PORT TOWNSEND — Speakeasies, flappers and the Charleston are back in vogue this weekend in Port Townsend as the Blue Crows take the stage to perform some 1920s-era hot jazz.
The old-timey ragtime, blues, jazz and jugband musical group will perform from 9 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. Saturday at the Uptown Pub, located at 1016 Lawrence St.
There is no cover charge to attend.
The Port Townsend-based Blue Crows, founded about six years ago, usually consists of clarinet player John Morton, guitarist George Rezendes and cellist Fred Nussbaum.
Nussbaum will not perform this time around, but guest musicians Tom Svornich, on drums and percussion, and Dave Smith, on mandolin, will sit in.
“We can’t start until the restaurant next door closes down,” Morton said Wednesday.
“That is the deal. Normally, we don’t play really loud . . . but with a bar like that late at night, we like to add a drummer, and that sort of boosts the energy.”
Blast from the past
“The music we play is really what jazz was in the early days,” Morton said.
“That was the music everybody listened to [in the 1920s].
“It is really the equivalent of what pop music is today. It took that place in the culture.”
Despite being 90 years old, the music style is still the “bee’s knees,” Morton said.
“Some of our material is much newer, but we have kind of a vintage sound,” he said.
And fear not, he said: The audience will have no problem cutting a rug to the old tunes.
“It is very infectious and mostly up-tempo,” he said.
“More than anything, it is something that most people have never heard but they really like it when they hear it,” he added.
“It is not something that gets played around here regularly.
“There is lots of blues bands, there is rock bands, jazz bands. But this doesn’t fit any of those categories.”
The music style is “quite a surprise to people,” but a pleasant one at that, he said.
“It is all old music, but we make it sound new.”
For more information, call Uptown Pub at 360-385-1530.
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Reporter Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or cmcdaniel@peninsuladailynews.com.