Bob Page at his piano. The Newcastle native and co-founder of the Jazz Babies now lives in Atlanta, but will return to the Twin Villages to celebrate the band’s 40th anniversary with a concert at the Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta on Thursday, Aug. 18.
The Jazz Babies will celebrate their 40th anniversary with a benefit concert for Lincoln Academy at the Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta on Thursday, Aug. 18.
Fans of the long-standing Twin Villages jazz ensemble can expect a classic performance.
“We’ve been doing some rehearsing. We’ve been learning some new tunes,” said drummer Dave Page. “We have our core of standards that we’ve always played, so they can certainly expect to hear some of the old favorites.”
Dave Page wears a T-shirt commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Jazz Babies. The band will perform a benefit concert for Lincoln Academy at the Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta on Thursday, Aug. 18. (J.W. Oliver photo)
The original members were brothers and Newcastle natives Bob and Dave Page on piano and drums, respectively; Billy Sherman on bass; T.J. Wheeler on guitar; Barney Balch on trombone; and Dick Cash on flugelhorn. Lefty McCauslin, on saxophone, joined in the early 1980s.
The Page brothers talked about the roots of the band Thursday, Aug. 4.
Bob Page, now 62, started playing guitar around 1963 or 1964, he said. Like many musicians his age, he was first inspired by The Beatles.
His first experience on stage was playing “Kansas City” with local musician and trash collector Earl Moulton and his band – Juicy and the Dump Pickers – during a “hootenanny” at Lake Pemaquid Campground in the mid-‘60s, when he was still a preteen.
The self-taught musician later switched to piano.
“We always had a piano in the house, so I could always bang out a little bit of blues on the piano, it seemed, but I didn’t get really serious about playing the piano until the early ’70s,” he said.
After graduating from Lincoln Academy in 1971, he was playing guitar in a rock-and-roll band, Cruisin’.
A friend of the family’s, the late Damariscotta businessman and piano player Bob Strong, helped develop his interest in jazz, as well as blues, boogie-woogie, and swing.
“He gave me an album one time that had some boogie-woogie piano players” from the ’30s, like Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller, Bob Page said. “I listened to those guys and I said, ‘whoa!’”
The record changed his musical direction. “I jumped very deeply into playing traditional jazz,” he said.
Bob Page and the bass guitarist from Cruisin’, Sherman, started to play some of this new music on the side, and Dave Page joined them on drums.
“It just sort of morphed into playing more swing and jazz and blues than we did before, then we started adding some horn players, and that’s sort of how the Jazz Babies got started,” Bob Page said.
Borrowing from a group of the 1920s, they called themselves the Down East Jazz Babies, later shortening the name to the Jazz Babies.
The band played its first gig at The Pier in Damariscotta – the present-day location of Schooner Landing Restaurant and Marina – in the summer of 1976.
“We did most of our playing that first summer right down at The Pier and kind of developed our chops,” Dave Page said.
“I don’t know how good we were back then, but they let us play there,” Bob Page said.
During the ’70s and ’80s, the Jazz Babies played around the state, from Bangor to Portsmouth, Bar Harbor to Portland.
Dave Page said his “claim to fame” comes from a late ’70s gig opening for the blues legend Muddy Waters at the Red Barn in Monroe.
“The whole band came in and they had to walk past us to get down to the dressing room and they all just stayed right there until we finished the song,” Dave Page said. “I remember Muddy gave us the thumbs-up.”
The song was the jazz standard “Sunny Side of the Street,” and Waters was impressed with their rendition.
Waters was famous for giving out nicknames. Dave Page – who many in the Twin Villages still know as “Big Dave” despite his dramatic weight loss almost 20 years ago – weighed about 350 pounds then.
“He nicknamed me that night ‘the big man with the big beat,’” Dave Page said. “That was just one of those nights you never forget.”
Two of the original Jazz Babies, Sherman and Cash, died in the ’80s, Sherman in a car accident and Cash of Lou Gehrig’s disease, according to Dave Page. Jack Tukey joined the band to replace Sherman on bass. The lineup has remained constant since.
In 1986, Bob Page moved to Atlanta, where he has lived and worked as a professional musician for the last 30 years. He has played in the house band at a blues club, Blind Willie’s, off and on ever since, and has performed around Europe and the U.S., including with big names like Chuck Berry and The Georgia Satellites.
For years, into the ’90s, he would return to Maine for the whole summer and play with the Jazz Babies. He still makes the trip north every summer and “we play as many gigs as we can,” Dave Page said.
The LA benefit at Lincoln Theater has sentimental meaning for Dave Page.
His first job for money was at Lincoln Theater with a group called 96 Tears, he said. The band “only played two or three songs, but played them over and over again,” he said. “I’m looking forward to going back.”
Bob and Dave Page graduated from Lincoln Academy in 1971 and 1975, respectively, and Dave Page is a former president of the Lincoln Academy Board of Trustees, as well as the school’s former food service director.
The concert will begin at 7 p.m. Tickets are $25, and proceeds will go to the LA annual fund. For tickets, go to lincolnacademy.org.
The Jazz Babies will also perform at Coveside Restaurant & Marina in South Bristol from 2-5 p.m., Sunday, Aug. 21, and at Schooner Landing from 2-5 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 11.
In addition, Bob Page will play with Eric Green at Schooner Landing on Thursday, Aug. 11, and the Page brothers and McCauslin will play at Lobsterman’s Wharf in East Boothbay on Sunday, Aug. 14.
