(gentle background music) - [Narrator] "Roots Race & Culture" is made possible in part by the contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat background music) ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ (upbeat jazz background music) - Hello everybody, and welcome to "Roots Race & Culture", where we bring you into candid conversations about shared cultural experiences.

I'm Danor Gerald.

- And I'm Lonzo Liggins.

Today we are here to celebrate jazz.

Nope, not the professional basketball team that Utah's known for, but the iconic music genre that originated right here in America that provides the NBA franchise name.

- Yes, yes.

It's a long running joke outside of the state that the only jazz you'll find in Utah is the sound of dribbling and sneakers squeaking on a hardwood floor.

But for those of us who don't know, Utah's NBA team was originally based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Now that's where jazz music was born among enslaved Africans back in 1819.

So that was the name of the team before moving to Utah, and it just stuck around through the transition.

- Okay, Well, you know, enough about basketball, we're here to talk about music.

- Let's do it.

- So as a music history buff, I am just super excited about our studio guest today.

They're both legends in Utah jazz music.

I wanna start with Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin, I'm a huge fan of hers and she's a big legend here.

Dee-Dee, tell us about yourself, please.

- Well, I am originally from Baltimore, Maryland, and I came here about 30 years ago and I've been, you know, singing and acting for the last 20 years, but I've been focusing for the last eight on just jazz music and it's been a wild ride.

- Yeah.

- And then of course we got George Brown.

- George W. Brown.

- The big George W. Brown Jr. Tell us about yourself, George.

- Well, I'm from Monroe, Louisiana, and I've lived there, Arkansas and Chicago.

- Yeah, I've been to all those places, I lived in every one of them places.

- Dana was born in every of those places.

(all laughing) - I can see the mosquito bites on your arm now.

- Yeah.

(all laughing) - That's right, that's Louisiana.

- And I moved here from Chicago in '85 and got directly into the music scene.

But my reason for moving here was with Uni Pacific Railroad.

- Yes.

- Oh.

- But I retired in '01 and have concentrated pretty much my retirement years performing, playing.

When I first moved here in '85, obviously I didn't know anybody in the music scene and I discovered that there's, Joe McQueen was one of the persons that was really known here for playing jazz.

So I sought him out and went up to Ogden to meet him and introduce myself and get some guidances, how to maneuver through this minutia called jazz in Utah.

(all laughing) - Which I'm sure has been quite the adventure for you.

- Yes, it has been.

- It's so funny because Utah's just such an unlikely place where you would hear that there was actually jazz musicians, but there's a lot of jazz music here though, right?

- Exactly.

- Yeah, yeah, it's keeping us working, enough to keep us working, for sure.

- Yes, yes.

- So, and now George, you've played in some pretty big concerts and big shows before all over the country.

Tell us about the beginning of the big sports, you know what it is, tell us about it.

- Oh, okay yeah, the Super Bowl back in '87, '86, '87- - The very first Super Bowl.

- The very first Super Bowl.

I was a student at Grambling in Louisiana, in the city called Grambling.

- Yeah.

- And we were fortunate enough to be asked to come perform the pre-game, halftime, and post-game show at the very first Super Bowl game.

- No way, that's crazy, that's so amazing.

- Then you can see that's been a while now.

(all laughing) So that kind of dates me, but- - How was that?

- That was great, but strange you ask.

During that time, although there were a lot of celebrities in the stadium but it was blacked out in LA because that was the very first one, nobody knew if it was gonna take off the way it has.

And so the stadium wasn't filled, but we did what we went to do and the rest is history.

- Yeah.

- Used to be just marching bands on the field, now you have all, I paved the way for all these top entertainers.

- Yeah.

(people laughing) - So what can I say?

(people laughing) - Yeah and- - So where's my money?

- Yeah.

(all laughing) So what are some of the key moments, as you guys are jazz aficionados, what are some of the key moments about this music genre in the state?

I mean, we mentioned Joe McQueen, who used to play, I guess at the, probably at the Porters and Waiters Club, 'cause he lived in Ogden and that kind of a thing.

When you think about the history of jazz music in Utah, what comes to mind?

Is there any specific genre or something that really sort of identifies this state when it comes to jazz music?

- One of the things that comes to mind for me is a man named Gordon Hanks.

- Gordon Hanks, okay.

- Gordon Hanks has brought more jazz to this town than anybody.

- The GAM Foundation.

- The GAM Foundation.

- Yes.

- What is the GAM Foundation?

- It is now defunct, he had to shut it down.

Money and, you know, everything got so much more expensive after Covid, but he brought in people from everywhere, and it used to be at the Sheraton- - Oh.

- And- - Capitol Theater was his last location.

- His last location and it was amazing.

- [Danor] Was this like an annual event?

- He brought in people every month.

- Right.

- Oh.

- Jazz musicians from all over the country.

- Wow.

- Going back.

- And yeah, we're really sad that he had to shut it down.

- People like Clark Terry.

- Cécile McLorin Salvant.

I mean, he brought in some greats - The real heavy hitters.

- Yes, yes.

- That's exceptional.

- He doesn't play a note, he just loves the music.

- Yeah, he's not a musician.

- Wow, wow.

- I'm curious to know, is there a specific genre or a specific song selection that you guys find is like really popular, people love to hear it around here?

- Well, I don't know about popular, but I know what I like to sing.

And I know when people come to see me, that's what they're coming to hear.

And I sing The American Songbook, which is the standards of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, and then I throw in some Nina Simone and try to throw in a few contemporary songs and make some different arrangements of it.

But what I love to do is the American Songbook because I don't think you hear it enough, to kind of develop a love for it and I want young people, people younger than me that's all, to develop a love for it.

And I think it's beautiful and it's ever changing and ever evolving, and you don't have to do it the same way every time, and I think you could put your own spin on it and that's why I love it.

- You know, as a matter of fact, we had a little treat before the show where we were able to actually see you guys both perform in your element.

And we would love for our audience to take a look to see how you guys are when you're actually out there doing your thing.

And Dee-Dee, what are you gonna be singing in this piece?

- I'm singing "'Tain't Nobody's Business".

- Now George, what are you gonna be playing?

- "I Remember Clifford", composition written by Benny Golson for a friend of his, and they played together, a trumpet player named Clifford Brown.

And it's a ballad that kind of touches me, and I really like it.

And to piggyback on what Dee-Dee was saying, the people that pretty much follow my group, G. Brown quintet, over the years have come to expect to hear people like Freddie Hubbard, Miles Davis, Coltrane, Stanley Turrentine.

Those are the type of pieces that we do and we've been supported for quite a few years playing that.

And I just wanted to add a little something to what Dee-Dee said there.

- Yeah, that's fabulous.

- Well hey, let's take a look and see what you guys were doing earlier.

Let's see it.

(gentle trumpet music) (gentle trumpet music continues) (gentle trumpet music continues) (gentle trumpet music continues) (gentle trumpet music continues) (gentle trumpet music continues) (gentle trumpet music continues) (gentle trumpet music continues) ♪ There ain't nothing I can do ♪ ♪ Or nothing I can say that folks don't criticize me ♪ ♪ But I'm gonna do what I wanna do anyway ♪ ♪ I don't care if they despise me ♪ ♪ If I should take a notion and jump into the ocean ♪ ♪ T'ain't nobody's business if I do ♪ ♪ If I go to church on Sunday and cabaret all day Monday ♪ ♪ T'ain't nobody's business if I do ♪ ♪ If my friends ain't got no money ♪ ♪ And I say take all mine, honey ♪ ♪ Ain't nobody's business if I do ♪ ♪ I swear I won't call no coppers if I'm beat up by my papa ♪ ♪ Ain't nobody's business if I do ♪ ♪ Nobody's business ♪ ♪ T'ain't nobody's business ♪ ♪ Nobody's business if I do ♪ - Wow.

- Woo.

- Y'all were just- - That is crazy, I just love that.

- Yeah, now "'Tain't Nobody's Business" by Bessie Smith is actually what the- - 1920s - Twenties okay.

- 1920S, yes.

- Great, lovely.

- Yeah, that's great stuff.

- I mean, how- - It's amazing a song can be a hundred years old and still be that good.

- I know.

And how long have you been singing?

- So I've been singing since I was six years old.

I sang at my grandmother's ladies who lunched parties where she'd fry some chicken and say, "Come on baby, sing the song, sing the song."

But professionally, with my band, I've been singing eight years with the jazz band.

- Wow.

- Nice.

- How long have you been playing George?

- Oh my goodness, I started playing fourth grade.

So I guess that it must've been around 1957, long before you guys were here.

(people laughing) - Started off in the fourth grade in Louisiana in elementary school.

You know, through Grambling, and graduated from Northeast Louisiana.

- But you did the railroad thing.

- Yeah.

- Did you keep up with your music during that time period?

- On the railroad started working with them in 1971, but I never stopped playing.

- Oh, okay.

- So the railroads supported my playing 'cause it supported my family.

- Supported your habbit.

- And I started with the railroad down there in Monroe, Louisiana, from there to North of Rock, Chicago and that's when they asked me, Union Pacific Railroad, asked me from Chicago to come out here and be part of the training staff for the operating department.

- Oh, wow.

- And once I was here, that was the first time I'd ever had a job in rail industry that had definite hours from eight to four, five days a week.

- Okay.

- Thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

So they gave them more of an opportunity to explore the music scene, especially here.

- Yeah.

- So I think this is what is interesting.

Like you sang for us during the show a song that is a hundred years old, right.

And you talk about playing with guys for 2 decades, and you would think that at some point things would kind of run their course and you'd feel like, "Oh, well, you know, "we had a good run, it's over."

What's happening in jazz now to keep it alive.

How do you consistently sing these songs that have been around for so long and still keep it fresh.

- Because they are fresh, you're not doing them the same way every time.

I mean, you can certainly sing a standard, but you can put your own stamp on it, you can arrange it any way you want to.

I was just in New Orleans and I saw this woman sing the song from "The Wizard of Oz", "If I Only Had A Brain."

And she did like a slow ballad version of it, I'm gonna steal it, I'm gonna borrow it.

- Yeah.

- And it was amazing.

I was like, wait.

♪ I could while away the hours ♪ And I was like, what, what is this?

And I think- - A sultry (laughs).

- Yes, a sultry "If I Only Had A Brain."

And I was like, Nayo Jones tore it up.

So I got to see her and I got to talk to her and what we said to each other was, "Do you know this?"

And she was like, "No."

She said, "Do you know about this?"

And I said, "No."

I said, well, let's connect because there's enough, we both said it at the same time, it was really symbiotic.

We both said, "There's enough room for all of us."

- Yeah.

- You know.

And so I'm gonna tell her what I know about the industry, she's gonna tell me what she knows about the industry.

We are both from two separate states, but we're gonna figure it out, we're gonna figure out how to collaborate or get it together, you know, so that we can all kind of spread the good news of jazz and I think that's how it stays, is because there's something new happening, changing all the time in this genre and that's how we've stayed around forever.

I've been able to work, there's a couple of organizations that helped me to kind of launch my career, Excellence In The Community is one of those organizations and they try to get local musicians, not just jazz, but a lot of them are jazz artists.

And so I've probably performed for them six or seven times and was able to kind of launch and be able to play all around the state, at least the Wasatch Front and am now, you know, I have a manager now and I'm trying to book tours, you know, and and play outside of the state and, you know.

- That's big, that's big.

- Yeah.

- Jazz fans here, like are they a good group of people?

I mean, when you do a typical venue, do you have like a good turnout or is it just?

- Yeah, what's the- - I'm gonna just brag a little bit.

- Okay.

- It's a little humble brag, but I just- - You always brag.

(all laughing) - You got something to brag about.

- But I just performed at the Kenley Amphitheater in Layton.

And the last time I performed there, there were 900 people that showed up, and this time there were close to 1400 and they stayed and watched me in the rain.

- Really?

- Whoa.

- So yes, there are jazz fans here, yeah.

- Well let me add a little sum sum to that.

- Come on now.

- All right.

- [Dee-Dee] Come on.

- Excellence in the Community is another venue that showcases music, specifically jazz, once a week on Wednesdays.

And my last two performances there was in December of '22 and February 1st of this year.

- Okay.

- And between those two concerts, we got over a million views.

- Oh yeah.

- So, I don't know if- - Yeah, YouTube, he puts it on everywhere.

Me too, same, yes.

- I don't know if they were sitting in the rain listening to it, but.

- So people are starting- - But they were watching guys.

Yes, yes, yes, yeah.

- We're exporting our jazz.

- I mean, we're trying, trying to get out there.

- Why isn't this more like, you would think if there was any sort of a musical genre where people were showing up with those types of numbers, why no venues here?

Why don't they have a specific jazz club?

Do you know why that's not the case?

- I could take a stab at it and say that most people think that jazz is only played in bars and we're just not that kind of community.

- Yeah, that's not really anything.

- But jazz is everywhere.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Jazz is everywhere.

- And we have a team here called The Utah Jazz.

People get out here and they're like, "Well, there's no jazz."

(people laughing) - Is there a specific performance that either of you can remember in Utah?

I mean, you mentioned people sitting around in the rain just 'cause they didn't wanna leave, but is there like a performance experience you had in Utah that's unique or really memorable that you've had, that it's like, "Well, you know, "I don't think I could've had this thing happen "anywhere else."

- Yeah, for me, it was playing backstage at the Grand Theater on the night that my mother had a stroke.

And I remember knowing that I had to do that concert and sitting with my husband and my mother, and she was not waking up.

She's still alive, but at the time, we didn't know if she was gonna wake up and my husband said, "Listen, I will be here, "I will stay here.

"You go and do this performance "because you've got people waiting for you "and your mother's gonna be sleeping, "she's gonna be here, "she's got people who love her, "who gonna be here "and I will call you if you need to come off of that stage."

- Okay.

- And I went and I told the audience what was happening and the support and the love that like came at me, the energy that came at me.

I mean, I couldn't have asked for, you know, a more supportive audience than that particular night.

It was like so many people were in her corner and whatever they were saying, whoever they were praying to, you know, they went up.

- You could feel it.

- I could feel it, I could feel it.

It was amazing, it was amazing.

- I wanted to add on to something that Danor said 'cause he was asking about, you know, what younger kids can do, or people in general, to get interested in jazz.

Recently, I walked into a room, my daughter was listening to some jazz music and usually I'll listen to jazz music if I'm writing or I'll listen to what my car, but I don't usually play it in the house.

And I just was like, I wonder how she got into this music, you know?

And I personally got into it a lot from watching the PBS series, you know- - Oh Burns, yeah.

- Yeah, yeah, The "Ken Burns Jazz" from one to 10.

Did you guys get- - Yep, absolutely.

- Isn't that amazing?

Each episode's like two hours long, but it will take you through the history and the contributions in particular of African Americans from jazz music, how we just basically created this amazing art form.

It's a uniquely American art form.

- But it's a global art form.

- Global.

- It's grown to that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I mean, it's something to me that if a young person was even remotely interested in jazz, just go start watching that series and you can see the contributions that we've really given, not just in jazz music, but just in music in general.

- But jazz definitely started, I was just there, jazz started in Louisiana, it started in New Orleans.

So from the enslaved people and then the Creole people.

And they, you know, you got the rhythms and the syncopations and then the Creole people had, you know, put their little zhuzh in there and then that's how Jazz was created.

- Yeah, they said on Sundays, the one day of the week where they didn't work, they would all meet inside this square and they would just play their music from their own culture and that sort of thing.

But it was a bunch of cultures, right, 'cause they didn't all come from one tribe in Africa or whatever.

So they started blending their music and then improvising and next thing you know, jazz is born.

You know, I find it interesting because jazz wasn't your first art form.

You started off as?

- I was an actor.

- An actor.

- Well, I was a singer, but like I thought I was gonna be like the next Whitney Houston or something, right.

- Okay.

- And then I got introduced to Jazz as an actor because I got to play Billie Holiday, and this is before Audrey McDonald played her, so, you know, before she won her Tony.

So take that Audrey.

Before she won her sixth Tony.

But I was in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Girl here, and we did it twice because it sold out every night.

So we did it in 2000, I think it was 2008, and then again in 2012, and I think we've got another one in there, it's coming up in a couple years.

But, you know, I wasn't a fan of jazz.

And so when you ask how people get to be, you know, get to love it, I think they just have to listen to it and find the thing that sticks for them.

So I knew that I could play Billie Holiday 'cause Billie Holiday's from Baltimore.

- Okay.

- And I'm from Baltimore.

- Yeah, you said that.

- Yeah, so when I went into the audition, you know, the director was like, "What do you think about her?"

And I was like, "Well, I think her voice is a little tinny, "it sounds like it's being sung through a tin can."

And you could see the director look at me like, "This, did she just see what I think??

- Are you trying- - But later on, after I got to know her and I started working with her she said, "When you said that," I said, "But Billy is my aunt."

Billy is like, she's like all of my aunties.

- Yeah, you recognize her personally.

- I had researched her and I was like, oh yeah, the way she sounds and the way she talks, those are my aunties.

- Yeah, those are your people.

- And so she let me continue auditioning and what she said was, "If she can sing as much as she can run her mouth, "then she's my Billy."

(people laughing) - And you showed her.

- A star was born.

- And rest is history.

- A star was born.

- And she's been running her mouth ever since.

(people laughing) Y'all are just great man, I love hanging with you guys, you know.

- Yeah.

- Any parting words for our audience?

Like, I mean, any thoughts that you want people to know about jazz, jazz in Utah?

- Jazz is never gonna die.

You keep hearing Jazz is dead.

Like Dee-Dee says, you can always find something in it that you didn't feel before.

And it's the launching path for so many other genres of music.

It's amazing for me, 18 years when the jazz was given birth to, how many lives have been blessed by it and how many people have made their livings from it, you know, from little spot down there in New Orleans.

And people love it.

Once you affected, it's hard to let go of that.

- I think there's something, you know, for lack of a better term, very black about jazz, you know?

- The resiliency.

- Yes, the resiliency- - It's stuck in there.

- The creativity, the improvisation, the ability to take something that looks like it's going to go sideways and make something out of it.

- There you go.

- You know what I mean?

- Right there.

- They hear it differently.

We hear it differently.

- Yeah.

- And as a result of what we heard and our expression of it, it's just saturated the country.

- Yeah.

- Saturated the world.

- That part right there.

- You're taking people on a journey.

Yeah, that to me is, is I'm so glad you guys came and were willing to share your talents with us.

It's like culture is a journey, it's a process, it changes, it evolves.

And you know, the fact that I know when I go and listen to you on stage, you're gonna take what's happening for you right now tonight, like you mentioned the night when your mother was in the hospital and what you are feeling, you know, maybe you're thinking about something, a former lover, or what it was like being on the Super Bowl stage or something.

And you're gonna take me on that journey that you're having right there spontaneously in the moment.

And to me, that's why jazz is special and it's our art form 'cause it's our way of telling the world how we feel and there's nothing anybody can do about it.

- Amen.

- Blues too, blues too was that way.

That was how it all got birthed.

It's beautiful music.

- It's part of jazz.

- Yes.

- Yeah blues and jazz.

It's been a pleasure, you guys are amazing.

Thanks so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

- Pleasure.

- Now remember, you can catch other episodes of the show and extended conversations with our guests on PBSutah.org/roots.

"Roots Race & Culture" y'all, we are out.

- [Narrator] "Roots Race & Culture" is made possible in part by the contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

(upbeat jazz background music) (upbeat jazz background music continues)