Donald Brown's Downtown Saturday Nights

This weekend provided further confirmation that the coolest Saturday night in town these days is Donald Brown's residency at the S&W. Playing (for no cover charge, mind you) with Rusty Holloway on bass and Keith Brown on drums, with several guest sax spots from Jerry Coker (the founder of UT's jazz program), Brown lent his energetic, sympathetic touch to a host of standards Saturday night. Almost as remarkable as the music was the crowd, an age-, sex-, and race-diverse assemblage that leaned heavily on a stylish gray-haired contingent that we will henceforth declare Knoxville's Senior Hipsters. These are people who were digging Miles and Trane decades before you were born, kid. At one point, a dance party broke out among a quartet who were all well into their AARP years (led by the fabulous Edye Ellis, who will always look better than you or me), and the younger, more abashed clientele could only watch with appreciation. Even the S&W's oddly spectral lighting suddenly makes sense in the context of a late-hours jazz club.