You don’t see this every day at City Hall – a jazz great playing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” on the flugelhorn.
Jimmy Owens – who’s played with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus and Count Basie – gave a somber rendition of the spiritual at a City Council committee meeting Wednesday as part of his testimony on securing pension benefits for aging jazz musicians.
He was among several who urged the City Council to push club owners for benefits.
“I’m seeing friends come down ill. They have very little social security. They have very little pension,” he said after his brief performance. “If they’d paid into a pension fund, they’d have pension [payments] every month.”
Photo: William Alatriste/NYC Council
But the owners of the world-renowned clubs they play – Birdland, the Blue Note and the Village Vanguard are but a few – have refused to discuss setting up benefits packages, Owens said. The Blue Note reneged on a promise in 2005 to do so in 2005, he added.
“Jazz musicians deserve to retire with dignity, and clubs should work with musicians to give them the protections they deserve,” said Council Member Corey Johnson, ” I’m not proud that these clubs who have refused to negotiate are in my district.”
The Blue Note did not return calls.
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