Last March I reported on the Chicken Fat Ball, an annual early January event in Maplewood, NJ. This year’s installment was held on January 7, and I was glad I returned. The format was a little different this year. Instead of two separate themes, this year there were none.
Well, not quite none; the first set consisted entirely of tunes made famous by Louis Armstrong. But the second and third sets featured songs from a variety of composers while not straying from the trad jazz idiom.
The honorees this year were Chuck Slate and Derrick Smith, two important figures in the early history of the New Jersey Jazz Society. The event was, as usual, produced by Al Kuehn and Don Greenfield, who’ve been involved from the very beginning in 1964 (though there was an extended hiatus before the Ball was revived in 1994).
There were seven musicians on the bill this year, all of whom have impeccable trad jazz credentials. They were: Randy Sandke on trumpet; Randy Reinhart on trumpet, cornet, and trombone; John Allred on trombone; Adrian Cunningham on clarinet, tenor sax, and flute; and a rhythm section of Conal Fowkes on piano, N
