June 15, 2006

By Richard Moeschl
The Daily Tidings

Now, nine years later, the Cabaret is celebrating its 20th anniversary and restaging the show.

“It was one of our biggest hits ever,” said OCT artistic director Jim Giancarlo who is directing and choreographing the production. “It’s our 100th show — it’s what’s playing when we turn 20. As good as the last one was, this one’s going to be even better.”

When the lights come up on the OCT stage, five guys in brightly colored Zoot suits burst out of a 1940’s radio. These are the five Moes: Big Moe, Little Moe, Four-Eyed Moe, Eat Moe and No Moe. The audience will spend the next couple of hours with them as they try to help out a young man named NoMax. NoMax needs all the help he can get.

And what better help could his friends offer but advice couched in the music of Louis Jordan? Typical of Jordan, some of the songs are funny and some are poignant, but they’re all bursting with energy that keeps all of the Moes dancing.

And there’s a lot of dancing. “The music demands it,” Giancarlo said. “You can’t sit still.”

Musical director for the show, John Taylor, said, “It’s fun music. It stirs the dancer in you. It stirs the person in you who wants to be jubilant.” Taylor plays keyboards for the show in a band that features Bruce McKem on bass, Daryl Fjeldheim on reeds and Kevin McKern on percussion. Taylor was formerly musical director for Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas and recently created the Children’s Musical Theatre of Ashland.

Set design is by Craig Hudson and Michael Halderman, costume design by Kern Lea Robbins, lighting design by Mike Stanfill and sound design by Frank Sullivan.

All six actors playing the parts of the Moes are making their Oregon Cabaret Theatre debuts. From New York City are: D. William Hughes (“NoMax”), Kwame Michael Remy (“No Moe”), Dante Maurice Sterling (“Four- Eyed Moe”) and Christopher George Patterson (“Little Moe”). Patterson is also assistant choreographer and dance captain. Hughes, Sterling and Patterson recently appeared in another production of “Five Guys Named Moe” in Boca Raton, Florida. Remy, Sterling and Hughes have recently appeared together in a production of “Dreamgirls.”

From the San Francisco, Calif., Bay area is DaRon Williams (“Eat Moe”), who has been seen in “Ragtime,” “Bat Boy” and “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.” Completing the cast is Seattle actor Ekello Harrid Jr. ,who has starred in “Ragtime,” “Cats,” “Smokey Joe’s Café” and “Guys and Dolls.”

Jordan’s father was a music teacher and bandleader. Jordan himself was a saxophonist. With the ragtime sounds of his father’s music moving into jazz and then into swing, Jordan had just the springboard he needed to create a more approachable version of Ellington style jazz.

“Louis Jordan made it accessible, commercial” Taylor said. “He made jazz fun. Not so cerebral.”

In the 1940s, the highly successful band Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five blended jazz, blues and swing into a high-energy, sassy, jive-talking sound that became known as “jump blues,” “jumpin’ jive,” or “the Big Bounce.” Jordan kept pushing the limits of his music, moving it forward into its next step.

From 1942 to 1951, Jordan recorded 57 chart hits including 18 songs that went to No. 1. Jordan held down the top slot for 113 weeks, earning him the title, “King of the Juke Boxes.” His recordings transformed swing and jazz into rhythm and blues with such songs as “Let The Good Times Roll,” “Caldonia,” “Choo Choo Ch’ Boogie,” “Ain’t Nobody Here but Us Chickens,” and “Saturday Night Fish Fry.”

“Saturday Night Fish Fry” kept the musical momentum moving and, according to some music scholars, was the first rock ’n’ roll song ever written. It was one of the first songs in popular music to use the word “rocking” in the chorus and to prominently feature electric organ and a distorted electric guitar. Jordan’s work was a huge influence on the musicians that pushed R&B into rock ’n’ roll: Bill Haley and the Comets, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard among others.

“All those people like Elvis were covering black music and got credit for starting rock ’n’ roll,” Giancarlo said. Louis Jordan is universally acknowledged as the person at the pivot. He was both innovative and known. He was in the movies. He was in main stream.”

“His music really has that black R&B sound that differentiates it from the Glenn Miller sound,” Taylor said. “It’s based on upbeat blues with elements of boogie woogie. A lot of the horn lines touch on Charlie Parkerisms. He’s always kind of taking you on a journey lyrically and rhythmically.”

OCT offers gourmet dinners and brunches with advance reservations. Appetizers, desserts, beer, wine and other beverages are also available, with no reservations required.