April 6, 1979 Gusto review: Richard Kermode and the Milestones at the Tralf

 

April 6, 1979 

Catch the Milestones while you can.

They’ll be gone by summer.

The area’s best little jazz band is the best-kept secret in Niagara Falls. That’s where Richard Kermode and the Milestones have been holding forth to appreciative but spotty audiences since New Year’s. This weekend, however, they’ve ventured down to Buffalo’s Tralfamadore Café, 2610 Main St., where they’ve expanded their usual Thursday date into a Friday and a Saturday as well.

         Bearded Kermode began playing rock in Buffalo bars in the early ‘60s. A first-class keyboardman, he made the big time in Janis Joplin’s Full-Tilt Boogie Band. Then he caught the Latin music fever during stints with Santana and Malo in the early ‘70s and he’s still got it strong. In his new home base, San Francisco, he works with a salsa band six nights a week, doing dances and Mexican weddings. Yes, he says with a grin, it’s a wild time.

         What brought him back was the impending birth of his second child. For this event, his wife wanted to be with her mother in Niagara Falls. The baby’s due in three weeks and the Kermodes will be back in the Bay Area before summer. So the Milestones are strictly a temporary arrangement, one of those happy gatherings of talent that flourishes for the moment and then evaporates.

         The closest Kermode can get to salsa music locally is Brazilian jazz-samba, which is considerably smoother and more sedate. In the right hands, however, it can cook, and Kermode has the right hands aboard.

         Sitting at the drums is one of the men who helped pioneer Brazilian jazz in the U.S. Edison Machado, who now lives in Niagara Falls, propelled Stan Getz’s early jazz-samba records in 1962-63. He predates all those wild-man percussionists with a thousand noisemakers. He plays a standard drum kit with a charming formality and precision that gradually melts into passion as the rhythms rise into a full head of steam.

         Even more impressive is Dick Griffo. He brings the Tralf to a hush with his flute solo on Kermode’s “Invitation to Love,” which Kermode recorded with Luis Gasca. And his supercharged saxophone solos on “Birimbao” inspire the grandest applause of the night.

         It’s a hard act for guitarist Stu Weissman to follow, but Weissman’s no slouch either. He finally takes the stage all by himself to open the final set with a quiet, elaborately embroidered version of John Coltrane’s “Naima.” Bassist Paul Zapalowski gets to show his stuff on the old standard “There Will Never Be Another You.” Jazz-samba may be this group’s specialty, but it’s certainly not all that they can do.

         As for Kermode, his piano artistry is so subtle it’s easy to overlook. “Invitation to Love” begins so nonchalantly with a tickle of the high keys, a tease around middle C and then finds the groove. Through it all, he maintains an uncanny communication with drummer Machado. Kermode moves back and forth from rhythmic block chords to antic single-note runs, playing off the drums as he builds up the energy with each shift.

         The miracle of Kermode’s crew is that a temporary band of diverse backgrounds can make such unique and satisfying music. That says something about the breadth and depth of the ambient jazz talent hereabouts. What’s a pity is that they’ve gone largely unnoticed for the past three months as they’ve done weekends at Bobby Minicucci’s Ontario House in Niagara Falls and Thursdays at the Tralfamadore. There’s still a couple months to remedy that situation. But until that happens, the best little jazz band in town is going to keep on being the best-kept secret in Niagara Falls.

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Undated picture of Richard Kermode.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Richard Kermode returned to San Francisco and worked primarily as a session and backup musician for people like Patti LaBelle and Pete Escovedo, making occasional visits back to Buffalo. His last performances here were in 1989. When he almost died from kidney and liver ailments in 1990, Bobby Minicucci held a benefit show for him in the Ontario House. He recovered enough to tour around the world on USO tours. He moved to Denver in 1994 to work on salsa projects and died there in January 1996 after a brief illness. He was just 49. The Buffalo Music Hall of Fame inducted him in 2008.

        Edison Machado, an unsung hero of bossa nova, recorded a couple tracks for jazz bassist Ron Carter's "Patrao" album in 1980 and appeared on more than 50 other albums prior to his death in 1990.

        Dick Griffo, after playing in bands in Las Vegas, was a fixture on the local jazz scene, appearing with the Buffalo Philharmonic in its pops series, leading jam sessions and giving private lessons. He died in 2012.

        Paul Zapalowski now plays bass and tuba with the Bar-Room Buzzards, the area's longest-running traditional jazz band. He retired as a lecturer at Buffalo State University in 2022. That same year he was one of 38 local union string players hired to play with the Eagles when their Hotel California 2022 tour came to KeyBank Center.

        Stu Weissman, voted best guitarist in the 2023 Jazz Buffalo readers’ poll, was an adjunct guitar instructor at Buff State for nearly 20 years and works with virtually all of the female jazz vocalists in the city. He appears with the Joe Baudo Quintet at noon every Wednesday in the Sportsmen's Tavern, sometimes brings his Swing St. Band to Pausa Art House and is scheduled to play the Northwest Jazz Festival in Lewiston at 3 p.m. Aug. 24 in the DiCamillo Courtyard, next to DiCamillo's Bakery.