[Dixielandjazz] THE POWER OF OKOM

[Patrick Cooke]

Very well put, Steve...
         I have long tried to find any value in the labeling, classifying,
and sub-classifying, and pigeon-holeing of styles, and even
worse...performers. Once he has classified the performance, the classifier
stops listening to what is actually being played, thinking "I've heard it
before". If he can't immediately classify it, he usually denounces it as not
being "true" to any genre he's interested in.
   Being true to a genre is diametrically opposed to the spirit of jazz...to
play what you feel, and try to make it different from every body else if you
can.
       This attitude is actually stifling to innovation...no one is allowed
to innovate, when every genre that is remembered was started by an
innovator.  Remember Louis Armstrong?  He was an innovator....so was Charlie
Parker, and a lot of guys in between.
        One style blurs into the next...where does one end and the other
begin?  If I were asked what style I play, I would have to say I don't
know....trad, dixieland, swing, New Orleans (which I suppose is a blend of
those three), New Orleans revival (whatever that is), and even some bebop
wherever it fits.
        I think it was Duke Ellington who said "There's only
two kinds of music....good and bad", but I could be wrong.
        Pat Cooke
        New Orleans

-- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Barbone" <barbonestreet@earthlink.net>
To: "Littlefield, David W." <dwlit@cpcug.org>
Cc: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz@ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2002 4:48 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] THE POWER OF OKOM


> Dave Littlefield wrote:
>
> "The question is legit, but not worded quite right. Trad Dixieland can
> sound
> like it should with either banjo or acoustic rhythm guitar. 1930s
> "Chicago/New York" Dixieland by nature was to a very considerable extent
> a
> style of small-group swing; certainly the boundaries of the 2 sub-genres
>
> are very blurry! And both used acoustic rhythm guitar. As I sit here, I
> have an impression (no statistics) that one significant difference
> between
> the 2 forms (at least on records) is a much greater use of ride cymbal
> by
> the dixielanders, whereas the small swing group drummers used brushes to
>
> the extent that the Condonites used ride cymbals.
>
> If the guitar is amplified internally so that it sounds like Charlie
> Christian rather than Eddie Condon or Freddie Green, then the overall
> sound
> of the band is changed significantly and loses some of its dixieland
> flavor, certainly it is no longer "traditional", and is moved within the
>
> boundaries of swing...Of course all this is conditioned by what the
> horns
> are doing, chordings, etc."
>
> List mates & Dave:
>
> Yes, solid logic if one defines trad jazz so as not to include small
> band swing. But a further question arises. What is small band swing?
> And  even, does trad jazz differ from Chicago (Condon) Style.
>
> Dick Sudhalter makes a couple of excellent points in "Lost Chords",
> while writing about "Dixieland" from page 274 to 299. Well worth a
> re-read if you have the book.
>
> On page 285 he notes that sax player Toots Mondello and critic George
> Frazier talking about "Dixieland" in the late 1930s meaning "an approach
> to small-band hot playing whose textures, repertoire and general
> allegiance reflected the ODJB". And Orrin Keepnews is quoted: "We said
> dixieland to distinguish a certain kind of small-group jazz from what
> the big dance bands were doing. We had two terms, 'dixieland' and 'small
> band swing' which were supposed to mean different things but which
> actually overlapped all the time. The truth of it is nobody really
> thought much about definitions then."
>
> And on page 279 Sudhalter notes; "Often such compartmentalization
> ignored the very sound of the music. When a 1937 pickup group led by
> Teddy Wilson recorded  . . . "I've Found A New Baby" with Buck Clayton,
> Buster Bailey and Lester Young as the horns it was heard and discussed
> as small-band swing. When two years later, Bud Freeman's Summa Cum Laude
> Orchestra, with Max Kaminisky, Pee Wee Russell, and Brad Gowans in the
> front line recorded the same number in much the same manner, it was
> Dixieland.
>
> The two performances, similar in structure and feel, draw on ensemble
> polylinearity and band riffing. Both spot rhythmically vigorous solos .
> . . . etc. As Bud (Freeman) put it many years later, "You can't say to a
> jazz performer whose talent is worth anything that he plays avant garde,
> or dixieland, or that he is a modern, or even a proponent of Chicago
> style. A substantial musician will say, 'I just play'"
>
> Trying to define what is Trad Jazz, Dixieland or Small Band Swing is
> interesting to say the least. What do we play? Darned if I know, but we
> use "Dixieland / New Orleans Jazz / Small Band Swing / Trad Jazz / Hot
> Dance interchangeably. And to borrow Condon's phrase, we also call it
> music.
>
> Anyway, if list mates are interested about what Barbone Street attempts
> to sound like, what the New York Dixieland scene was like from 1945 to
> Condon's death, read Sudhalter's Lost Chords, pages 295 to 299. In those
> few pages, he says it all, and we try to fit that mold with our
> amplified guitarist.
>
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
>
> Note also that we Dixieland / Small Band swing players in NYC in the
> 40s, 50s, 60s called what we played traditional jazz and/or dixieland
> without thinking about banjos, guitars, tubas, string basses, saxophones
> etc. The only distinction we tried to make was that it was not bop or
> progressive jazz, then also on the scene. Also those who categorize
> styles of OKOM, eg Tex Wyndham, make no stylistic distiction for "Trad
> Jazz.", other than British Trad.
>
>
>
>
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