the hum / By Bob Doran

Who is Jacob Fred?

Serenading the oysters, Irish rockers and the first of the fest

(June 18, 2009)  There was some sort of time zone mix-up when I called Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey leader/pianist Brian Haas in Tulsa, his home since he was four. When we connected later I learned he was in a meeting with some people from the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra to plan a concert for early next year, in which JFJO will collaborate with the symphony doing jazz versions of Beethoven’s 3rd and 6th symphonies. Classical music was where he got his start.

“My grandmother was a professional organist and played for all the silent movies in Tulsa in the ’20s and ’30s. As soon as we moved here, she started checking me out, noticed I had a good time playing piano, so she made my mom start me on classical piano. So in a lot of ways Beethoven was the beginning for me; Beethoven and Liszt, and Bach especially.”

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It seemed like a question he’s probably answered too often, but I had to ask: Who is (or was) Jacob Fred? It turns out it’s a name Haas made up when his mother was pregnant with his little brother, Richard. “I wanted her to name him Jacob Fred and I nagged them about it to the point where they lied to me and told me they’d do it. I stopped talking about it, but when he was born, of course I called him Jacob Fred. They’d say ‘No, his name’s Richard,’ and I’d say, ‘You guys lied to me; you’re liars; I hate you guys.’ Then they bought me a stick horse and I named that Jacob Fred.”

The name resurfaced when he started an eight-piece jazz band at the end of 1993. “I was only 19 and a lot of the guys were that age or a little older. We were fed up with how all the jazz bands just had the leader’s name in it: Herbie Hancock Trio, David Holland Quintet, you know. We were rebelling against the whole leader thing, so we came up with a name that made it obvious that it was a group concept.” While the current Jazz Odyssey lineup is all new and only Brian remains from that crew, he still says he’s not the leader.

The latest episode of the long journey is an as-yet-unreleased EP to be titled One Day in Brooklyn. With Brian’s piano trading licks with young Chris Combs‘ slip-sliding lap steel guitar, it doesn’t sound like most JFJO music I’d heard, but the cool country/jazz vibe feels right.

The EP ends with a slow countrified version of Thelonious Monk’s tune “Four in One” that’s just sublime. “It’s definitely the only time that song’s been played that way, as a two-step,” said Haas. When I tell him it brought to mind country-swing a la Bob Wills’ with Leon McAuliffe on steel, and “Take Me Back to Tulsa,” he was thrilled. “You nailed it. Bob Wills is a big influence … We actually talked about him in the studio before we did that track. Chris, our man on lap steel, was like, ‘Do you guys care if I just go totally Bob Wills on this thing and just do lots of sliding major chords. We were all like, ‘Please,’ [and] we turned it into this slow, dirty Texas two-step.”

So that song will be one of my requests when the band plays Saturday, June 20, at Jambalaya. It’ll be a long day, but I’ll be there.

Looking to become immortal? The always-funky Bump Foundation is bringing in a film crew to shoot their set Friday at Muddy’s Hot Cup. “In this day and age it’s expected to have some sort of killer YouTube footage,” says head Bump Greg Camphuis, promising an “all-star cast with sit-ins from all sorts of folks.”

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