The Hot Sardines

Evan Palazzo, the bandleader and pianist, is a native New Yorker.[2] He began playing piano by ear at age three and was beguiled by amateur musicianship his whole life.[3] As a boy, he aspired to be "a performer and an entertainer, but also a combination of Rick Blaine and Victor Laszlo."[4] He was a student at the Waldorf school in New York City and went on to major in theater and musical theater at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.[3] He developed a passion for jazz in general and playing stride jazz piano in particular.[5] Returning to the Big Apple, he made a living as an actor in theater and film production, as well as continued working on his music.[6] In 2007, he released an album titled Finding His Stride featuring his special brand of stride piano music with a "ragged" rhythm.[7] For a while Evan was a trouper in chanteuse Lauren Ambrose's band, The Leisure Class.[6] He appeared in scenes playing the piano in several films. His spouse, actress Jennifer Weedon,[8] knowing of Evan's desire to start a jazz band, placed an ad on Craigslist for him. Soon Evan was getting together with other musicians for informal jam sessions.

Elizabeth Bougerol, the band's frontwoman, vocalist and occasional washboard player, was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris.[9][10] She grew up in France, the Ivory Coast, and Canada. While young, she initially wanted to be a vet but did not have the stomach for it.[4] She earned a bachelor's degree from Brock University and a master's degree from the London School of Economics. She edited city guides on the internet and created editorial websites as well as writing freelance for magazines and book projects.[11] Like Palazzo, she nurtured a lifelong passion for music, especially pop from the 1920s to 1950s – performed by the likes of Fats Waller and Ray Charles. An autodidactic singer, she haunted live performance venues in New York City, imploring her favorite artists for the opportunity to sing with them. However, although naturally gifted with "a sweet and soulful voice,"[10] she nevertheless was turned down because she had no professional background. Undaunted, she taught herself to play the washboard–jug band style and began placing advertisements on Craigslist searching for others who shared her fervid enthusiasm for early jazz.[11]

Serendipitously, Evan and Elizabeth both answered the same Craigslist ad for a traditional jazz jam occurring at a noodle shop near Times Square in Manhattan.[2][12][1] Elizabeth recalled the chance encounter "was like an instant musical connection. We started trading stories of songs and singers we loved while growing up, naming our biggest influences and trying out tunes together."[13] They discovered their mutual admiration of Louis Armstrong and Harlem stride style jazz legend Thomas "Fats" Waller.[1] "I started playing [Fats Waller's] 'Your Feet's Too Big' on the piano and Elizabeth joined in like we'd been singing that duet together for decades," Palazzo recalled.[11] Elizabeth recounted how "everyone else in the room just faded away while we geeked out."[13]

The duo began regularly meeting to play music for their own enjoyment.[14] A college acquaintance of Evan's – or "Bibs"[12] as he came to be known – heard that they might be looking for a tap dancer for the band and put them in touch with their first hoofer, Edwin "Fast Eddy" Francisco.[15] Eddy stopped by Evan's domicile while they were rehearsing and began to tap along to the music. Elizabeth accompanied Eddy's rhythmic tapping on a DublHandi washboard that she had purchased at a nearby hardware store. Thus the early Sardines tap-and-washboard percussion section was born.[11][3]

An hour later, the intrepid trio departed for their first open-mic gig at a coffeehouse on the last Q train stop in Queens.[12] They had to list a name on the call sheet for their group to perform at the event. They wanted "hot" in the name to indicate the kind of jazz they played, something like Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven groups.[14] Inspired by a tin of spicy sardines that Elizabeth had found at a grocery, they christened the band as The Hot Sardines.[14]

"Miz Elizabeth" Bougerol on left. Top to bottom: Jason Prover, Nick Myers, Joe McDonough, Evan Crane, Alex Raderman, Evan "Bibs" Palazzo. (Photo by LeAnn Mueller.)

For several years, The Hot Sardines played free gigs for friends and at small open-mic venues such as the now-shuttered Banjo Jim's on the Lower East Side.[13][16] During this time, the band was "playing in New York for anyone we could get to listen to us, busking in the subway and dragging friends out to look for bars with open mikes."[11] Unexpectedly, they became part of an alcohol-fueled flash mob scene "in New York, where people go online and find the location and the secret password, and then 300 people show up dressed in vintage attire and party the night away."[11][17]

"We never intended to start a professional outfit," Palazzo said regarding their formative years. "We wanted to do it has a hobby, [but] we found ourselves getting gigs."[14] Over the next couple of years the band attracted musicians from prestigious institutions like the Juilliard School and Berklee, accomplished professionals who were unafraid to "get down and dirty" with early American jazz.[16] Slowly, the core group of the band grew to a septet and then an octet, with Mike Sailors on cornet, Jason Prover on trumpet, Evan "Sugar" Crane on sousaphone and bass, Nick Myers on saxophone and clarinet, and Alex "Tastykakes" Raderman on drums.[11]

During the economic downturn known as the Great Recession,[17] the band fortuitously benefited from the mid-2010s hot jazz revival,[15][18] a Millennial cultural phenomenon emanating from Brooklyn.[10] As a result, there began in New York a "cyclical burst of Jazz Age nostalgia," and this hot jazz revival attracted "a young, fresh crowd" that clamored for a particular strain of throwback jazz "that once would have put it under the Dixieland heading."[19] This revival was largely ascribed to the popularity of television programs such as Martin Scorsese's Boardwalk Empire which renewed interest in the Roaring Twenties and, in particular, the frenzied underground music of the Prohibition-era speakeasies.[10]

Amid this jazz revival, a turning point for the Hot Sardines came in 2010 when they performed for the first time at the speakeasy-themed Shanghai Mermaid, a 6,000-square-foot warehouse behind an unmarked door in Crown Heights.[17][20][21] During the apex of the economic recession,[17] the "extravagantly theatrical" Mermaid recreated the decadent atmosphere of a red-walled 1930s cabaret and was the epicenter of the throwback jazz scene, with monthly underground costume parties and aerialists swinging from the ceiling.[17] Due to its local prestige, performing at the Mermaid was deemed a coming-of-age moment in the band's evolution. "We all [still] love playing at the Shanghai Mermaid," Palazzo stated in 2015, "it's about as close as you can get to time-travel to the 1930s."[4]

Soon after, the Sardines' next big break occurred in June 2011 due to Bougerol's ability to sing in both English and French.[11][22] She had received a cryptic email stating that an unidentified third party was seeking a jazz band that could perform songs in French for a last-minute gig on the forthcoming Bastille Day.[4] She submitted a few video clips of the band's past performances, and they clinched the job. It turned out that the gig was Midsummer Night Swing at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.[11][23] They performed before a youthful audience of 7,000 swing dancers and brought down the house.[12][3] After headlining at Lincoln Center, they were "heralded as one of the greatest jazz acts to come out of New York City."[24] Soon after, they served as openers for the jazz trio Bad Plus and French gypsy-jazz artist Zaz.[4]

High-profile gigs started rolling in, and the Sardines' debut album Shanghai'd premiered in July 2011 to favorable reviews.[25] They went on to have 17 consecutive sold-out shows at Joe's Pub starting in 2012.[26] The Sardines were soon invited in 2012 to represent New York in front of 25,000 spectators at Festival d'Île de France in Paris.[21]

During the next several years, the Sardines released several follow-up albums via the Eleven Records label including Comes Love (December 2013),[27] The Hot Sardines' Lowdown Little Christmas Record (December 2013),[28] and Sardine 3: Frolicking at the Playground (February 2014) recorded at The Music Playground.[29]

Due to their success, larger record labels such as Decca/Universal Music Classics began taking an interest in the piscine troupe. Subsequently, their first major label album – eponymously-titled The Hot Sardines – was released on the Decca/Universal label in October 2014.[30] This 2014 self-titled album contained both jazz classics and original Sardines' compositions and reached number 12 on the Billboard charts in August 2015,[31] as well as went to No. 1 on the iTunes Jazz charts in the U.S. and U.K.[3] It remained in the top 10 on the Billboard Jazz Chart for more than a year.[24] Meanwhile, the band continued their frequent pilgrimages to Joe's Pub, Shanghai Mermaid, and Midsummer Night Swing.[32][12][33][34][35] They became virtual regulars, if not inmates, at André Balazs' posh Top of the Standard.[36]

In 2014, they performed at the Montreal International Jazz Festival.[37] They played to sold-out appearances at Symphony Hall accompanied by the Boston Pops,[38] with their songs arranged for the orchestra by Tony Award-winner Bill Elliott. The song "Wake Up in Paris" – written by Bougerol[14] – made its debut at The Pops' shows and was duly praised. "The real stunner was 'Wake Up in Paris'," wrote The Boston Globe at the time, adding that "with sweet, lush, Technicolor strings, it was hard to imagine how it could possibly work without orchestral accompaniment. But work it did."[39] (The Globe also noted the presence of Sardines' fans who had attended in flapper cosplay attire.[39])

Later that year, in October 2014, the Sardines headlined the grand reopening of the Rainbow Room located on the 65th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, an Art Deco-skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan.[5][40] Traveling across the Atlantic Ocean, the "flaming little fishes"[11] made a splash with their London debut in the Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall in November 2014.[5] Their tour proved a success due to the popularity of American jazz in European countries.[4] (They also appeared annually from 2012 to 2016 as the musical headliners on the short-lived TCM Film Cruise, hosted by Robert Osborne and Ben Mankiewicz, where the band entertained fans of classic and pre-code cinema amid anchorages in the Bahamas.[41][42])

The Sardines performing in 2015 at Texas A&M University.

On June 16, 2016, the troupe released French Fries + Champagne, their second album on the Decca/Universal label, which featured Tony-winning thespian Alan Cumming on one of the standout tracks, "When I Get Low I Get High" (originally recorded in 1936 by Ella Fitzgerald).[43] A tongue-in-cheek music video with Cumming and Bougerol performing the song was released the same day on YouTube and gradually amassed nearly one million views.[43][44] The band described the video's unique visuals as a "Weimar acid trip."[43] French Fries + Champagne debuted at No. 5 on Billboard's Jazz Traditional Chart, No. 6 on Jazz Current and Top 20 Heatseekers Chart and was No. 1 on both iTunes' and Amazon's jazz charts.[24]

In April 2019, the Sardines released their eighth album, Welcome Home, Bon Voyage.[45] This live album was recorded in two originative bursts at their regular haunt, Joe's Pub, in New York and Koerner Hall in Toronto.[45] The album's release loosely coincided with the Sardines' prolonged stopover at Club Cumming, the East Village cabaret owned by actor Alan Cumming, a "wonderfully bizarre"[46] establishment renowned for its drag shows, knitting nights, and downtown queer fusion.[46] (The same month, Cumming performed on stage with the Sardines during their residency at his cabaret.[47])

As of 2019, the Hot Sardines "have performed all over the world, notching more than 100 gigs a year."[24] Their concerts typically attract a youthful audience who are "passionate and committed" both to swing revivalism and to experiencing how "a jazz club might have been in 1920."[24] Reflecting upon the Sardines' continued success in 2019, critic Nate Chinen noted that "not many bands have seized the postmillennial early-jazz spotlight with as much gusto as The Hot Sardines. An eight-piece outfit [which] has devoted more than the last decade to a razzle-dazzle reclamation of prewar swing, often with a healthy dose of humor."[45] For their own part, the Sardines remain light-hearted about their success and insist their continued goal is to promote cultural awareness of little-known 20th century jazz pioneers. "If we could contribute to that in the smallest way," Palazzo stated in a Star-Gazette interview, "our work is done."[3]