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As everyone in the United States cannot help knowing, and as many people around the world cannot help puzzling over, today is an unofficial US national holiday known as Super Bowl Sunday. In Phoenix, Arizona, The Seattle Seahawks play football of a kind that is not soccer, against the New England Patriots for the championship of the National Football League. Multiple millions of dollars are spent on the game——and that’s just for commercials aired in the television broadcast.
In recent years, bowing to popular taste, the NFL has hired pop performers, mostly from rock and roll, to supply the Super Bowl’s halftime entertainment. The Nielsen ratings from last year’s Super Bowl XLVIII (or for those who prefer Arabic numerals, 48) show that the singer Bruno Mars set a record for halftime watching by attracting 115.3 million viewers. It has been decades since jazz artists have been invited to perform at the Super Bowl. Ella Fitgerald sang In 1972. Woody Herman sat in with the University of Michigan Marching Band in 1973. The 1975 halftime show was a tribute to Duke Ellington, who had died the year before. The late Al Hirt played several times over the years, as has his good friend Pete Fountain. Here is Fountain in the halftime extravaganza in 1990 at Super Bowl XXIV. Be patient; he shows up at 2:20.
The final score was San Francisco 55, Denver 10. No one is expecting that kind of blowout in today’s Seahawks-Patriots game. At this writing, kickoff in Phoenix is two-and-a-half hours away.
Later: Final score, New England 28, Seattle 24. Dejection overrules analysis. Suffice it to say that Seattle threw the game away—literally—in the final moments.
Doug, are you familiar with the “Super Jazz” album which featured BOTH Al Hirt and Pete Fountain, with their bands AND together? I have it as a double LP. Some great playing on there as well as some great comedy (LATER in the evening)! :>)
It’s an album called Super Jazz. Here’s a track recorded at halftime at the Super Bowl in New Orleans in 1978. Before they play the blues, you’ll hear some mildly scatological chatter. When the music gets underway, Eddie Miller has a lovely tenor saxophone solo. A hero of Bob Crosby’s big band, New Orleans native Miller played in Fountain’s band for several years in the ‘60s and ‘70s before he returned to Los Angeles. He died in 1991. Cannonball Adderley once called Miller the first of the cool tenors. Hirt and Fountain get silly in their solos, but the musicianship is stunning. Great fun.
1978 was also the year that my band (The New New Orleans Jazz Band) played for the official Super Bowl Brunch before the game at the Hyatt Regency (next door to the Superdome). It was a great opportunity for us. Then it turned out to be an even bigger opportunity, as 60 Minutes was filming. We were playing, and all of a sudden Mike Wallace was standing next to me talking. Then they let about a minute of our music go into the show. I had calls from all over the country asking how in the world we got on 60 Minutes. Just luck, I guess.
What a pleasure to see this halftime show with Pete. Those were the days of REAL football halftime shows. The crap that they put on now, with over the top entertainment BS and screaming pop singers, just doesn’t do it for me. Guess I’m too old and set in my ways musically to “appreciate” the stuff that goes on now.
So, you saw the Katy Perry halftime.
Only part of it. That was enough!!!
I had TV sound off and NPR on, listening to the news. The visuals were far more than enough.
Indeed, they did throw the game away.
My first cousin Pete Carroll lost the Super Bowl today, and it looked like he was bending over crying. They did mess up the end of the game. He is a darling boy and I wish that he had some input into getting me to sing the National Antham. The singers were horrible, just singing from the head instead of the gut. The one who sang the anthem looked as though she was going to bite someone. They always hire the poppers with all their tricks. Just a presentation these days. I would like to see some good jazz.
I’m happy to say that it’s all over but the shouting. However, the shouting will go on for a few more days courtesy of ESPN. As a recovering NFL addict I would have preferred a Seahawks win, but my sponsor in rehab says, in the words of Buddy Holly, “It doesn’t matter anyway.” I didn’t watch much SB, Netflix was more to my liking since my copy of Tavernier’s ‘Round Midnight’ hasn’t arrived in Mexico yet.
Have a cup of Seattle’s best and don’t analyze or fret. It’s only a game. Some win and some lose. I’m sad to say that the Super Bowl and “American Sniper” on the same weekend says something about the State of the Union. Time for some Mexican-grown coffee and “Kind of Blue.’
…or for “Tijuana Moods” … Cheers! 🙂
I didn’t watch more than a minute of the cheesy halftime show. Lenny Kravitz? When was he ever faintly considered a musical icon? What decade did they dig him out of? And young pop “singers” who sing weak tunes they don’t even write? The money and the ads drive it all now, and I’ve also lost my taste for the game. I put some Wes Montgomery on the player for the rest of the evening.
Meanwhile, before each Seahawk game, I always played “Eagle” by Paul Winter which was actually Paul McCandless playing solo oboe with a recording of an African fish eagle (as close as a seahawk as I could find)!!!
I believe I heard Pete Fountain at the late-but-not-so-great Hall of Fame game in Canton, Ohio in . . . probably 1970. I doubt if I even had a word for it at the time (I was 13), but that must have been the first live jazz I ever heard.