Belleville's Beabouts make jazz a family affair

If I told you that this story from the weekend Belleville News-Democrat featured a piano-playing father, a trumpet-playing son, and some New Orleans standards, perhaps you might think for just a second that it was about the famous Marsalis family.

But no, it's a profile of Belleville's Beabout family - patriarch Greg on piano; son John, 14, on trumpet; and mom Cindy handling the vocals - who, along with saxophonist Bill Hausmann, make up the Greg and Cindy Beabout Jazz Quartet. Though they may not have achieved quite the notoriety of the Marsalis clan, they're keeping busy playing gigs at clubs, local wineries and private parties in the Metro East.

(Full disclosure: Greg Beabout reads this Web site, and some time after we had exchanged a couple of friendly emails, recently asked me to sub for him and the band at a private party when he was called out of town on short notice. I certainly appreciated getting called for the gig, and the engagement was successfully completed, to the best of my knowledge, without any serious or lasting damage to either of our reputations. That's not why I'm linking to this article, though - I just thought it was a fun story about a family playing jazz together, though the writer (or someone on the copy desk) mixes up the names of father and son a couple of times.)