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Annie Linders fell in love with traditional jazz while riding a boat down the Mississippi River.
There are other ways, other places to fall in love with traditional jazz, but none of them are nearly this good.
“After I graduated, I went on a sailing trip with some friends on the Mississippi,” Linders told the Herald. “They were sailing down to New Orleans and that sounded like a lot of fun to me so I asked if I could hop on the boat and sail (from St. Louis) to Memphis.”
A musician since she was a kid, Linders brought her trumpet. One of the friends brought her accordion and taught Linders the standard “Delta Bound.” Linders was hooked.
On Aug. 23 – 24, as both an organizer and performer, Linders will help put on the Bay State Hot Jazz Festival at Medford’s Condon Band Shell. Linders’ band, Annie & the Fur Trappers, will headline the Sunday lineup while other New Orleans and trad jazz bands will fill up eight hours of free programing. Now in its third year, the Bay State Hot Jazz Festival was formerly known as the Medford Trad Jazz fest.
Despite being born more than half a century after the genre peaked, Linders connected with the music and its important stylistic and historical legacy — Louis Armstrong, the Jazz Age, and Roaring Twenties stood in bold opposition to prohibition and segregation.
“It wasn’t all great back then,” Linders said. “We’re careful not to glorify the entire ’20s because there were a lot of bad things about the decade. But the music is something to be carried on and continued. It’s so uniquely American… It was made here, formed by the good and bad things that were happening at the time. It’s something to be proud of.”
“Just like people say don’t forget Bach and Mozart, we are saying, ‘This stuff is worth being remembered,” she added.
Listening to Annie & the Fur Trappers records serves as both time machine and party starter. Like rock ‘n’ roll before it, New Orleans’ jazz was dance music for the young, music to go wild to. A tune like standard “Ain’t She Sweet” from the Trappers’ 2023 album “Remember the Charleston” evokes both a strange nostalgia and urge to ask somebody to pass you the moonshine (get a load of that trumpet solo!).
The Midwesterner moved to Boston during the pandemic — the worst time to be a musician. But eventually Linders found a community of like-minded players who also dug old 78 records by Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Bix Beiderbecke. Linders agrees that millennials and Gen Zers can find something decidedly undigital, decidedly organic in the music.
“With AI taking over, it’s nice to have a band that can show (up with seven musicians) and no amplifiers and make something that, hopefully, AI can never make,” she said. “It totally makes sense that this revival would be happening at this time.”
Whether you saw Armstrong live (wow, impressive) or you just discovered “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” find something that swings at the Bay State Hot Jazz Festival.
Tickets and details at baystatehotjazzfestival.com
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