Why are four knitted chickens from Lansing roosting on a New York City jazz musician’s bookshelf?
Tuesday (July 23) marks the 10th anniversary of a small but mighty musical miracle, Jazz Tuesdays at Moriarty’s Pub. Collateral knitted-chicken dispersal is only part of the story.
Since 2014, hundreds of visiting stars, local mainstays and Michigan State University Jazz Studies hotshots have hit the Moriarty’s stage under the steady aegis of veteran drummer and Jazz Tuesdays organizer Jeff Shoup.
MSU trombone Professor Michael Dease is a national chart-topper and a three-time DownBeat Critics Poll winner, but he puts a special sauce on his slide when he slips downtown and saunters into Moriarty’s.
“Jeff Shoup and Moriarty’s have created a rare, diamond-tier event in the United States — a successful, engaging and recurring-weekly jazz venue,” Dease said.
New York City jazz organist Brian Charette has played in top clubs around the world, but he pulls out all the stops at the mention of Mort’s.
“Jeff has put together the best steady jam session I’ve ever attended,” Charette said. “And he’s a superb drummer.”
“I love the vibe of Morts,” he continued. “All sorts of people from all walks of life come together for music. I have four amazing knitted chickens, and the food is great, too.”
About those knitted chickens.
Most Tuesday nights at Mort’s, a first-row regular could be seen knitting colorful little chickens as she listened. Musicians were invited to take home a souvenir bird courtesy of Deborah Sutherland, known affectionately as “the chicken lady.”
The chickens have the run of Charette’s East Village apartment, sharing shelf space with classics like “Anna Karenina” and a paperback edition of Mad Magazine.
Now and then, Shoup and his colleagues at Mort’s pay tribute to Sutherland by grooving out on a tune by funk legend Pee Wee Ellis, “The Chicken.” They played with extra feeling on July 9 after learning Sutherland had died a week earlier.
“Those chickens are spread all over the country, from Seattle to New York,” Shoup said. “It’s really cool.”
The saga of Jazz Tuesdays began in fall 2009, when Shoup started a jazz night at the former Gone Wired Café, now the Avenue.
“I was really just looking for a place to play,” Shoup said.
After several months, the gig moved eastward along Michigan Avenue to Stober’s Bar, where it lasted another two years and gained traction with local jazz students and a few visiting musicians.
When Shoup returned to school and started a family, the event was placed on hiatus. However, after receiving his master’s degree from MSU in 2014, he again found himself looking for a place to play.
Shoup casually remarked to Joy Allswede, co-owner of Moriarty’s Pub, that it would be a great place to revive Jazz Tuesdays.
“She said ‘OK,’ and here we are, 10 years later,” Shoup said.
With jazz confined largely to the hothouse environment of university classrooms and recital halls, Jazz Tuesdays created a living link to the heyday of the world’s great jazz clubs, from Minton’s Playhouse in New York to Ronnie Scott’s in London to Baker’s Keyboard Lounge in Detroit.
“We needed something like this in the community,” MSU Jazz Studies director Rodney Whitaker said. “Jeff understood how to tap into a certain consciousness that was ready for something regular.”
It helped that Tuesday is usually a slow night for jazz musicians, including MSU students.
“These are the guys that just always want to play,” Shoup said. “They don’t go home and play video games the rest of the night.”
At Mort’s, Shoup decided to reach beyond MSU and weave a wider web of jazz connections, stretching from mid-Michigan to points far beyond. His first guest was Ann Arbor bassist and composer Paul Keller. (Keller has returned most years for a July anniversary gig but can’t make it this year.)
For Tuesday’s 10th birthday bash, Shoup is bringing in another regional all-star assemblage: Toledo vocalist Ramona Collins, Ann Arbor pianist Rick Roe and Detroit bassist Jeff Pedraz.
Shoup’s main goal after moving the event to Mort’s was to build its reputation until people called him, instead of the other way around, and he’s achieved that goal.
“I have every night booked now until December, and I have a waitlist,” he said.
Retired MSU music Professor Ron Newman said Shoup “has done a superb job in getting both national talent and outstanding Michigan talent to perform at Mort’s.” (Newman also praised Mort’s for having Smithwick’s ale on tap.)
Whitaker knows better than anyone how hard it is to build a jazz scene.
“When you start something here, people are quick to tell you it’s not going to last,” Whitaker said. “You hear the reports about all the things that just didn’t happen. It’s discouraging, but you have to work like Jeff did.”
It’s not easy to pin down why some formulas click, and others stick.
“It’s an intimate room, and the crowd is right on top of you,” Shoup said. “Everybody is friendly. It’s more spontaneous. I guess the stakes are low. Sometimes things go in more unexpected places.”
Charette loves the wild nights when he and local organist Jim Alfredson spiral into a dual-keyboard phantasmagoria of jazz, funk, progressive rock, Baroque counterpoint and anything else they can conjure from their feverish fingers.
Some memorable nights have been dedicated to a particular artist or album. Last December, Ann Arbor saxophonist Mark Kieme mounted a full-scale recreation of organist Jimmy Smith’s classic album “Christmas Cookin’” with Alfredson, MSU guitar Professor Randy Napoleon and Ypsilanti trumpeter Paul Finkbeiner.
Shoup’s account of the night offered a rare glimpse of the ulcers involved in running a regular jazz event. The big-band arrangements on “Christmas Cookin’” aren’t simple.
“I was expecting certain people to put charts and stuff together for this because we had it booked over a year in advance,” he said. “As the date approached, I realized this work wasn’t going to be done.”
Those are harsh words from the usually genial Shoup, but he needn’t have worried. Any jazz musician worth their salt knows “Christmas Cookin’” well enough to play it on a kazoo and a cast iron skillet. Alfredson and the crew, backed by Shoup’s rock-solid drumming, put plenty of rum in the eggnog.
“I’m not going to say it was a perfect rendition of the album, but we just had such a good time that the rough edges didn’t really matter so much,” Shoup said.
After the pandemic shutdown, getting Jazz Tuesdays back together was a heavy lift, but it’s now back to full steam and “has its own momentum,” Shoup said. Nevertheless, without a steady sponsorship from local jazz patron Gregg Hill, he said, “I would have to reconsider keeping all of this going.”
Hill isn’t the only angel on the head of this pin.
One night, Shoup complained to Alfredson about lugging a heavy old keyboard rig back and forth. About 10 minutes later, Alfredson texted Shoup to tell him he had secured a $900 house piano from Casio. Trent Harris, a Jackson musician and attorney, signed on as a Jazz Tuesdays sponsor two years ago.
Most of all, a loyal and growing audience that’s “generous with the tip jar” makes it all worthwhile, Shoup said.
“It’s really all about them,” he said.
By now, Shoup has submitted to the “momentum” and plans to keep Jazz Tuesdays going as long as he lives in Michigan. Napoleon, a frequent performer at Jazz Tuesdays, expressed the general sentiment.
“Once, I was starting to think about shutting it down, but Randy forbade me from doing so, in no uncertain terms,” Shoup said.
Dease had more ambitious marching orders.
“This opportunity to hear and participate in live, quality jazz music is a blessing to the Lansing area,” Dease declared. “I hope this continues long enough to add another zero to the end of 10 years.”
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