Back in the saddle (or re-percussions)
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Back in the saddle (or re-percussions)
Categories: Announcements, News, Gigs, 94 words1 feedback •They're back! Some things were just meant to be together and with the help of some wonderful people in Ft. Lauderdale, the original members of Jazzberry Patch have come together. A simple "reunion" gig that was intended to celebrate the good ole days has grown into the rebirth of the Jazzberry Patch group. The group is hotter than ever and features the original trio of Ben Champion, Danny Burger, Ken Burkhart, plus (++big plus++) old friend Martin Hand on guitar and vocals. If you are in the area be sure to seek them out.
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Getting Dusty - JAZZBERRY PATCH
Categories: Announcements, News, Whatever...., 2233 words3 feedbacks •
JBP Productions
Previously published in Elemental Magazine
By Austin "The Judge" WheelerOver the years,the Jazzberry Patch album has become quite a crate-digging mystery. Why the name? Why the speed boat on the back cover? Why raw jazz-funk in 1977 ? Who was Billy Lauderdale? So on,so on, and so on." There are a lot of funny stories." explains Kenny Burkhart, organist for Jazzberry Patch,"but probably nothing you could put in print."
What we can print began in the fifties in South Florida, where the young saxohonist Ben Champion grew up."That was really an exciting time ," remembers Champion," I would go down by the bridge where Cannonball Adderley was playing and sit there until it was time to go to school in the morning,and Cannonball would go teach school at Dillard High School, sell cars in the afternoon, and play at night. He was a hard-working man."
Cannonball Adderly 's hard work had an impact on Champion that hit close to home . " He'd come out of the Navy School of Music,"explains Champion," and my brother followed him thru there." Once out of the Navy , Ben's older brother Ron and friend Mike Longo began gigging with Adderely in Fort Lauderdale
Champion explains that Adderley's sound came from spirtuals. "Cannonball brought that very spritual music right from the church into the mainstream of blues." Under the influence of Adderely. and Ben,s own church music. They would get down." remembers Champion,"and thats where we learned to play! The ones we went to really had a very distinctive, ,spirtual blues band. A lot of tambourine players,and they'd be shouting you know it was like the first forms of jazz for us kids. That was exactly what it was. The Blues.
Outside of the church, Ben , his older brother Ron, and pianist Mike Longo and a drummer named Peter Hellmantoller, formed a group called The Sophishtocats. By the time Ben reached the 11th grade, all four received full scholarships to the Western Kentucky State School of Music." I got a scholarship while I was still in high school." remembers Ben. " Then I went to California and Mike got a scholarship in the Oscar Peterson School of Music, and then ended up with Dizzy Gillespie for about 15 yrs. " After a brief rock and roll gig in California, Ben Champion returned home and formed The Ben Champion Trio, recording two independent LP's The Ben Champion Trio (CP-101), and The "Live" Sound of The Ben Champion Trio (ALP-80).
In 1973, a B-3 Player began to make his own waves in the Fort Lauderdale area. As organist Ken Burkhart remembers it "Somebody told Ben that he had to go into this club in Hallendale and hear this B-3 player. So he came in a couple of times and talked to me. I was just doing a single, playing B-3 alone. He sat in and did a couple of tunes with me,and I loved it, because he played so well. I thought "How cool is this? As it turned out, Ben knew the owner and was eventually hired to join Kenny." Ken and I started as a duo , "explains Ben. "Then we hired a couple of friends, but I already had my eye on Danny Burger. Ken and I were together for six to eight months befor we got him. We were getting the music together, and already had a direction by the time we brought Danny in. When Danny Burger became available, that was the beginning of Jazzberry Patch."
In 1974, Jazzberry Patch was formed, and with the help of Ben's long time friend and manager Rich Farrell the gigs started rolling in. " We worked quite a bit at Hallandale Beach,"remembers Ken Burkhart, at the Holiday Beach Club. I remember one night the guys from the O'Jays stopped and sat in. The big named bands loved to come and sit in because they got to stretch out and play,and not have to play a show or read charts or anything. So they got a big kick out of it, and we had a lot of fun like that ,too"
The band would also make appearences with their friend Dizzy Gillespie. If you saw Dizzy in South Florida , you also saw Jazzberry Patch. As Ben remembers it. "We appeared with Dizzyy Gillespie,everytime he was in the area. We had always idealized him, all his bands and his music. I remember the first time I met Dizzy . Mike came to my house and rang the door bell. I woke up , and went to the door and here he's got Dizzy Gillespie with him! He said,"Are your knees knocking? I did'nt really believe it was happening." From that point on Ben Champion and Dizzy Gillespie became in Diz's words: "family."
Dizzy's endorsement, along with Rich's tireless promotion, gave the band a huge fan base in Fort Lauderdale. But Rich wasn't just a manager. "Rich was a real world-class boat racer "explains Ben. As the throttle-man for an Anheiser-Busch sponsored race-boat , Rich Farrell traveled the U.S. and brought Jazzberry Patch (and their wifes) with him. "We used to go to California for the boat races, "remembers Ben. "We'd go to Key West for the boat races wherever the boat was racing we'd usually go. Point Pleasent, we took our boats up to Lake George , NY and Jazzbery Patch did one of the racers weddings!" Rich even had his Busch-Sponsored boat repainted with the Jazzberry Patch logo! "At one point," Ben remembers," we had a Porsche on the circut, a race-boat with two world championships and a band that just traveled around with all that! I remember I was in Newport California, in the Balboa Beach Club, like one of the most exclusive clubs there is, and this guy says,"Aren't you with that Jazzberry boat? I said ," yeah . And he said,"What do you do on the boat? So instead of putting him on and telling him I was the navigator, I said," I Have the band. He said,"Does that boat have a band on it? And I said," Don't all of them?!!"
In 1976 , The Jazzberry Patch was booked on back-to-back Carnival cruises," I remember this one cruise," starts Ken Burckhart,"and this is a true story. I've got it on tape. Some guy literally danced by with his wife, drunk out of his mind. He looked up at Ben and said,' This is the best time I've had in my whole life. I'm celebrating my (whatever anniversary it was). And seconds after he said that he collapsed of the dance floor. Ben was screaming over the microphone, "Is there a doctor in the house? " Danny stop playing ,stop,stop!" They came and they tried to revive him and then they finally airlifted him off the boat. I'll never forget that, because we have it on tape. Of course, the next day all of the other entertainment on the ship said," Boy, we heard you really knocked them dead in the lounge. I can laugh about it now, but I'm sure at the time his wife wasn't real thrilled about it--that was their anniversary."
From the cruise ship , the Jazzberry Patch took up residency at a club called The Banana boat. " We were packing it out every Sunday," remembers Ben," and sometimes two or three afternoons a week depending on what was going on. " Across the street, a tiny club called Bogart's," was struggling to stay afloat. "They were friends that had Bogart's, "explains Ben, "and they were dying. So we went to do a few days for them just to pull them out. " After the Jazzberry Patch brought the capacity crowds back to Bogart's , the small club couldn't ante up. " They couldn't afford to pay the band 'remembers Ben. We were making a lot of money for a trio back then, and this was a small little club. The only way to make it work was if we had a piece of it. So we took half the club! I hocked my house and bought in!"
As Ken remembers it, "You could only get so many people in Bogart's, but we would pack them in! But believe me, the bandstand...We literally had to slide out. Danny and I were pretty much side by side. I could practically reach over and grab his high hat,and Ben was just a few steps in front of us. Nobody could come up and sit-in, there was just no other room! Bogart's was basically just a bar, in the middle of the room,and pretty much just standing area around the outside. That was it , it had two small restrooms and dartboard and that was it. That was Bogart's."
The small club on the corner of Commercial and Bayview would become the breeding ground for the Jazzberry Patch LP," Bogart's was the basis of the record,"explains Ben."Every night we had a lot of freedom. We did a lot of entertaining and a lot of commercial tunes, but we had our own club, we had the opportunity to experiment with our own music. Those things were honed right on the job,and then finally recorded. Thats why there was an unusual time element in some of the songs, they go from extremely long, to, I think the tune on one side was thirty seconds("Overy Easy"). Having our own place with Danny Burger and Ken Burkhart, we played six ,seven nights a week, as long as we could stand,and we'd take trips with the boat team. This went on for several years. That's exactly what it takes for a group to get that tight,have that much freedom and still have mental guidlines to go by. Very little music was put on paper,, Sometimes before we'd go into the studio we'd sketch out the arrangememts for additional musicians that we'd be adding, but it was all honed, very spontaneously,on the job. The writing and everything was done spontaneously on the job, even Ken's little vocal things. He had the abiliy to come up with some things some nights. It wasn't really thought out. But the group, it took us like three years to get on that level where we could communicate that well."
Ben adds: It was a once in a lifetime thing. The club, We bought into it when it needed, and we had a good enough following to support it. We had total musical freedom for three years, which is unheard of in our business. We also tried to keep enough brains in it to keep it commercial because we wanted to keep the place very, very busy. So it was like I said a once in a lifetime experience. We've had many other great experiences, but nothing quite that free Hence that album is a very personal thing. Thats what we did every night. I was happy that we did capture that much of it."
Perhaps the best example of capturing the sound of Bogart's lies in the twenty minute uncharted title track" Jazzberry Patch." The way that came about,' explains Kenny ' is I would play this break tune, which started out the same as "Jazzberry Patch." Little by little, each night, we would just start adding little things to it. Nothing was really written out. We just kind of did this on stage,and the song kind of grew and progressed, and ended up being what it ended up being like a twenty-minute thing. Each time we played it, we would add one thing here, and something else there, and before you knew it , we had practically a whole side of an album. that's how that actually formed. It was just pieced and pieced and pieced together. It just evolved from jamming , and I thought that was kind of cool."
Another "cool" composition on the LP is "These Are My Friends" by Ken Burkhart. Opening with a ferocious drum break from Danny Burger, " These Are My Friends" thunders into a mean bari sax riff and vocals from Burkhart himself. In 1994 The Beatnuts would re-introduce this cut to the world via an interlude on the classic Street Level. Immediately following " Get Funk." three guitar chops , and a little kid singing in spanish, is Danny Burger's nasty cowbell break. " I think it's wonderful," laughs Ben Champion, understanding the importance of The Beatnuts to our generation, and also admitting that the little kid is to funny. The grateful Ben Champion continues," I'm amazed at what you've created with this album that you found over in this little town in Georgia. That's who's responsiable. People like you, are playing it for other people. You heard something and shared it with sombody else, and we're here talking on the phone. So actually, It's not always what the artist does, it's what people who have received them do for the artist. It's a very major thing. It's very flattering. To be my age, and have one of my great times heard by someone totally unrelated to it, simply on it's merit alone, and have them share it with some of their friends and hence, this conversation. I think it's Wild."
This article would not have been possible without the patience and help of Rich Farrell, Ben and Gail Champion, & Ken and Deb "Sugar Bear' Burkhart. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
P-Vine Records (Tokyo) interviews Ben Champion
Categories: Announcements, News, Whatever...., 503 wordsSend feedback •P-Vine Records talks with
Ben Champion
By Kei Matsuoka
Kei - Please explain the significance of the boat on the back of the jacket.
Ben - Rich Farrell was a friend and fan, who came to listen to my music. At the that time he was racing power boats, and I was a fan of his. He raced with the Miss America team, and the won the world championship. Rich then got his own boat with a major beer company as a sponsor. Many of our fans were boat racers, and we played many of their functions. When we were working on our album, Rich renamed his boat Jazzberry Patch and raced under that name.
Kei - Are Kelton Champion and Gary Champion related to you?
Ben - Yes, Kelton and Gary Champion are my first cousins.
Kei - Please comment on Mickey McGann who is both the piano player and engineer.
Ben - Mickey McGann was a fine musician, writer, and engineer who wrote and played piano on Over Easy (track two). He was a close friend who passed away in 1990.
Kei - Who does the singing on Sugar Bear, and These are My Friends ?
Ben - Ken Burkhart wrote and sang Sugar Bear and These are My Friends (track 4&6).
Kei - Who wrote Sand In Your Blues ?
Ben - Sand In Your Blues was written by Mike Longo for this album,and has since been recorded by other groups.
Kei - Where does the name Jazzberry Patch come from?
Ben - I came up with the name in the early 70's while eating raspberry salad. As the group ranged from three pieces to nine pieces , how many berries in a patch? AS many as we wanted.
Kei - Are there any unreleased recordings by Jazzberry Patch?
Ben - Yes there are many unreleased recordings, which we are cataloging now.
Kei - How do you feel about your album being released in Japan?
Ben - We are thrilled and flattered about the album being released in Japan.
Kei - Have you known Jaco Pastorius?
Ben - Yes I knew Jaco, and his parents(his father Jack was a fine singer). Jaco used to borrow my Jazzmaster Bass. He was so great on it, I gave it to him. Year's later he gave me another bass in return.
Kei - Please tell us musicians you respect, and musicians you were influenced by.
Ben - Having grown up in South Florida my first great influence was Cannonball Adderly, as he was from South Florida also. My hero's were all the great horn players (Stan Getz, James Moody, Michael Brecker, Earl Bostic, and my older brother Ron). Dizzy Gillespie was my greatest influence in music, and life. Mike Longo has been a life long friend and teacher. I consider Danny Burger one of the most unique drummers I have ever seen or heard. He is still one of my closest friends, as is Kenny Burkhart, and Rich Farrell.
Thank you for your time,
Kei
Deep in the Crate
Categories: News, Whatever...., 1656 words6859 feedbacks •By Andrew Schrock
Previously published in the Orlando Weekly.
Used with permission of Andrew Schrock
"It's an old expression," says Orlando musician Ben Champion, "you know, come on down, sleep on the beach or whatever, you'll get sand in your shoes. Well, we've got grit, too, in our music. 'Sand 'n Your Blues!'" The leader of the Jazzberry Patch trio, with a good-natured chuckle, reveals the source of one of his songs' titles. "It's a Fort Lauderdale thing."
The group was active for years in what Champion calls the "prime era" for playing jazz in 1970s Florida, but managed to stay off major labels and stay in the poorly lit jazz clubs that dotted the coast of Florida.One of the only artifacts of that time is their eponymous album, a bright-orange LP with a hand-painted picture of the group on the cover. The album almost sunk into the swamp, with only memories of smoky bars, were it not for the Seattle-based label Light in the Attic's plans to rerelease the three-decades-old artifact and market its off-kilter mix to a new generation of fans. It's taken a chance encounter by a hip-hop group, the enthusiasm of record collectors and sudden global interest to get this obscurity back on record shelves.The Jazzberry Patch album is a highlight of home-brewed jazz in the 1970s. Like many Florida creations, Jazzberry is deeply personal with an offbeat sense of humor, the musical equivalent of Champion's wry chuckle coming through in a quirky mix of frolicsome vamps and eccentric solos. The album's mix of jazz, rock and Latin styles came out of a touring trio that led Champion, Ken Burkhart and Danny Burger up and down the coast. The record retains this same jam-friendly, improvisatory nature born of live performance that requires more energy and natural skill than formal schooling.Champion's playful flute bobs and weaves with Ken Burkhart's clavinet and Moog synthesizer throughout the title track, blazing for an energetic 20 minutes. Burkhart, who Champion describes then as a young whip only at home behind "a pile of electronics," shouldn't list singing as his forte, but the vocals on the album aren't without their charm. It's psychedelic jazz on steroids, like organist Charles Earland with a touch of the overdriven San Francisco fuzz of Sly Stone. In a snobbish music world where even 25 years later "fusion" is a condescending term, this is an example of "electric" jazz done right.
The decade of the '70s "was a great era for listening and forming," says Champion. "We had a lot to draw on back then ... be-bop [and] R&B merged with jazz things, which become better with rock rhythms ... it's a mixture of jazz with pop music.
"[Florida] was a blender of cultures," says Champion.
And even if books such as Jazz: The Essential Companion insist that there were "no cliques of local young jazz musicians" in Florida, the trio would be inclined to disagree. When Champion states, "It's like a family out here," he means figuratively, but as often as not he means it literally too, even if the players aren't renowned. Champion's cousins, Kelton and Gary, played on the album, and his parents were active players in their church, which was the first musical environment he was exposed to before making his way into more secular areas. In fact, Champion can give a synopsis of everybody on the album and how their grandfather or cousin down the road is doing.
Mike Longo is one of those acquaintances. A childhood friend of Champion's, his ornately detailed keyboard work is a palpable influence on the playfulness of the Trio's sound. In the '70s he was going through his own midlife crisis of sorts, leaving piano for synthesizer and penning albums like the pulsating The Awakening for Mainstream Records. In the liner notes to the Jazzberry Patch LP he cites the trio's "swinging lyricism" and "pulsating polyrhythms," painting an album "of sheer joy and excitement."
What exactly was the "Florida jazz" sound then? Champion cites a protégé and a peer as influences.
"Starting with Jaco [Pastorius] and Cannonball [Adderley]. They have a distinctive Latin-funk sound that's easily identifiable," he says.
Pastorius is, of course, the fretless bassist who made playing the instrument as glamorous as lead guitar with his dexterous slap-bass technique. With a thumb in every pie, the Champion took him under his wing in the '60s and sold him an old Fender bass, which Pastorius reconditioned. It became a favorite he would wield through his career with the wildly popular jazz-fusion group Weather Report.
Saxophonist Cannonball Adderley hailed from Florida originally, as did the popular bop trumpeter Blue Mitchell. Even the late Ray Charles moved early on from his native Georgia to Greenville, Fla. All these artists had raw, unadorned styles that were upbeat and unapologetic. They wielded their instruments - whether saxophone, trumpet or piano - boldly, with an honesty that befitted the Southern temperament. The swampland of Florida seemed more inclined to birth artists that freely took from soul and funk playbooks, as well as traditional jazz.
Dizzy Gillespie was a mainstay of the touring jazz scene, and it's hard to deny his role as ambassador of the Latin influence. During the '40s and '50s he introduced driving Cuban rhythms to swing, and toured extensively for decades after, often landing in Florida. When Gillespie was in town he would stay with Champion or Mike Longo.
The Jazzberry Patch drew on his trademark congas, and though they did play together, Champion has even fonder memories of Gillespie outside the studio. "We'd have softball games, he'd play every game. We once played a double-header at a state park, had all the musicians over. Everybody's arguing about balls and strikes and we had a blind piano player there ... Dizzy made him the umpire," he chuckles. "They don't call him Dizzy for nothing."
This rich history means little to the music collectors who stumble upon the group's lone album in the recesses of a thrift or backwater record store. Ironically, the people who precipitated its rerelease were the ones least connected to Florida culture. In an Internet-linked world where MP3s are traded at high speeds, truly obscure music is few and far between. This makes discovering an unknown album both more rewarding and a harder secret to keep.
In 2002, the hip-hop magazine Elemental featured Jazzberry Patch in their "Gettin' Dusty" section, which focuses on unearthing music for reappreciation. The only thing better than finding a tasty bit of funk is bragging about it.
Even before the magazine exposé, a drum solo by Danny Burger was sampled by one of hip-hop's most prolific production teams, the Beatnuts. In the early '90s, the appropriately titled group served up a sound between the playful, jazzy Pharcyde and the abruptly violent N.W.A. As the decade went on, the 'Nuts produced dozens of tracks for the likes of Ghostface Killah and Dilated Peoples, scoring several hits. The Beatnuts were also ravenous jazz fans, even going so far as to mimic classic Blue Note cover art on their albums. It was this love of the music that led them to the Patch.
Ben Champion couldn't be more different from the Hispanic hip-hop duo who call themselves "Psycho Les" and "JuJu," and is surprised that his album found its way to South Carolina, never mind New York. Copies have even trickled down to Japan and Europe, turning up in radio station playlists and DJ sets. The rekindled interest in the album by the international record-collector community means that the price has skyrocketed. A copy of the album on eBay, if you can find one, will currently run you over $200. Champion relies on his daughter to keep up with that trend (she's still hanging on to her copy).
Champion says he "couldn't have pictured our music that we were making in the '70s being identified with É hip-hop as it is now," but harbors no grudges, taking a lighthearted approach to being sampled. Like James Brown, he prefers to retain his integrity and prospective fan base at the possible expense of his wallet. If he wanted to, he could certainly sue the hip-hop duo. With hindsight he confides, "I'm sure there's some good in everything. It was quite humorous and we were flattered by it. Our rhythms had lasted 30 years!"
Though past retirement age, Champion is only semiretired. Although he does spend a good deal of time fishing, he still commutes from Live Oak, north of Orlando, to Miami several times a month to play in club situations that closely resemble the "chitlin' circuit" clubs of the Jazzberry Patch days. Though the cultish reputation enjoyed by his lone, private-press album is unlikely to yield anything resembling a "comeback," Champion chooses not to ruminate about his old albums, a task he leaves to those young enough with time to burn. He's more interested in performing. To Champion, touring and playing out is an integral part of his life. "Musicians long to be heard," is his philosophy. They especially like to be heard in a live club setting where they are "inspired by the listeners," feeding off their energy.
Similarly, Danny Burger continues his musical adventures in Miami with some new kit additions, like his expressive "tompani" (a cross between a tom-tom and a timpani), and recording in sessions with old-guard leaders like Lou Donaldson. Keyboardist Ken Burkhart continues in a more mellow fashion, playing more traditional piano on a weekly basis at a jazz brunch. They're doing what they've always done, individually or collectively, regardless of all the attention.
Perhaps this is why Champion can take such a relaxed attitude towards his old music being obsessed over: "It's all pleasant memories for us ... anything we do from now on is a plus."
Republished with permission of Andrew Schrock/Orlando Weekly. Photo by Brook Pifer. Previously published in the Orlando Weekly.
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