Fri, Jun 19, 7:30 PM
Jim Grantham, saxophone Scott Foster, guitar Ollie Dudek, bass Omar Aran, drums $20 Cover Charge / BYOB Students $10; Kids Free For Reservations call (415) 586-3733 These players will recreate a bit of the “Sea Bop Experience,” playing repertoire from that vast book compiled 20 some odd years ago in tribute to the unique and inspired musical life of Don Prell, who passed just recently at the age of 96, still holding forth weekly at the Bayview Boat Club on Terry Francoise Way, twixt the basketball pavilion and baseball stadium. For well over a decade, Don was a core member of, and practically a labor contractor for, the Chuck Peterson Quartet--which started Bird & Beckett on the way towards legitimacy as a jazz venue There have been more than a few sites and mentors where young jazz players have honed their chops, later to become lasting figures on the San Francisco jazz scene... those that haven't moved on to New York and other centers of the jazz universe. Places like Keystone Korner, where saxophonist Jim Grantham taught music theory in the halflight of a Sunday afternoon to young aspiring players like John Wiitala, and the Gathering Caffe on Grant Street where Bishop Norman Williams and BJ Papa schooled Mike Olmos, Joel Ryan and others. The Bay View Boat Club under Don Prell's hand was one such venue, where Don held down a Wednesday night booking for decades with his ad hoc combo known far and wide as Seabop, comprising a flexible who's who of talented musicians, from accomplished colleagues to youngsters still wet behind the ears playing for tips, cheap drinks and food in the company of the bassist, whose resume dated back to the 1950s in Los Angeles clubs like The Haig in what's now Koreatown and on tour to New York, Europe, Africa and beyond with the Bud Shank Quartet. He held a bass chair in the San Francisco Symphony for decades along the way, but he was never for a moment of his career anything but a jazz cat. There's never been anyone like him, and he's sorely missed.