hello and welcome to another episode of jazz call today we have a great drummer with us his name is mrs jimmy given and jimmy has played with a lot of people is a very interesting background so welcome a thank you for having me been looking forward to it because i think in order for your viewers to understand how and why i'm here you know that thing about six degrees of separation right well we have you and i have like four degrees of separation really mr dorian parea who is the president of the of local three ninety nine of the american federation of musicians in the world with my father in every part ok well there there's a so you guys already connected you know all right so now we go to a young people's workshop that mr perry it was hosting and that is how i met leslie forte ok all right i'm taking care of the drum student leslie was taking care of the trumpet section right all the professional musicians on their instrument helping and we had great times and then it was about six months ago i'll say that  leslie contacted me actually he recruited me into dr ralph williams of all star american jazz group i thought you were calling yourself a gentleman new jersey can remember my name and he knew my claim from the workshop he says i got i got a job a drunk whack it and if you're interested would like to have you and whatever the name of that band band it was didn't have a name that they would actually know it was thought ok i like that so you're from new jersey tell me about lakewood you later that you were telling me something about you know the last of the lake where the whole hotel musician that's correct primarily because i am the youngest ok all right there are musician and both of them are world class musicians ok and we've we've been together all this time from paul marti and then me being the youngest and i'm sixty four so what was it that the hotel musicians that we lived we had a life like no other really that's right well there was the first of all we moved to lakewood let me look now we've got to go back to another not separation but the history got to know your history in order to know where we are today my parents were entertainers oh given's and sweetie we performed in the what they call the borscht belt that's lakewood the catskills miami beach and all parts in between and growing up i was in brooklyn we lived in brooklyn until sixty three ok in one thousand nine hundred sixty three the summer of sixty three we moved to lakewood new jersey because lakewood was nine months worth of work in the hotels because it was the winter jewish resort the summer was only the summertime three months and that was an era in of in the forty's but especially in the fifty's and sixty's and then toward the seventy's through the seventy's and by the end of the seventy's both lakewood and the catskills really had died just like in the movie dirty dancing when the owner kellerman asked honey coles that's his real name the actor who has a trade honey coles what's going on everything is changing the flights to europe twenty one cities in three days well it's lennox city played a part in that for lakewood because the folks found stead of coming down for a day or two or even for the bus outings that we used to have in lakewood for another hour they could go for the dow sixty miles more and see a show and gamble they had shows in lakewood in the afternoons as well dancing and a show of which my parents performed and many many other fine entertainers they weren't big stars big name entertainers but you got barry frank tony drake barry frank was the emcee in a couple of the hotels in lakewood he was also the emcee at the rally hotel up in south falls bergen the catskills as well as have been having been the band singer for sammy kaye so doing it on there was not difficult for you all make a living is not what we did not have to travel even even the performers didn't have to travel you could make a living if you lived in lakewood you could make a living if you lived in the catskills you could make a living so what changed all of that in your opinion the gambling which was the demise i mean what you mean w got gambling everybody started going there oh all right and then the hotels did kind of the clientele through attrition work and it was it's a multiple process it wasn't just because of atlantic city attrition as well and part of what kellerman said the younger people didn't want to come to lakewood or they didn't want to come to the catskills anymore when they could go to these other places flying so what kind of music were you will  kinds of music what they we had a popular top forty well not so much the top forty which would be classified terms of rock and roll but whatever broadway musical was out all the singers who came through the hotels and there were many in lakewood and many in the catskills they all everybody went hello dolly came out everybody was singing hello dolly all right when fiddler on the roof came out matchmaker matchmaker ok there is a was a legendary club in lakewood called richard's lounge richard stein he lives up in north jersey now what a gentleman and a fantastic drummer himself he own the club in fact he used to play for peter nero when he decided he wanted to open up a jazz club and now you want to know if you want to talk about jazz artists some back then and we're going back forty plus years david sanborn are you aren't dave liebman elvin jones dakota statement you name and they all went through was and that would have been even before the sixty's of course is right but the people that i'm talking about and they were all young like i say david sanborn david sanchez you name  whoever's big today went through richard yesterday so what they're like if you played at the jazz club the people who play the jets will also play the hotel was in the back and forth that you a not really know because the richard wound and when you say jazz was strictly jazz open not to say they couldn't come in and sit down and play a show because when the performers came in they plop their arrangements down they put their books down and we had to play in but actually play  singer comedian ok she was funny tommy drake was funny he sang and i don't know how many languages and in any key somebody would ask them to sing a song somebody from the audience was that he could just sit in a song he says sure all right first that answers the first question how old were you when you started playing with your parents well let me put it in this way i emceed my first nightclub when i was twelve years old ok there's a beautiful story about that i'll lay that on you i kind of started everything everything kind of started happening if anything good for me but don't get me wrong it was always good i had the greatest parents you could ever imagine jimmy given and my mom barbara her stage name sweetie and if you go to my website jimmy givens dot com you will see what i am talking about in fact everything we're talking about here is on my website so you can the historian of the of my family and lakewood truthfully i'm on the board for the lakewood historical society in a lakewood heritage commission the full soul and i showed you my book earlier to give you an idea of what lakewood was about and i also have a book dedicated to the catskills ok so i want to memorise and then i want to move to some other stuff ok now memories of of your day that the hotel just plain first of all when we moved out let's go back to sixty three when we first moved to lakewood we worked in a hotel called the capital post capital hotel which was family owned and operated and my parents basically worked out of there and one night this is this is now you got me going this is friday night eight so many so many perhaps the lady tina robins that i spoke about she had annoyed dition down in atlantic city for a lounge gig and one of the hotels and i can't remember the sands of the clari but she said to me i need you to play for me she gave me a hefty hunk of steam and just for that one night a one hour show she because she had a tough act in and they didn't want her husband standing up there conducting ok and i had played her for years in fact aides to take me on jobs but for this particular night i was up there and i didn't need her music because i played it so much and i said tough back she needed somebody who could keep the rest of the band going when they were top musicians in a glen exciting but you still have to have direction so that was it she looked at me and i took off wonderful and you know those are the kind of memories that i have of of an era that has gone sadly gone do you think the change in music also along with lenny theory also affected that whole circuits well music evolves music will always change as as you know all right big band music here comes elvis here comes the sixty's come disco here comes from after disco to be there is no music and a lot of people don't even like disco but afterwards i mean in the eighty's and ninety's and the two thousands it entirely different a synthetic it's not it has no heart and i'm saying this i don't care who does what can you not sure for to be a pig zack lee right you listen to music from the fifty's that happen to be my favorite my specialty as far as music goes the forty's through the seventy's i mean i'll play any type of music in fact with her side i got it i got to jump in here with her son when we got started and has our rights these fantastic arrangements and we've got great guys bill may and dr charles france on guitar and he'll play piano is our is all over the piano alto sax tenor just so those who don't know who you're talking about you thought about dr has structure of course now right but when you go over to the broadway side of things that we did in the hotels that was it and when i said before ms come in put the book down and we play what we see  one town to another nets how they made their living but it's a certain type of music you have to learn it somehow is it on paper yes it's on paper but after you learn it you never look at it again so send it so can someone else just jump in time but there are so many many more songs secular some religious that you know you play it but you know it it's something that kind of like you're born into it you were here you know what i was i've been in lakewood almost all of my life other than the first twelve years and brooklyn bed stuy to be exact ok that's why we moved the neighborhood took a nosedive that we had to get out and we lived in it we lived in with such a wonderful wonderful town beautiful town which was known for its clean pine hair that's why the tour people guests would come down come down food plenty of food in all of the hotels he ate all you and a place in both places lakewood and the catskills and then unfortunately it's gone but the memories and the music can always withstand you can do is come up with a good a drum machine that took away a lot of work from from a live drum and the technology and i guess i'm thinking a way back when they first came out they were actually separate boxes that you would plug into like your keyboard or into the amp they were quantity looking and clunky sounding so that's what i call the big i don't know what they call they were i think it would be oh ok they they sounded terrible you couldn't do anything he could make and he fills if you want to change a temple in the song and now now they are very high tech i have to i have to admit you know otherwise i'd be close minded and i'm not close minded prejudiced yes but close minded know it the the technology that they have today yeah they can they can they can do fills they can do brakes they can change tempo but you've got a program that's the machine all right put a lot like i say put a lot of drummers out of work through but is good is they are today they along with any other synthesised form of music cannot replace live musicians not because i'm an american federation of musicians and that's what i was raised  we're going to go back to remember this back to the drum machine recently and i'll tell you how recent as recent as monday december fourteenth of this year two thousand and fifteen i celebrated my forty fifth anniversary as a member of the american federation of musicians a license thank you december fourteenth one nine hundred seventy when i graduated i graduated in seventy as well but i join musician's union all right and next year when i'm sixty five mr dorian perry will be presenting me with my gold card which makes me a life member of the american federation of musicians now back to the drum box they're good but they cannot replace a live drama a the synthesised sound of violence of a violent cannot replace a violent section i don't care how great it is there i've said it again thank you i know it's true because i will form is what was and is everything is programmed is no room for you to also change simple lou anywhere you have to even though they do more you have to stay with the now you see what you just said and as great as tina robin was god rest her song right she wanted me to go on studio and record her act so that she could become a track act ok you know  what's wrong with that exactly what you just said is no freedom of improvisation now what my father do my father wrote some when i say wrote he didn't actually sit down and write him he had the ideas and sounds great indefinite until the singer jumps in their little darling just until the singer starts then you pick up with the rest of the arrangement when i haven't so much fun this could go on for ever but i'm afraid simple and just very quickly do you have any gigs coming up yeah well what do you have coming up as we are well once it's confirmed i will get back to you and dr williams will get back to you as well we've got a new jazz venue down and columbus new jersey that we will be performing at the date has not yet been firmed up but once it is we'll let you know and who