Jazz Veterans Skip Bey and Tim Jackson
by Dean Cottrill

[Note: This article was written in 1997, Jazzons as since closed.]

The only audible flaws in an evening with Skip Bey and Tim Jackson (acoustic bass and piano, respectively) will be the absence of applause if you don’t show. But even in the off-season, the unpretentious club Jazzons has hosted enthusiastic houses when ‘Tip & Skim’ are around. The too-often cerebral world of jazz is unceremoniously suspended when the streetwise energies of Bey and Jackson render mainstream and bop fare irresistible to even hard core anti-jazzists. See? You’re smiling already.

Bey and Jackson, both veterans on the local scene at clubs as far back as the Rising Sun, have also collected bumper stickers internationally and need little prompting to wax anecdotal about the colossi of jazz- Skip with Chet Baker, James Moody, Sonny Stitt and Frank Morgan; Tim with Paquito d’Rivera, Cleanhead Vinson, and Cab Calloway, along with Michel Donato and Karen Young locally. In between the laughs and dares, there is the ever-present telepathy that has gifted this duo with 15 years of magic.

"Playing with Skip is like going to school and church at the same time," says Jackson. I wish I’d said that.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll stay for another set. Hip music, hot food and comfortable prices should bring Jazzons some well deserved (and long over) dues. And tell Sharon I promise not to fall off my stool next time.

Dean Cottrill is an active musician on the Montreal blues and jazz scene.

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