THE ANNUAL MEETING 2011

On April 2nd nearly fifty Bunk freaks gathered in the premises of the Centre for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research in Stockholm to attend the 25th annual meeting of the Swedish Bunk Johnson Society. Thanks to Jens Lindgren, retired curator of the Jazz Research Department of the Centre, we still can meet in these premises.

The formal Society matters - elections, economics etc - were handled in around eight minutes, a new Society record I think. Next on the agenda was Christer Fellers, who demonstrated the Society's web site. Christer's impressive work creating, maintaining and developing the site was rightfully applauded by the meeting. By the way you can see pictures from the annual meeting this year as well as other years on the web site.

After Christer's presentation it was time to enjoy another member's impressive efforts, Sven Gustafson's Cajun dinner. With our stomachs full of Sven's delicious food we were ready to attended the next high light of the evening, Mike Hazeldine's state of the art lecture on Freddy Keppard and Jimmie Noone, two of the real giants of New Orleans Jazz. Mike accompanied his interesting lecture with a lot of pictures of these gentlemen and places where they have worked.

And what is an annual meeting without Jan Lorentzon's quiz? Nothing, I would say. This year Jan's quiz dealt with the New Orleans Revival of the 1950's. And of course the questions with both American and European musicians and orchestras were harder than ever. Winner of the traditional bottle of Four Roses - Bunk's number one booze - was not surprisingly Per Oldaeus, a living lexicon as far as New Orleans Music is concerned. Eleven other happy winners, far behind Per's result, could chose from records, books and other jazz items donated by Jan.

Then Jens Lindgren entered the stage to give us an idea of how Buddy Bolden sounded. Jens started with "High Society" by Kid Rene's Delta Jazz Band from 1940, by many considered probably the most Bolden like orchestra we can hear on record. In his lecture with lots of musical illustrations Jens also gave us some examples of attempts to recreate Bolden's music, i.g. by Humphery Lyttelton and the Society member Marc Caparone. So thanks to Jens we now know how Bolden sounded although the legendary cylinders are lost.

And of course the evening was as always concluded with live music. Christer Fellers and his New Orleans Stompers guided us into "The Wonderful Musical World of Bunk Johnson". One hour with tunes associated with Bunk affectionately and skillfully performed by Christer tp, Jens Lindgren tb, Kenneth Arnström cl & sax, Klas Lagerberg g, Göran Stachewsky sb and Sven Stålberg dr was indeed the perfect end of a most pleasant evening. See you all again next year.

P-O Karlström