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Pony Boy All-Star Big Band: This Is Now
by Jack Bowers
This Is Now is a venturous and engaging concert date by the Pony Boy All-Star Big Band, taped in May 2024 at Boxley's jazz club in North Bend, Washington. Pony Boy refers to the band's label, Pony Boy Records, while the term All-Star is, as always, in the eye (and ear) of the beholder. Clearly, there are some stars in this firmament, not least of which is drummer and music director Greg Williamson. Trumpeter Jay Thomas has long been a ...
Continue ReadingJim Knapp Orchestra: It's Not Business, It's Personal
by Jack Bowers
The Jim Knapp Orchestra's CD It's Not Business, It's Personal, recorded in February 2009, was set to be released on November 19, 2021—six days after Knapp died at age eighty-two in Kirkland, Washington. Apart from his role as bandleader, Knapp was a trumpeter, composer, arranger and longtime faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. Described by Grammy-winning composer/pianist Jim McNeely as “a brilliant musician, great teacher and a humble, sweet [and] generous man," Knapp was widely recognized ...
Continue ReadingJay Thomas Quartet: Upside
by Paul Rauch
Seattle-based musician Jay Thomas may be considered the oddest of ducks in the jazz universe. By that, I am referring to his fierce musicality expressed both on trumpet and saxophone, as well as most members of the brass and woodwind families. Inspired early in his career by the like minded veteran Ira Sullivan, Thomas in a single night will drift from trumpet to tenor, from flugelhorn to alto, and then double back on flute and soprano. He may as well ...
Continue Reading20 Seattle Jazz Musicians You Should Know: Jay Thomas
by Paul Rauch
The city of Seattle has a jazz history that dates back to the very beginnings of the form. It was home to the first integrated club scene in America on Jackson St in the 1920's and 30's. It saw a young Ray Charles arrive as a teenager to escape the nightmare of Jim Crow in the south. It has produced such historical jazz icons as Quincy Jones and Ernestine Anderson. In many instances it has acted as a temporary repose ...
Continue ReadingTula's Jazz Club: Soliloquy to a Seattle Jazz Institution
by Paul Rauch
It was the tail end of a long weekend. Temperatures had risen to 80 degrees under a sunny only-in-Seattle blue sky, the waterways and markets humming with a sea of humanity. It was not a night one would expect many to venture into the quiet, dark solitude of Tula's Jazz Club, where for nearly 26 years the best of Seattle's vibrant jazz scene had come to roost. The scene up and down Second Avenue in Belltown was its usual interesting ...
Continue ReadingJay Thomas: We Always Knew
by Paul Rauch
Legacy is a fleeting notion. It is incomprehensible in real time when a career hits high points, when certain doors open to quantitative opportunity. Jay Thomas can tell you a thing or two about that, based on his own personal experience as a jazz artist over half a century. His story includes playing on the Seattle scene as a teenager, leading to opportunities hampered by among other things, drug addiction. It is as well a story of overcoming those obstacles ...
Continue ReadingJay Thomas / Gary Smulyan: Lowdown Hoedown
by Paul Rauch
Sometimes the most joyous and satisfying things in life occur in the light of pure happenstance. Such was the case when New York based baritone saxophone master Gary Smulyan ventured west in the 90's to perform and teach at the Jazz Port Townsend Festival in Washington state, in those days directed by veteran saxman, Bud Shank. There he met an unusually remarkable and versatile musician, Jay Thomas, a Seattle native and resident, and a friendship was forged that at last ...
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