Miss Jo's San Francisco

FAT TUESDAY IN THE FILLMORE MUSIC DISTRICT WAS A SAN FRANCISCO HAPPENING, according to the slice Miss Jo enjoyed as she hung @ Rasselas Jazz Club to hear Bohemian Knuckleboogie lay down its funky blues & jazz, with her hub Jeff heating up the keys on the baby grand.

It was a beautiful night for Mardi Gras, with dry, warm weather brought to SF by El Niño. Revelers along Lower Fillmore Street moved among its half dozen music venues between Post and Eddy.  A Carnaval clown on stilts and a rag tag New Orleans-style brass band—- M.J.’s Brass Boppers—- played and danced up and down the four-block stretch and in and out of clubs.

Miss Jo arrived as the street band and a few dozen merrymakers in tow were leaving Rasselas after bursting, as planned, into Knuckleboogie’s gig. The roving party snaked around the club, horns and voices blaring “When the Saints Go Marching In,” as the Knuckleboogie fellas were playing “I’m Old Fashioned,” with band leader Mike Pitre swooning the melody on his pocket trumpet.

Later on, Mike, from the bayou of Port Arthur, Texas— and no slouch to doing the Bourban-Street-brass thang—  struck up Knuckleboogie’s swinging version of Ellington’s “Caravan.” Bass player Stoo Odom, who hails from the Louisiana swamplands, got his Fat Girl dancing, as smiling drummer Garry “Tex” Williams laid down his swinging rhythms.

With the baby grand’s top open all the way, and his boogie-woogie keys going full tilt, Jeff was on a roll and looked like he could drive the piano across the room.

The fellas sounded great. Miss Jo captured some of the evening with her camera on the fly, trying to avoid using the flash and spoiling all the Fat Tuesday fun.

Here’s a YouTube video of  Knuckleboogie playing “Caravan” in a studio setting. (The same musicians from Fat Tuesday are playing in the video, with the exception of drummer Benny Murray.) While it’s an Ellington tune, the lyrics are Mike’s. Miss Jo likes Jeff’s St. Pauli soccer club hat from Hamburg, Germany.