All That Utah Jazz 

• Derek Carlisle

As someone with the shallowest of roots in Salt Lake, but an abiding interest in local music wherever it may grow, a comment that often appeared in my social media feeds when I recently moved to SLC was a jibe about Utah jazz. Essentially, the gag was that a newcomer would have a hard time coming across actual jazz music in this region, a joke inherently wedded to the local basketball franchise's name.

It wouldn't take long, though, before this newbie found out how well you can find jazz here. It may take a little bit of digging, but not all that much. You can track it down at clubs, in record bins at multiple shops, on digital streams, on overnight radio and on the occasional street corner downtown (at least once the weather breaks, or so I'm told).

As a newbie, I've been told that jazz institutions like the GAM Foundation's SLCJazz series—which brings in national touring jazz performers—and outdoor concerts hosted by Excellence in the Community, highlighting local performers, are events that anchor the jazz scene. There are also clubs around town such as Gracie's and Bourbon House that host regular jazz nights. But I set out to find out for myself.

Raw Materials
One of the folks I spoke to referenced the old jokey "Utah Jazz" chestnut before I even had a chance to mention it.

Christian Asplund, a composer and bandleader living in Provo, says that "the naming of the basketball team gives a one-liner to people outside of Utah. But I don't think they realize that [jazz music] is more popular here than in most places I've lived."

• Courtesy Photo
• Provo musician Christian Asplund hosted the Avant GaRAWge venue at his home.

Asplund lives, teaches and performs in Provo and doesn't play jazz in Salt Lake City, at least not often. He's also a self-described avant garde jazz multi-instrumentalist and composer, not necessarily clued into the specifics of what gets booked in SLC and what doesn't (and why).

But he's not a full outsider, either, with a long string of creative pursuits that've pushed jazz forward in the region. He's got ideas about jazz in Utah. Informed ones.

"The sense, in general, is that Utah is a very musical place," Asplund says. "Kids take music lessons here. People enjoy classical. Music plays a large role in the dominant religion here. To my mind, there's a perfectionist streak that's a little counterproductive at times. That's where the raw part comes in. We need something like a venue where things don't need to be perfect, they could be raw and new."

That said, there's a history and pedigree to jazz here, he says.

"In the '40s, '50s and '60s, there was a real love of jazz in the state," he offers. "Certainly, as I talk about it now, I have many students who are jazz musicians. BYU and the U of U have always had good jazz programs and Snow College down in Ephraim has this weirdly good, very small Jazz Studies program."

Beyond educational settings, Asplund noted that Utah's ski lodges and resort spaces have also played host to acts.

"There's a history of hiring jazz groups to play for those," he said. "There have been all kinds of interesting little venues."

Asplund has certainly put his fingerprints into contemporary music history. His name dots more than a few articles about regional jazz, including some in this publication. When written about in City Weekly by Nick McGregor in 2019, Asplund's impressive resume was boiled down well: "Professor in BYU's School of Music. Co-founder of the Seattle Experimental Opera. Acclaimed composer of sacred music. Associate editor of esteemed academic journal Perspectives of New Music. Co-author of a forthcoming book on Christian Wolff, a member of the legendary 20th-century New York School of experimental composers."

He's also an advocate for jazz in Provo who's turned his garage into a mini-venue multiple times—it's called Avant GaRAWge, now in its third, home-based location. And Asplund has booked a church for jazz as well, hosting the Avant Vespers series at Provo's St. Mary's Episcopal Church.

He's also an active player—when pandemics allow—most recently with a three-year-old trio called We Free Kings, which includes Erik Larson (contrabass) and Timm Tippetts (drums). From 2020 through the very beginning of this year, Asplund found time to write and record, releasing 35 tracks in early March. He did so across two records, "Tippy Shed" and "Tree'd Up," both available for purchase on the digital service Bandcamp. Being on sabbatical, which he's enjoying this semester, allowed for him to indulge himself in the simultaneous release of two records.

"Basically, I would say that it's kind of a pandemic project," he says. "The compositions and the rehearsals and the recording sessions all came when my gigs and performances got canceled. I didn't have collaborators to work with for the first little while and just started composing jazz tunes. For me, they're kind of like poems. There's less infrastructure in writing a jazz piece that can be used for different ensembles. It's music I can play on my own as a pianist, or I can bring people in."

And with the pandemic receding and many public performance venues reopened or reopening, Asplund's planning on making some live dates happen in 2022. With two albums of material to present, why not?

"I've started making inquiries," he says. "I think this trio is so good. We have a really good esprit de corps. Everything's there, musically and texturally. We have good improvisation, good composition. These are great players and we work well together. I would love it if we could turn some people on with this sound."

500 Shades
At 9 a.m. every weekday morning, listeners of KUAA 99.9 FM are treated to a 15-20 minute block of jazz, compliments of the station's exceptional morning shift curator, David Perschon. He also spots jazz into other portions of his 7-10 a.m. Spin Cycle show, while the station's program director, Bad Brad Wheeler, highlights jazz sounds throughout the day, both on his own afternoon shows and during the pre-programmed hours that take up much of 99.9's mid-day.

• Thomas Crone
• KUAA 99.9’s “Bad” Brad Wheeler

At no time, though, is jazz more heard in Salt Lake City than during the overnights, as the 100-watt station delivers a 10 p.m.-5 a.m. jazz block.

"There's a history of jazz in Salt Lake," Wheeler says. "There's so much jazz history here that it blows my mind. And it does seem like there has been a jazz renaissance here in the last few years. More live jazz, more improv."

"Jazz is important," Wheeler says with evident passion. "I'm not so much a jazz guy as a blues guy, but just as there are 500 shades of blues, there are 500 shades of jazz."

When Perschon and Wheeler get talking about jazz and the station and its role in keeping a diverse musical palette on the radio waves in Salt Lake City, the conversation stretches from a few minutes after Perschon's show and continues into the next hour. It's kinda like sitting around the counter of a record store, as the experienced heads there start dropping knowledge and names.

They get off to the races as they discuss key folks, all worthy of further listening. Red Nichols and His Five Pennies get brought up as some of the earliest stars here. Lloyd Miller is highlighted as a key name to research by both. They mention drummer Steve Lyman's time here and the need to invest real energy in learning about the career and music of Alan Braufman. Other, earlier jazz programmers are mentioned, too, such as Steve Williams, "The Mayor of Jazz City," who, until 2015, spun jazz at KUER 90.1 FM for 31 years. (He went on to host a Sunday night jazz program on KCPW 88.3 FM until April 2021.)

• Thomas Crone
• David Perschon runs blocks of jazz music on 99.9.

It's around the time that Williams' program left KUER's airwaves that KUAA decided to invest in the sound. "We're putting jazz on the radio ...," Wheeler starts, to which Perschon finishes, "... and are taking on the jazz torch."

They do so on a station that has limitations, if only due to that low-wattage. You can catch KUAA at 99.9 all around the city of Salt Lake. But when you drive toward Ogden, a Spanish-language station begins to clash with their signal.

Going in the other direction, an oldies station called "The Goat" takes over the signal, telling you to head down the dial to their permanent home a few clicks away. Even with a transmitter located on top of downtown's Wells Fargo building, 100 watts is 100 watts and once you start leaving the city limits, you'll hit a bit of friction in your community radio listening.

That said, kuaafm.org does cover the entirety of the world wide web. So there's that.

Just as they sketch out the fandom they share for jazz, both Perschon and Wheeler note that they're not limiting programming to SLC artists, no matter the genre. New, old, experimental and traditional, the jazz played on KUAA crosses a lot of boundaries. That's particularly true during Perschon's 9 a.m. block, when the giants of jazz rub shoulders with newer artists and those working on more-exploratory edges of the form.

"I seek out jazz that's interesting to me," Perschon says. "We all know Miles and Coltrane but I like a lot of new stuff, experimental stuff, too.

"I find it to be incredibly interesting music," he adds. "It's challenging to a lot of people, but I love that jazz pushes boundaries." For a station like KUAA, "it's good to push musical boundaries."

The station, which is run under the auspices of the Utah Arts Alliance, is found in a low-rise building along some extremely-in-use railroad tracks, inside the Utah Arts Hub (663 W. 100 South, SLC). In its location in an industrial pocket on the edge of downtown, it shares some artistic and cultural kinship with other businesses on the block, such as The Sun Trapp bar and the Metro Music Hall, both of which are a hop-skip down the way.

Wheeler figures the clean-and-tidy little studios will be at The Hub for a time, sharing space with rollerskating classes, textile and podcasting studios—a bit of everything, really.

"We might possibly be the unofficial entertainment district of Salt Lake," Wheeler says. "You can come down here at night, and it's nuts."

But the incursion of condo projects nearby suggests that a move could be in the offing at some point. Wherever the station goes, these two on-air voices will be providing jazz grooves.

"We don't worry about ratings," Wheeler says. "We just have to worry about the quality. If we put out a good program, everything will take care of itself."

Jazz on Tap
Chad Hopkins is the eponymous owner/brewer of Hopkins Brewing, a facility in Sugar House that draws a good lunchtime crowd and, oftentimes, a great dinner service. Twice a week, the 193-seat dining room and taphouse is treated to jazz, with a jam on Wednesday nights followed by a Thursday night staple featuring a house trio. Both events take place during the 8-11 pm prime time.

• Thomas Crone
• The house trio at Hopkings Brewing anchors one of two weekly jazz nights.

These days, when the band takes over a flat-surfaced stage area near the expansive front windows, there's a full house on-hand to watch and listen. That wasn't the case all that long ago.

When the bar was new, less than a half-decade back, Hopkins says "it was kind of awkward because it was so dead in here. You'd have these excellent jazz musicians, some of the best around. And there was no one here but me." Because these were friends of his, some musicians would ask if they should keep playing into the third set, the answer was always, yes, "since I'm here and enjoying this."

"It was always a dream to have jazz in my spot," Hopkins says. "Mainly, I do it because I enjoy it. I wanted my own jazz club! But we also showcase other bands that are fun."

Hopkins sketches out a bit more of his personal fandom, describing how he "grew up" as a musician. "My dad was a musician, and I grew up around them," he said. "I had a few bands in high school, and one of my best friends was an incredible drummer, who went on to become a world-class drummer." (That would be Steve Lyman, mentioned by the cats at KUAA.)

Even in the course of a short conversation between lunch-and-dinner rushes, Hopkins mentions a few times that jazz has a solid hold on two of the "four or five nights a week" of live music at his spot—even if his staff is sometimes a tad vocal about their lack of jazz fandom.

Hopkins says that keeping jazz on the calendar brings a certain loyalty, and he's seeing fans through the doors weekly.

"We've got a following, people are coming here every Wednesday and Thursday to hear jazz," Hopkins says, while throwing some playful shade at his crew.

"While some of my bartenders don't like it, people come in and have a good time, overall," he said. "We're starting to see a lot of the same people here for jazz."

Hopkins notes that the style played by the brewery's weekly house trio, for example, is flexible enough that folks are able to "come in and converse" or "immerse themselves in the music," depending on mood. Ditto on Wednesday nights, when sax player David Halliday often serves as a musical director of the evening's direction and sound.

Immersion in the music was on display a couple of weeks back on a Thursday, as the house trio involved the usual suspects of Alicia Wrigley on bass and vocals, Parker Swenson on drums and keyboardist Tony Elison. With no knock on the first two players in saying so, Swenson had heads turning and eyes fixed on him as he took a pair of solos during the first set.

Even the non-jazz fans in the house had to take in a moment of that, while those upfront locked in, heads-a-boppin'.

Heartened that some local bars and restaurants are bringing back live music in this period of relaxed COVID protocols, Hopkins is happy that some are spotting jazz into their lineup. But as someone who's invested in the myriad sounds of jazz making it in Salt Lake, he's realistic. The options aren't endless now, but the trend lines might be pointing in the right direction.

For casual music fans, "there's not a lot of jazz around, and people may not go out and find interest in it. It's not really a mainstream sound," Hopkins said. "But I've been to Manhattan and LA and other places with cool jazz clubs. There's a lot of movement to Salt Lake and with that, people are bringing culture."

When they arrive, they can find some local jazz culture cooking twice a week at a busy brewpub in a heavily trafficked neighborhood. That's not a small thing, no matter the motivation.

As Hopkins says, "I definitely like the jazz vibe a couple of nights of the week. Selfishly, it's for me. These are my friends, and we'll keep it going."

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Memory Lane
So About That New Orleans Jazz Thing...

Teams within the "Big Four" American sports leagues (Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League) have been moving around for better financial opportunities for no small amount of time, with each of the leagues seeing ebbs and flows in franchise movement.

Occasionally, as in the case of the current Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams, a team can find itself cycling through a market more than once. In this case, the NFL franchise known as the Rams enjoyed a decade in Cleveland before a lengthy move to Los Angeles, then a two-decade stay in St. Louis before returning to LA in 2016.

For folks who've moved to SLC in more recent times, there could be a tendency to assume that the Utah Jazz are a legacy franchise for the state, one that's been rooted here since the team was birthed by the NBA. That name, though, "The Jazz," clearly suggests a different story. The team's not the Mountaineers, the Pioneers, the Saints or another name that would hint at geographical or historical kinship to Utah. Instead, it's the Jazz, an import from a city that truly knows jazz.

For those in back not paying attention to the guy at the bar telling the story to some new locals, here's the quickest of recaps: the Jazz were originally a New Orleans NBA franchise, a team that enjoyed five uneven and, to be honest, mostly unsuccessful seasons in NOLA during the 1970s. It was a team that followed, by five years, the New Orleans Buccaneers of the American Basketball Association, the doomed competitors of the NBA—that now-defunct league also included, incidentally, the Utah Stars (1970-76).

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Despite having a few top-flight players come through its roster—playing alongside a popular franchise cornerstone in the offensively inclined "Pistol" Pete Maravich, a collegiate star at nearby LSU—the New Orleans Jazz were also-rans in the NBA between 1974-79. The team would ultimately run up a modest combined record of 161–249 over five seasons, all but the first of which were played inside the monstrously scaled Superdome.

The original Jazz had some bad luck all right, from splitting arenas in its first year, to seeing Maravich hobbled by injuries during his high-scoring years there, to struggling to fill a major arena that was far too large for a sub-.500 team.

In the summer of 1979, the team was successful in lobbying for a move to Utah, just in time for the 1979-80 season that saw Magic Johnson and Larry Bird enter the NBA. The star power of the two rookie players would help to raise the fortunes of the entire NBA from that moment on—a period currently being chronicled on the HBO series Winning Time. (TC)