The Saturday Night Music Appreciation Society Featuring: Jeff Weinman on the Piano

Jeff Weinman plays old timey “Barrelhouse”  piano, a combination of ragtime,  blues and “honky tonk” stride piano styles that came out of the saloons and ghettos of New Orleans in the early decades of the 20th century.His influences include the music of Spencer Williams, James  P. Johnson, Jellyroll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet,  King Oliver, Fats Waller, and Bessie Smith.  He also is a student of old vaudeville acts and burlesque comedy.

Jeff will be performing an array of Dixieland standards,  Hokum blues, and Tin Pan Alley novelties. He tells jokes too.

We asked Jeff about why he continues to play this music and about his musical influences. “I play music that speaks to me with what I hear as an honest voice. It does not matter that it is from another time. I feel this music is good for people because it expresses great sadness and great joy without irony and without the burden of hipness, or a jaded view of life.  When Louis Armstrong picked up his horn in 925 to go to Chicago to join up with King Oliver, it was a ticket to leaving the ghetto behind and to become an “Ambassador to the World” .

No other musician was so loved by so many. This man changed the world  without the internet, without television, and in fact when only 25% of homes had a radio, and 10% had a Victrola. Somehow he was beloved by the whole world though the clarity and emotional truth of his performances and the humor and humanity expressed in his music.”

We also asked him if he likes other kinds of music.  “I  have realized that our American Hot Jazz is much like other  “folk” music forms of other downtrodden peoples: Gypsy music of the Balkans, Klezmer music of Eastern Europe, Mexican Mariachi, Afrocubano, Taino > music, and American Appalachian old timey fiddle music.  They all take great skill and discipline and years of practice  to play well. Each of these musical styles succeed at expressing  profound emotion with clarity, sans irony, and with little commercial gain.”

Jeff went on to add, “People play all of these forms to achieve at their best, a transcendence of suffering.  That is why these forms of music can be considered legitimately to be great Art, and should be honored and taught, and certainly not forgotten. Also, you can dance to it, and some of it is really funny. I like funny stuff, and old jazz and blues is full of funny stuff.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9rVw_eD9WM

Short Link: