Jazz comes full circle
When we were doing research in the Index-Tribune archives for our story on the Sonoma Valley connection to the birth of jazz (published March 29), we found a news report in a March 22, 1913, edition of the I-T that read as follows:
"One of the largest crowds that ever attended an entertainment and dance assembled at Boyes Springs last Saturday evening and enjoyed an evening of pleasure. Art Hickman was there ... The Seal baseball players were in evening dress ... and the Sonoma Valley girls think they (the ball players) are just too lovely for anything ... Good dance music was one of the features and everybody present had a good time."
Those Valley ladies and San Francisco Seals baseball players who listened and danced to Art Hickman's band that day, may have been the first to ever hear "jazz" performed in Sonoma Valley. A San Francisco sportswriter connected the word "jazz" to Hickman's music, and for the next decade and a half, the musician was credited with the "invention of jazz music."
Hickman himself never liked the word applied to his music, but the name caught on nevertheless, and by 1915 the sounds that music critics of the time called "wild and rhythmic" became known as jazz throughout the country.
That little bit of colorful local history comes full circle starting Thursday when the first Sonoma Jazz Plus festival opens at the Sonoma Valley Field of Dreams.
Many local residents have tickets, and the performers include the great and ageless Tony Bennett, Diana Krall, Boz Scaggs, Steve Winwood, Isaac Hayes, Regina Carter and Mavis Staples.
We commend all of those who worked so hard to create this incredibly rich musical experience for our community. We hope, just as in 1913, everyone present will have a wonderful time.
- Bill Lynch, Editor
http://www.sonomanews.com/articles/2...s/letter01.txt
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