I recently hosted a new Jazz Jam in Calgary at Wine Oh's!, the newly renovated and renamed Beat Niq. The room sounds great and a lot of people showed up. It's early days but I think that Jam is off to a great start. Anyways.....I have been meaning to play with a wider array of musicians so I hired a couple of younger guys and brought about ten common Boogaloo charts. I was ready to groove with the help of some Lee Morgan, Eddie Harris and Cannonball Adderley favourites! It turns out the boogaloo isn't as popular as I thought. Half of the band wasn't quite sure what to do, and we ended up playing pop/funk versions of all the tunes (Full disclosure: we didn't just play boogaloo's, the swing tunes were great and the young guys were really fun to play with)
I started to ask around and something I took for granted is just not that popular here. I have had some great discussions about the boogaloo since; It's origin, who came up with it etc....and it looks as if the origin of the boogaloo is not 100% common knowledge, in fact no one really knows! More research is definitely needed!
In the mean time here is a great clip of Lee Morgan and band featuring Billy Higgins on Drums, playing what I believe to be a fantastic Boogaloo!!!
