ORSON VIDEO OF SONG FOR MY FATHERS E-EDITION

Richard Mason and Benjamin Morse, creators of the Orson interactive e-edition of my book Song For My Fathers, have just posted a short video about it on youtube. It's an excellent introduction to the new world of interactive books that Orson has invented. I was thoroughly bowled over by what they and their tech people did with my book. They took it from a static print version to a multidimensional experience combining musical performances, interviews, videos, and dozens of rare photos--not to mention an audiobook track synched to the text. The Orson edition of Song for my Fathers is currently on offer for half price ($12) throughout the summer. Have a look: https://youtu.be/YwEsCFqOdFc

SONG FOR MY FATHERS --THE INTERACTIVE E-BOOK VERSION

 AT LAST! The new improved interactive e-book edition of SONG FOR MY FATHERS is now available for iPad downloads. In addition to the full text of this coming-of-age-in-New Orleans jazz memoir, there is an audio narration, some 100 vintage photos, musical performances, interviews, plus rare video footage of jazz funerals, parades, and recording sessions from the 1950s and 60s. Anyone who liked the print edition (and has an iPad) will get a real kick out of this multidimensional you-are-there version.

Here's how to get it: 1) go to Apple App store, 2) find and download "eLume" app from Orson and Co., 3) go on the app and choose SONG FOR MY FATHERS among their offerings, 4) pay and download the package--takes about 10 minutes, 5) enjoy!

For inquiries and download help: info@orsonandco.com

NEW ENHANCED E-BOOK EDITION OF SONG FOR MY FATHERS

Announcing the launch at the end of April 2015 of the "eLume" (enhanced e-book) edition of SONG FOR MY FATHERS, featuring the complete text, audio narration, 25 musical performances, 100 vintage photos, archival videos, interviews, etc. Available soon on the Apple App store and through orsonandco.com. Here's the whole story:

PUNCH MILLER'S LUCKY ESCAPE

Photo of burnt-out club, La. Weelky 5/4/1940

Trumpeter Punch Miller was a great teacher and a great raconteur. One amazing story he told me involved the Walter Barnes orchestra. Punch had played with them in Chicago, but quit the band in 1940 just before they went south for a gig in Natzhez, were they all burned up in a dance hall fire. I recently ran across an article in the Louisiana Weekly that described the disaster in these grisly terms: "More than 200 baked humans have been taken out of this land of the dead, the Rhythm Club, where they suffocated and died when someone flung a lighted cigarette into the Spanish moss-covered ceiling...all of the instruments used by the Walter Barnes band were destroyed except the piano." (My profile of Punch Miller, including his account of the fire, appears in SONG FOR MY FATHERS, chapter 11.)

"EVERYTHING'S LOVELY"-DEJAN'S OLYMPIA BAND

Harold with me, at 16, blowing behind him. © Sancton Coll.

One of the greatest learning experiences I had growing up was marching and playing with Harold Dejan's Olympia Brass Band. Harold, a soft-spoken, good-humored alto sax player, had a favorite saying: "Everything's lovely!" I built up my chops playing eight-hour parades and funerals with the Olympia, I learned a lot of great music, and got an inside view of the back streets and neighborhoods that, in those Jim Crow days, were largely unknown to whites. Harold opened the door to a different world.

Here's what I wrote about Harold's band in "Song for My Fathers":

By far the funkiest of the marching groups was Harold Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band. Harold had a day job as a driver and delivery man for the Lykes shipping line, but his real love, and genius, was running the Olympia. Harold had a favorite saying—”Everything’s lovely”—and when you hung out with him and his band, everything was lovely and life was fun.

         Harold was one of the younger jazz musicians, probably in his late 50s when I met him. He was short, broad-shouldered—he used to be an amateur boxer—and a bit paunchy. He had a smooth, gentle voice and a ready laugh that always made you happy to be around him. People called him the Duke.

Olympia on Parade. Photo © Tom Sancton, 1962

        Harold played an alto sax with a transparent red plastic mouthpiece. To tell the truth, Harold was not a dazzling instrumentalist. In fact, he never played anything but straight melody. That was surprising, since he had played with some famous bands in his youth—reading bands that required high-level musicianship. So I couldn’t figure why he never ventured past the melody line or displayed any kind of technique.

         He explained this to me one day when I asked his advice about clarinet playing. “Tommy, I’m a tell you how it is,” he said with a loud sniff. I think he had some kind of allergy, because he wore reddish-tinted glasses and was always sniffing and blowing his nose. “You take me—I can run scales and arpeggios all up and down my horn. But you’ll never hear me do that. You know why? Because you gotta let the people know what you playin’. Out on the street, folks don’t want to hear all that fancy stuff. What they loves is the melody.”...

The Olympia musicians were the most unselfconsciously funny people I had ever met. They were always kidding each other, bragging about their sexual prowess, their drinking capacity, their luck at the race rack, or telling hilarious stories about one another... (Read the rest in Chapter 15 of "Song")

Please check out my SONG FOR MY FATHERS page on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Song-for-My-Fathers/945467905483373?ref=br_tf

"SONG" SHOW AT TENNESSEE WILLIAMS FESTIVAL, MARCH 21

[from Tennessee Williams Festival website]

Song for My Fathers

A unique multimedia stage production based on Tom Sancton’s critically acclaimed New Orleans memoir featuring Tom Sancton and the Preservation Hall All-Stars. Directed by Ron Rona and produced by Ben Jaffe.

Hailed as a “newly minted classic” by The Times-Picayune, this heartwarming story about a boy growing up in the 60s and learning to play jazz from the veteran musicians at Preservation Hall comes to life in the form of Sancton’s narrations, audio-visual projections, dramatizations and musical interludes provided by the onstage band. The Song For My Fathers stage show debuted at Tulane’s Dixon Hall in 2010 and played to packed houses at the Chat Noir in 2011. Now it comes to the new state-of-the-art performance hall at the Old U.S. Mint, which is currently hosting a year-long exhibit celebrating the 50th anniversary of Preservation Hall’s founding.

Come view the exhibit as part of an intimate cocktail reception before experiencing Sancton’s guided musical tour in this unique multimedia stage production that blurs the lines between personal journey and historic account. It’s a history lesson that will have you dancing in the aisles.

For booking see TWF site: http://www.tennesseewilliams.net/festival/schedule

Susan Larson’s Q&A with Tom Sancton

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Posted on February 14, 2012 in Arts & Letters, Enews

Another one of the great pleasures of working on the Tennessee Williams Festival is the chance to catch up with old friends. It’s been a pleasure to know Tom Sancton and a delight to see his wonderful memoir, Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White, metamorphose from page to stage. He’ll be performing with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band at the Festival’s gala Wednesday night at the Mint.

Here’s a glimpse into his life on and off stage.

Performing in the musical adaptation of your book, Song for My Fathers, must be a little bit like walking around in your own past, isn’t it?

That’s exactly what it is like. As with any memoir, the process of writing the book required a long, deep plunge into my past. That was a mental process of memory, imagination, reconstruction. The stage show is a different way of reliving the past in that I don’t just tell the story; I must evoke it physically and visually. The presence of the band, the young man who represents me as a teenager, and the audiovisual elements, bring the story to life onstage in real time. So being in the middle of that is not merely relating the past but re-enacting it. At times, it is almost like an out-of-body experience, especially when I watch Zach Young play little Tommy Sancton taking a clarinet lesson from George Lewis and sitting in with the band.

Has the experience of this book been transformative for you?

Absolutely. The writing itself was a transformative experience. But the really significant transformations are the ones that followed the publication of Song For My Fathers in 2006. In a very real sense, it was the book that brought me back to New Orleans after living away for 40 years, much of that time in Paris. In the wake of Katrina, I had wanted to come back here to re-connect with my roots and be closer to my family. The book was the vector that brought me home. Here’s how it happened: Tulane University chose it for their Fall Reading Program that year and invited me to come give a lecture in October 2006. That led to discussions about coming to teach at Tulane and resulted in my being named the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities for the 2007-08 academic year. My teaching role at Tulane was subsequently extended for three years beyond that. In the meantime, I became active as a musician and writer, re-connected with old friends and made new ones, and became thoroughly anchored again in my home town.

Does doing the musical version somehow complete the book in a new way for you? (I know many poets who say that the poem isn’t finished until it’s read aloud and heard.)

Yes. Relating the story out loud, re-enacting the events with the audiovisual elements and live music, connects it to an audience in a way that goes far beyond words on a printed page. As with my music, I feel like it doesn’t really exist until an audience hears it.

Do you have a new book in the works?

I am putting the finishing touches on a novel set in a little fishing village in Normandy. It takes place in the contemporary time frame with flashbacks to the Nazi Occupation during World War II. The story has elements of a thriller, a detective story, a historical novel and a literary novel, through the story of a young couple that moves to this town and is confronted with a dramatic series of events that transform — and threaten — their lives.

You’ll also be moderating a panel about books about music at the Festival. Is that something you read for pleasure?

Actually, I don’t read a lot of music books. This may seem paradoxical, since Song For My Fathers is to a large extent a book about music and musicians in addition to being a coming-of-age memoir. But music is something I experience most intensely through my playing, and through listening to other musicians play. When I happen to read music books, as I am doing in preparation for this panel, I do enjoy them as they tend to tell great stories about musicians and their lives — and all good writing, after all, is about storytelling.

And are you here to stay now? Still spending summers in France?

Yes, I am here to stay — but with one foot still planted in France. My French wife Sylvaine, a sculptor, painter and photographer, has made a place for herself in the New Orleans art world. I have picked up an active life here with my music and writing. But France still occupies a big place in our hearts. We are fortunate enough to have a house over there, so we can return periodically — especially during the scorching New Orleans summers. In short, we enjoy the best of both worlds.

"SONG" AT THE CHAT NOIR -- READY TO ROLL!

On Tuesday, Director Ron Rona ran us smoothly through a full rehearsal of our "Song For My Fathers" stage show at the Chat Noir. Those who saw the premiere at Tulane's Dixon Hall last spring should enjoy it even more in the intimate setting of this well-known cabaret theater in downtown New Orleans. The front tables practically touch the edge of the compact stage. At one point, the band weaves through the tables in a second-line parade that brings the audience right into the action. As in the original show, I am seated on a stool stage right, narrating the story of a young boy's magical apprenticeship with clarinetist George Lewis the other jazz greats at Preservation Hall. The Preservation Hall All-Stars band occupies center stage and delivers musical interludes that bring my memories to life. On a screen mounted at right of the stage, vintage videos and still pictures from the 1950s and 60s present dramatic images of the unforgettable people and places described in the narrative. One touch that I find particularly

intriguing is the young man who plays me circa 1963: journalist and clarinetist Zach Young. Watching "myself" sit in with George Lewis at the Hall for the first time is, for me, an eerie and strangely moving experience. But you have to see it for yourself. Le Chat Noir, 715 St. Charles Ave., May 13, 14, 15, 21, 22; 8 pm on Fridays and Saturdays and 6 pm on Sundays.

Check Offbeat's preview: http://offbeat.com/2011/05/01/tom-sancton-meet-tom-sancton/

The Gambit's blurb: http://m.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/song-for-my-fathers/Content?oid=1726761

My interview with Susan Larson on WWNO: http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wwno/news.newsmain/article/8008/0/1800984/The.Reading.Life/The.Reading.Life..5311

For tickets and reservations: http://www.cabaretlechatnoir.com/index.php?id=298

"SONG FOR MY FATHERS" SHOW AT LE CHAT NOIR!

For those of you who missed the "world premiere" at Tulane's Dixon Hall one year ago, Le Chat Noir theater is presenting a reprise of the stage show based on "Song For My Fathers." The multimedia show features readings and narration by yours truly; music by the Preservation Hall All-Stars; and projections of rare archival photos and videos depicting the legendary jazz players—George Lewis, Sweet Emma Barrett, Punch Miller and many others—who taught me about their music and their humanity nearly a half century ago. Show dates: May 13-15; 21, 22

Check the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_si5OXylZs

Online reservations on the Chat Noir site:

http://www.cabaretlechatnoir.com/index.php?id=298