Remembering the Sacto Dixieland Jazz Jubilee on National Jazz Day

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Dixieland jazz was my childhood soundtrack. First, the LP records (they didn’t call them Long Playing for nothing) on the Hi-Fi stereo console: Jack Teagarden, Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven, the haunting soprano sax of Sidney Bechet, the seemingly improvisational, but actually well-polished lively sounds of the Firehouse Five + 2, who we could occasionally enjoy live at Disneyland as many of the members of the band were animators, illustrators, and members of Disney studios. There was“Strictly From Dixie,” Benson Curtis’s radio program of trad (traditional) jazz every Saturday at 5 PM, recorded on Dad’s Teac reel-to-reel and played back endlessly over the backyard speakers while we swam in the pool and Dad pruned the palm trees or barbecued the chicken. My parents were charter members of Orange County’s Jazz Inc. jazz club, which hosted a meeting/performance on the second Sunday of each month at a local Moose lodge. From time to time, we kids were allowed to attend the concerts (probably because babysitting wasn't available).

Oh, the magic of these grown-up Sundays! Endless Cokes in small plastic glasses with lots of ice, while Mom and Dad drank beer and caught up with friends in between sets. Watching the couples jitterbug to music too exciting to stay in your seat to listen to. Learning to appreciate and to applaud each solo. Learning the names, all the words, even the origins of the songs. Sending up requests for Dippermouth or Tishomingo Blues, accommodated because of the novelty of a child requestor (I think we were almost always the only children there). Surprising the band by singing along, or jumping in on cue: "Oh, play dat thing!"

What became the Granddaddy of all Jazz Festivals, the Old Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee, began on Memorial Day Weekend 1974; a three-day extravaganza of dozens of bands over a dozen venues scattered in and around the historical waterfront district of Old Sacto. We were there that maiden year and every single year for the next decade. Bands from the entire country – and later, the world – performed, and the music, as well as the esprit de corps of jazz enthusiasts reunited with their greater tribe, made for a high-energy weekend.

Sacramento somehow never failed to deliver scorching 100-degree weather over the Memorial Day weekend, which meant that seeing a band slotted into some of the larger outdoor venues actually felt like punishment. You had your festival badge to allow access to each venue, and you learned swiftly to score a seat in a good location several sets before popular bands like the High Sierra Jazz Band, or Banu Gibson and Her New Orleans Hot Jazz Orchestra took the stage.

Due to the size of the festival and the variety of activities, children – by now I was a teenager – were no longer as much as a rarity in Sacto, but kids who actually enjoyed the music still were. As I grew older, I became a sort of groupie to various favorite bands, had my own budding (autographed!) record collection, and was allowed to attend venues on my own. By college, I’d make the seven-hour drive up myself with a friend in tow.

And since the future of a music genre that dates back to the early 1920s can only continue by instilling a love of it into later generations, there began to appear the occasional younger bands, most notably the Jazz Minors, a talented and lively band from Eugene, Oregon who were (hooray!) just about my age. 

This was our much-anticipated Memorial Day Weekend vacation every year until 1985. Then my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer. She died just seven months later…on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.

None of us ever attended the Jubilee again.

There were other, smaller jazz festivals we'd also enjoyed--notably the Pismo Beach Festival around Halloween--that my sister, Chris, and I urged my dad to attend after my mom's passing, inviting ourselves along. I’ll never be sure if Dad agreed to go just to make us happy or not because once we moved to the East Coast he rarely attended a festival. Also, despite novelties like The Jazz Minors (now the house band at Disneyland), the aficionados and the performers were aging and dying out, and the festival choices gradually dwindled.

All except the Sacto Jubilee. Still, to stay relevant and profitable, it had begun to morph into a far less restrictive definition of jazz (thereby running up against the Monterey and Newport Jazz Festivals), and eventually into the multi-genre Sacramento Music Festival. But a few years ago, after a 44-year run (can I even be that old!?) the Sacramento Jubilee called it quits, unable to compete with similar music festivals such as Napa's Bottlerock, held the same weekend. 

I learned recently that May 29 is National Jazz Day, so I looked up the background and found it was created in 1991 after a petition by a musician and bandleader from the New Jersey Jazz Society. I wonder if he and his band played in Sacto, and if the holiday was influenced by the trad jazz fest that became the second-largest music festival in the country. I expect there are a lot of fans like me who prefer to believe it did.

Today marks 36 years since Mom passed. Dad has been gone over 20 years now, and I inherited his record collection, from which I carefully digitized my favorites so that they reside on our iPhones. And whenever we are working around the house, or fire up the barbecue, we also fire up that Dixieland soundtrack and I'm back in my happy place again.

"Oh, play dat thing!"