Jay Hickerson & Carol Leigh with the GJB

With the passing of Fred Vigorito this March, following closely after Bill Sinclair in February and Noel Kaletsky, Joel Schiavone, and Bob Bequillard in recent years, it is unclear where the Galvanized Jazz Band goes from here. Fred led the band for fifty-five years! Over the last decade, he sent me a steady stream of CDs drawn from the group’s history of performances. This album, Jay Hickerson & Carol Leigh with the Galvanized Jazz Band, is the most recent, and I thought I had already reviewed it last summer. I listened to it plenty on my front porch. That long run of recordings made by Art Hovey and circulated by Fred among fans now feels like a meaningful archive of a band that sustained traditional jazz Sunday after Sunday in restaurants and taverns, often playing for audiences who may have come for dinner or a pint but stayed for the music.

As I write, they are still scheduled for today, Sunday, March 15, at Aunt Chilada’s, their most recent residency. Alex Owen will be on cornet, John Clark on clarinet, Jim Fryer on trombone, Jeff Barnhart on piano, Art Hovey on tuba & bass, Tom Palinko on drums, and vocalist Cynthia Fabian at the mic. Owen represents the younger generation, frequently heard in recent years on albums out of New Orleans, though now living back in New York. His bio notes that he first encountered traditional jazz while at Connecticut College, and I would not be surprised if the Galvanized Jazz Band had something to do with that, as they had inspired and welcomed Jeff Barnhart a generation before. The rest of the lineup will be familiar names to many readers.

Today (Sunday, March 15) happens to be the day of Fred Vigorito’s funeral, so the bandstand this evening may serve as a fitting musical sendoff to the man who led the group since 1971. Indeed, as this CD plays in the background here in central New York, they are just warming up in Connecticut.

My hope is that these CDs remain available to those interested in exploring them. There are 37 listed on the GJB website, with another nine or so out of print, and it was Fred who handled the sales and shipping. These are live recordings centered on a guest, a venue, a band member, or simply an exceptional night. Art Hovey recorded the performances and produced the CDs, so I remain hopeful the series will stay accessible. Hovey has long been the band’s documentarian, even writing the three-part history of the Galvanized Jazz Band that appeared in these pages in 2021. It is fitting that the historian is now the last surviving original member from the band’s founding.

With that context out of the way, let’s talk about the actual CD.

Jay Hickerson & Carol Leigh with the Galvanized Jazz Band documents the band’s Sunday engagement at the Chowder Pot in Branford, Connecticut on March 17, 2002, one of the regular restaurant venues the band worked after the long Millpond Taverne era. Despite a typo on the track panel listing March 7, the insert text and cover make clear that the date was St. Patrick’s Day. The holiday itself is only lightly acknowledged in the repertoire; the lone nod being “Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral.” The rest of the program reflects the familiar mix of classic jazz and swing standards that sustained the band through decades of regular engagements.

Guest pianist Jay Hickerson steps in for Bill Sinclair on this date. Hickerson was a Connecticut musician and teacher remembered by many students as a practical, chord-oriented pianist who emphasized the language of standards: intros, codas, and the fake-book fluency working musicians rely on. That approach fits naturally within the Galvanized Jazz Band’s framework. His playing is relaxed and supportive, providing rhythmic lift and contributing tasteful solos when called upon. Where Sinclair often drove the band with a stride-influenced pulse, Hickerson leans toward a lighter chordal approach shaped by the popular song repertoire.

Vocal honors go to Carol Leigh, long admired by traditional jazz listeners for her warm delivery and natural feel for early jazz songs. Leigh comes out of a bluesier white female vocal tradition, the lineage that ran through the popular song world into the 1970s, and that earthiness gives her interpretations more grit. She had a gift for presenting familiar songs with an easy conversational quality, and her performances here fit comfortably within the band’s ensemble sound. Her connection with the Galvanized Jazz Band went back many years, including appearances during the Millpond era, so her presence here feels like a reunion with old musical friends. Having moved West to East over her long life, she died in Connecticut in 2020.

“These Foolish Things” is a highlight that emphasizes the contribution of both guests; at over six minutes, “St. Louis Blues” is another.

The band for the evening included Fred Vigorito on cornet, Russ Whitman on clarinet and saxophones, Craig Grant on trombone, Art Hovey on bass and tuba, and Bob Bequillard on drums. Together they work through fourteen selections from the traditional jazz and swing songbook. Nearly all tracks run over four minutes, with many over five, giving the band time to stretch.

Other titles include “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “Mean to Me,” Eubie Blake’s “Memories of You,” and a very New Orleans “You’re Driving Me Crazy,” which has a second-line feel, along with staples such as “Paper Moon,” which finds the band in good spirits, and a rowdy “China Boy.” Leigh handles several of the vocal features, while the band cuts loose instrumentally on numbers like “Tiger Rag.” The obligatory Irish moment arrives with “Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral,” but otherwise the program stays rooted in the core repertoire the band played week after week.

What these recordings capture is not a special event but the sound of a seasoned working band doing what it did week after week. Like the other releases drawn from Art Hovey’s archive, the disc recreates the easy atmosphere of a restaurant engagement where the music was played with consistency, swing, and good humor for fans who made the band a regular part of their weekends out.

If this proves to be the final addition to the series drawn from Art Hovey’s archive, it stands as another welcome document of a band that kept classic jazz alive in New England for more than half a century. Like the other Galvanized Jazz Band discs Fred sent my way, it is the sort of record that can be studied by devoted listeners or simply enjoyed the way I first heard it—played on the porch on a summer evening, sounding as relaxed and natural as the working band that created it.

Jay Hickerson & Carol Leigh
with the Galvanized Jazz Band
www.galvanizedjazzband.com