When
you’ve got a piano marvel in the house, you wind him up and let him go – and then
go along for the ride. That was the case Thursday when clarinetist Bud Leeds
brought his quartet to the Venice (FL) Art Center as part of the South County Jazz
Club’s matinee concert series.
Bud Leeds, Bobby van Deusen
The
marvel was Bobby van Deusen, a ragtime and stride specialist who lives in
Pensacola but was in the area for this weekend’s Suncoast Jazz Classic. Van Deusen will perform at the weekend-long trad jazz event in Clearwater with
the Barbary Coast Dixieland Show Band. Bassist Don Mopsick, a 19-year member of the Jim Cullum Jazz Band, and drummer Tony
Martin, who had worked with van Deusen previously in New Orleans, rounded out Leeds’ band.