YOUR FAVORITE MEMORY OF THE GRILL

[Dr. Nelson Harrison]

If you ever had the Crawford Grill Experience, consider yourself fortunate. Please share your favorite memory here so others around the city and the world not as fortunate will get an idea what it was like and could be again.

[Pgh Rich]

There would not be enough room here for me to list my favorite memory of the Grill. I don't think, for a period of time, that there was not a week that I did not go to the Grill. I remember the little incident one Friday afternoon with Maxs Roach. And I enjoyed the many time I had the pleasure of talking to Richard Grove Holmes between sets, after all we were both Richards only he had the grove LOL. There where many many more. But I think the group that I enjoyed the most, and I will explain, was a group that I can not find anyone today who remember them. They where called "The Quartette Tres Bien". I came to know them personally. There was Richard Simmons, Jeter Thompson,Albert St.James and Percy James. I have three of their albums that they autograph for me and I will always treasure them. They are the old 33 1/3 records that most folks don't even know about. These guy were great they came from St Louis and was at the Grill a number of times. The albums that they gave me.....Sky High, Steppin Out, and my favorite Kilima Jaro. Their other albums that they made that I know of was Boss Tres Bien and Spring into Spring, they may have made more but these I know. Ever time they came to town we would get together for a few. I lost tract of them over the years. If anyone have heard of this group please let me know or if anyone know if they are still around. When I think of the Grill I think of The Quartette Tres Bien...which I found out means "Very Good". Opening the Crawford Grill will be the best thing to happen in this Burgh in a very very long time.

[TDanyel]

OK, technically, I am TOO YOUNG (LOL) to remember anything about the Grille when it was in it's heyday. My grandfather, Attorney W. Wendell Stanton was a very active supporter of the Grille, so I grew up knowing about the Grille anyway! But MY first true memory of the Grille was when I (at the age of 16 or, so) danced at the Grille in a show called Bitches Brew (Miles Davis)! I was a member of the junior company of the Pittsburgh Black Theater Dance Ensemble, and the Artistic Director at the time, Professor Bob Johnson, had to get special permission from my mother, (Jeanne Stanton Grayson) to dance there on a school night! LOLOL. oh the fun! I even remember my grandfather coming to see me perform during the run of the show! I am looking for pictures from the opening night party I will share, if I can find them.... I just saw them recently, I know I have them, somewhere :-)

Peace and Blessings,
TDanyel

[Dr. Nelson Harrison]

First Person / Music and memory
One night at the Crawford Grill remains part of my soundtrack
Saturday, September 24, 2011
By Rebecca Taksel
In memory, everything seems to happen to music," says Tom in the opening monologue of Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie."

I believe that most of us do have a soundtrack for our memories, and I know for certain that some of my best memories are about the music itself.

I moved back to Pittsburgh in the mid-1990s and soon realized I was part of an army of returnees. We Pittsburghers come back because we have family here, because we "don't know what we've got till it's gone," because we're seeking a haven, because we're plain homesick for our hills and for our roads named for the twisting runs they follow.

Once here, we almost inevitably begin to unpack the baggage that's been with us in our travels. We go in search of memories we've been carrying around for years, for decades: Oh, that's still here, and that's really and truly gone, though I stand on this broken, glass-littered pavement and will it back with all my might.

At the end of "The Glass Menagerie," Tom says that "time is the longest distance between two points."

Yes, but it is paradoxically the shortest, too, because whether we return as I did, or stay away as Tom did, our memories do travel with us, and they eventually become us, so completely that we forget their particulars and just call them by our own names: "This is who I am."

If we do come back we're surprised to realize we've returned to the source of something that's carried us so far and so long. In my case that something was jazz.

•

Jazz is an international language, one I was taught by my father, who was a genuine aficionado.

When my siblings and I were still young, our dad took us to Toronto to meet Canadian and Japanese jazz enthusiasts and players he'd found through an obscure publication. When I was studying in New York, I was at home at the Five Spot and the Half Note. At language school in Europe in the 1960s, my love of jazz instantly brought me German and English friends. In Washington, my sister and I lived around the corner from Charlie Byrd's club and dropped in often.

But the jazz began for me in Pittsburgh, as it did for so many others.

I can't presume to tell the story of Pittsburgh jazz. There are others, including my friend, the great musician and scholar Dr. Nelson Harrison, who continue to delve into that history and unearth new treasures. What I have that belongs to me and to my siblings is a memory ... of one night at the Crawford Grill in the early 1960s.

This was a night during the engagement of Chico Hamilton's band, the one that included Charles Lloyd on saxophone and flute and the Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo. My dad used to bring our mother and some or all of us five kids to the Grill regularly. We sat in a large booth, ate delicious dinners and listened to many of the great players of the great era of modern jazz.

But that night is the one I remember best, I think because all of the players sat with us and talked with us between every set. I think it was the sight of my still-very-young youngest brother that tickled Chico the most, the idea that there might be a next generation of jazz fans on the horizon (my brother did become a lifelong jazz lover). I'm pretty sure my mother exchanged a few words of Hungarian with Gabor, who had been in this country only since the revolt of 1956.

•

Since I've been back in Pittsburgh, I've heard so many others talk about the Crawford Grill. I've seen Teenie Harris's marvelous photos of the Hill and read, too, about the impact they've had far beyond Pittsburgh. And I've read about the mixture of hope and skepticism many feel about what awaits the Hill District when the Civic Arena comes down. How much have we learned from the monstrous depredations of 1950s-style urban renewal, and how much have we not?

More particularly, I've heard from people who remember my dad from his days as a volunteer jazz DJ on WAZZ and the early days of WYEP.

I've not been out to listen to jazz as much as I'd like to. When we were young it was a privilege to stay up late enough to catch a couple of sets. Now that I'm not at all young I'm usually ready for bed earlier than my enforced childhood bedtime. But I am here, comfortable in my own city, my own history, remembering times like that perfect night when my whole family was wrapped in the joy of music.

Rebecca Taksel teaches French at Point Park University ([e-mail]).


First published on September 24, 2011 at 12:00 am


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