[Dixielandjazz] 2 beats, or 4?

[Don Ingle]

Butch-san:
A few of the finest drummers I have heard or even worked with were able to
play a four beat rhythm, but with a decided though subtle 2 and 4 accent
that was almost not heard but felt. I have heard Nick Fatal do it with some
of the small bands he gigged with on the coast, Mattie et al, and it was
there.
Charlie Bodice, who seems to have dropped out of gigging in music to gigging
fish in NO.O. sent me a tape of some of the current New Orleans bands, and
drummers, working in recent times, and they all had this wonderful street
beat underlying an often straight ahead four beat rhythm section. Again, it
is an almost never obvious feel. When it is played that way you cannot help
but swing along.
It is not necessary to pound on the two and four to announce you are in two
beat. Or to play four beat so metronomically even that there is no breathing
room. Anyone tells you that good drummers are a dime a dozen should give us
the address. I might take a couple dozen just for the fun of it.
>From a steamy, muggy day in North Michigan, waiting for the first frost --
next week no doubt,
Don Ingle



 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Butch Thompson" <butcht at sihope.com>
To: "djml" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 3:36 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] 2 beats, or 4?


>
> As Steve Barbone points out, Lawrence Marrero does play a steady four
beats
> from the very beginning.  What I'm trying to say here, but not doing it
very
> well, is that a lot of the New Orleans records I'm talking about seem to
> combine that four-to-the-bar feeling with some two-beat.  It's really
both.
> Maybe a better way to say it is that while the bands did play in four, the
> bass drum and bass fiddle often played on one and three instead of all
four
> -- much like Morton's smoothed-out left hand on the piano, which had a
> feeling of four but retained (with considerable variation) the outline of
> ragtime's oom-pah.
>
> For George Lewis' band playing two-beat (with Marrero playing on all
four),
> listen to any number of recordings of Bugle Boy March, for example.  The
> band never played that number any other way, though they sometimes went
into
> four for an out chorus or two. The Mosaic set includes the so-called
Climax
> session of 1943, and in fact the band is very much in four there; that's
> because the bassist on that session, the great Chester Zardis, plays that
> way consistently.  A few years later, with Joe Watkins on drums and Slow
> Drag Pavageau on bass, there was a lot more two-beat for a while, but the
> band changed its approach after spending some time on the concert circuit.
> Watkins drifted away from the snare-based style he started with, and
toward
> an even four on the cymbal and bass drum.  Drag moved in the same
direction.
>
> I'm not saying that early New Orleans jazz was ever in strict two/four.
To
> the contrary, there was nothing strict about it at all; I still think it
was
> a combination, a smoothed-out combination of the two.  Great players like
> John Lindsey knew exactly how to manipulate this combination.
>
> I promise to be quiet now.
>
> Butch Thompson
>
>
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