, a rascal of an old man, and his son Jackson, one of the most fluid trombonists I ever heard. I gladly worked for beer, and developed a taste for Anchor Porter, which the club supplied us with in pitchers.

The odd thing about the gig this particular Friday is that few of the regulars are in the picture. I’m guessing Jake had a gig elsewhere, perhaps in Monterey, where he lived.

Bill Newman is the guitarist. He used to play in Desi Arnaz’s band and at the time--despite the fact that some of us were playing for nothing--he was the president of Local 346 of the American Federation of Musicians, which had an office up the street. Bob Kent is the drummer, Alan O’dea on tuba, one of the five guys named Moe on trombone, Lewis Kaiser on trumpet, unknown on clarinet, and me on the alto saxophone.

Those were the days. Cheap rents are long gone in Santa Cruz, a casualty of the Loma Prieta earthquake. The Catalyst still stands, but, I suspect, nothing like it was.