So What: Local News, Notes & Links

Here's the latest wrap-up of assorted links and short local news items of interest:

* It's been an eventful week for Miles Ahead, Don Cheadle's movie about Miles Davis, as Cheadle and company began filming on Monday in Cincinnati and last night wrapped up a successful IndieGoGo campaign raising more than $340,000 in additional funding for the movie.

Meanwhile, Cheadle also was interviewed about the movie by Entertainment Weekly (which ran the photo of him as Davis-circa-1969 that accompanies this post), Okay Player, and Uprising Radio.

* In other Davis-related news, the trumpeter also showed up on a list recently published by WhoSampled.com of the top 10 most-sampled jazz artists of all time. Davis ranks number nine on the list, with 146 samples of his music used in hip-hop records that made the charts. (Incidentally, the musician ranked as "most sampled" is a Missouri native - keyboardist Bob James, who's originally from Marshall, MO and has had his jazz/funk tunes sampled 734 times to date.).

* Drummer Dave Weckl has announced a tour and forthcoming album by his new group, the Dave Weckl Acoustic Band, which features St. Louis native Tom Kennedy on bass along with saxophonist Gary Meek and pianist Makoto Ozone. Though the tour schedule for this summer doesn't include a St. Louis date, you can see a brief preview video of the band, recorded earlier this year at the Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood, here.

* In conjunction with other merchants in the Old Webster business district, Euclid Records will hold a sidewalk sale next Saturday, July 19, with thousands of LPs, CDs and DVDs for sale at marked-down prices in front, in back, and inside the store, which is located at 19 North Gore in downtown Webster Groves.

* Tavern of Fine Arts co-owner Aaron Johnson got married over the Fourth of July weekend to Melissa Brooks, cellist with the St. Louis Symphony. Congratulations to the happy couple!

* Historian and former St. Louisan Benjamin Cawthra, who wrote the book Blue Notes in Black and White about the history of jazz photography, has a few thoughts about recent developments here concerning Jazz St. Louis and the Palladium, and how the presentation of live jazz continues to evolve.

* Keyboardist Jim Hegarty has published a new ebook, Guts & Soul: Looking for Street Music and Finding Inspiration, which is available now for free on Smashwords and soon via iTunes and other outlets. "Street music has always inspired me and I went looking for more," explained Hegarty in an email touting the book, which contains photos of and conversations with street musicians in New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New Orleans.

* Jazz radio update: Coming up this week on Radio Arts Foundation - St. Louis' “Somethin’ Else,”  host Calvin Wilson explores the compositions of saxophonist Ornette Coleman, as recorded by the composer himself, bassist Christian McBride, drummer John Hollenbeck and others.

Following that, on "The Jazz Collective," host Jason Church will offer up tracks from Morgan James, Omar Hakim, Cookin on 3 Burners, Down To The Bone, Ragan Whiteside, Mindi Abair, Lou Donaldson, Wes Montgomery, Junior Walker, Wilton Felder, and Donald Byrd as well as locals including Dawn Webert, Soul Cafe, and Jim Manley.

"Somethin' Else" can be heard at 8:00 p.m. Saturdays, followed by "The Jazz Collective" at 9:00 p.m., on 107.3 FM, 96.3 HD-2, and online at http://www.rafstl.org/listen.

Palladium added to national list of "Most Endangered Historic Places"

The Palladium building in Grand Center has been added to the National Trust for Historic Preservation 2014 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

Once home to Club Plantation, which hosted performances by many historically important jazz and blues musicians, the building (pictured) has been threatened both by neglect and by a potential expansion of the nearby VA Medical Center. The NTHP is a Washington-based not-for-profit group that works to save historic places in the United States.

The inclusion of the Palladium on their 2014 represents a potentially significant step in saving it, and a victory for local artist, author and activist Kevin Belford, who's been a vocal advocate for preserving and restoring the the building and created a Facebook group to publicize the effort.

On his blog Devil at the Confluence, Belford wrote:

"This is the only landmark in St. Louis ever recognized as an endangered national treasure. In its 27-year history, the NTHP's list has brought attention to more than 250 sites, only a handful of which have been lost, according to the Trust.

The new research and the support from everyone on the Facebook group made the difference and now the possibility of demolition by the VA Medical Center is lessened. The Missouri State Historic Preservation Office and the VA's own independent Cultural Resources survey confirms that the Palladium is significant for its association with culturally important events and social history.

In correspondence to the MSHP, the Veterans Administration said, "At this time, the VA considers it unlikely that the St. Louis Palladium property will be acquired." And in a recent reply to me, the VA's Office of Acquisition, Logistics and Construction said, "Presently the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has no plans to acquire the Palladium building." But the threat by the VA was not the only danger, because deterioration was evident in a recent visit inside of the building."

Opened in 1913 as a roller skating rink, the Palladium also served as a dance hall that featured some of St. Louis' first jazz performances. Club Plantation, which occupied the building during World War II and into the 1950s, had the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra as house band, and presented early performances by important St. Louis musicians including Chuck Berry and Miles Davis as well as nationally known touring acts like Nat "King" Cole, Benny Carter, the Mills Brothers, and Ella Fitzgerald. The building was used as a thrift store in the 1980s but has been vacant for a number of years.

“The Palladium is one of the last remaining links to St. Louis’ important role as a center for African-American music in the 20th century." said a statement from NTHP president Stephanie Meeks. "Rather than demolishing this vital piece of America’s historic fabric, it should be restored to once again serve as a cultural center for the people of St. Louis.”

For more about the history of the Palldium and Club Plantation, see these two entries from Belford's blog.

Photo from the Save the Palladium Building at Grand Center Facebook page. Edited 6/26/14 to fix a garbled sentence.