[Dixielandjazz] Re: Jazz Popular?/Mainstream

[D and R Hardie]

Dear Bill And Others.
                                 Once again, I did
not say the term 'mainstream' was invented here or
that it was used in the 1940's. I quote from my
original post:" The latter
term was used in Australia by followers of the
1940's Chicago Style to differentiate their
somewhat 'progressive'  music from that of the
revivalist bands  who were imitating  recordings
by Bunk Johnson and the Classic 1920's jazz bands
of  King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton ."
Fred Spencer misinterpreted this comment to imply
that I was talking about musicians active in the
1940's and that it was invented here. Certainly
not. I meant fellow musicians  with whom I
associated, who  modelled their playing on  the
Condon School. As Bill well knows this could not
have been after 1956. If he is right about the
1958 date they must have been prescient. However I
did not  ever  intend to establish the date of the
invention of the term and would not want to be
misquoted again and again on this. That is how so
many  fallacies about jazz history have been 
started.
 
regards Dan Hardie
 Check Out the Early Jazz History site at:
 
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~darnhard/EarlyJazzHistory.html

 

Bill Haesler wrote:

> Dear Fred,
> I have not kept all the posts re this thread, so
> this may have been quoted
> already.
> In the 'New Grove Dictionary of Jazz' (1988
> edition). James Lincoln Collier's
> 'Mainstream' entry  says: "A term coined in the
> 1950s by Stanley Dance to
> describe the work of contemporary musicians
> working in the swing idiom of the
> 1930s and 1940s."
> Contrary to my friend Dan Hardie's Australian
> 1940s assertion, I would suggest
> that it was not until the mid to late 1950s (at
> least) that we in Oz started to
> use the expression.
> For what it is worth, the definition does not
> appear in 'Dictionary Of Jazz'
> (Panassie & Gautier. 1956).
> However, in 'The New Jazz Book' (Joachim
> Berendt. 1959) says: "When the new term
> "Mainstream' was coined in England for the Swing
> style of the present, Buck
> Clayton became - certainly among European jazz
> fans - one of the leading
> personalities of Mainstream jazz."
> In 'Know About Jazz' (Peter Gammond, Peter
> Clayton. 1963) they say "Mainstream -
> It was found that between traditional and modern
> jazz was a great deal of jazz
> which belonged in neither camp. The word
> mainstream was coined to cover this in
> about 1958. It includes the music of Count Basie
> and similar bands."
> Kind regards,
> Bill.
>
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