Page 50 - Guerin Media | Cork Airport Holiday & Destination Guide 2015
P. 50
Cork and All That Jazz
Nigel Mooney
Ireland’s King of the Blues, Nigel Mooney, remembers the great years of the Cork Jazz Festival
“Are ye doan for de jezz?” was the familiar question posed by Cork taxi drivers every October bank
holiday weekend to thousands of international musicians and jazz fans who piled into the intimate
streets of the city on the banks of the Lee for the annual festival; the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival;
what was once the greatest jazz festival in the world.
Ifirst heard about Cork and “the jazz” from my
parents; in the late nineteen-seventies they would big-name jazz artists to Cork and word-of-mouth was
enhancing the reputation of the festival in jazz circles
head down from Dublin for the long autumnal worldwide. Many of the stars from the entire history of
weekend with a group of friends to the jazz were still around and eager to play this great
newly-established John Player Cork Jazz Festival. Ella festival in Ireland; legends from the Dixieland and
Fitzgerald won the hearts of all with a Swing days were elderly now but
performance that established Cork on playing as well as ever; beboppers like
the international jazz-map; Mel Torme Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry
sang with an orchestra led by Mulligan and Stan Getz were ageing
drummer Mel Lewis, the great Sonny but still on top form; young guns like
Rollins was there too; a trio of the Marsalis brothers were just
piano greats - George Shearing, emerging. I was still in my teens and
Marian McPartland and Dick not yet fully steeped in the music of
Wellstood, and my mother’s favourite, these great musicians, but that year I
a tribute to Louis Armstrong performed Ella Fitzgerald headed to Cork in October to see one
by ex-members of his band - Peanuts of my heroes, the great bluesman B.B.
Hucko, Big Chief Russel Moore and bassist Arvell Shaw King, never thinking for a moment that I would open
amongst them. for his band only a couple of years later. I also caught
a show by ex-Count Basie Orchestra tenor saxophonist
In 1982, Guinness took over the sponsorship and began Buddy Tate with trumpeter Clark Terry, an early
expanding - more funding brought more and more influence on Miles Davis. In fact, Miles’s old
work-mates, the Heath Brothers were there too, and
some Belfast blues
musicians that I
would soon befriend,
guitarist Ronnie Greer
and the late, great
pianist, Jim Daly.
BB King So began my love
affair with the
Guinness Cork Jazz
Festival, a
50
Nigel Mooney
Ireland’s King of the Blues, Nigel Mooney, remembers the great years of the Cork Jazz Festival
“Are ye doan for de jezz?” was the familiar question posed by Cork taxi drivers every October bank
holiday weekend to thousands of international musicians and jazz fans who piled into the intimate
streets of the city on the banks of the Lee for the annual festival; the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival;
what was once the greatest jazz festival in the world.
Ifirst heard about Cork and “the jazz” from my
parents; in the late nineteen-seventies they would big-name jazz artists to Cork and word-of-mouth was
enhancing the reputation of the festival in jazz circles
head down from Dublin for the long autumnal worldwide. Many of the stars from the entire history of
weekend with a group of friends to the jazz were still around and eager to play this great
newly-established John Player Cork Jazz Festival. Ella festival in Ireland; legends from the Dixieland and
Fitzgerald won the hearts of all with a Swing days were elderly now but
performance that established Cork on playing as well as ever; beboppers like
the international jazz-map; Mel Torme Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry
sang with an orchestra led by Mulligan and Stan Getz were ageing
drummer Mel Lewis, the great Sonny but still on top form; young guns like
Rollins was there too; a trio of the Marsalis brothers were just
piano greats - George Shearing, emerging. I was still in my teens and
Marian McPartland and Dick not yet fully steeped in the music of
Wellstood, and my mother’s favourite, these great musicians, but that year I
a tribute to Louis Armstrong performed Ella Fitzgerald headed to Cork in October to see one
by ex-members of his band - Peanuts of my heroes, the great bluesman B.B.
Hucko, Big Chief Russel Moore and bassist Arvell Shaw King, never thinking for a moment that I would open
amongst them. for his band only a couple of years later. I also caught
a show by ex-Count Basie Orchestra tenor saxophonist
In 1982, Guinness took over the sponsorship and began Buddy Tate with trumpeter Clark Terry, an early
expanding - more funding brought more and more influence on Miles Davis. In fact, Miles’s old
work-mates, the Heath Brothers were there too, and
some Belfast blues
musicians that I
would soon befriend,
guitarist Ronnie Greer
and the late, great
pianist, Jim Daly.
BB King So began my love
affair with the
Guinness Cork Jazz
Festival, a
50
