[Dixielandjazz] Jim Cullum Banjo (Howard Elkins)

[Charlie Hooks]

on 1/21/03 5:36 PM, Don Mopsick at mophandl at landing.com wrote:

> In other words, the "junk jewelry" of the "light
> syncopations" gets in the way and pre-packages the feel for the whole band,
> instead of leaving it up to the front line or soloist to swing the way HE
> wants to. When I was a horn player (trumpet), I much preferred a rhythm
> section that left the time and the changes pretty much alone, setting up a
> tabula rasa upon which I was then free to create MY jazz, MY dynamics, and
> MY syncopations.

    Hard to imagine any sequence of statements about rhythm playing that
would seem to me more preposterous than these, which only shows how far two
honest men can disagree!

    I totally agree with Jim (Beebe, not Cullum) about the relentless
chuck-chuck Chinese-water-torture and to me mindless sort of banjo-playing
you describe.  "Setting up a tabula rasa" is absolutely the last thing such
playing accomplishes: instead, it proceeds like an endless chain of
chink/links, tight little chink-boxes, potholes, into which I'm required to
step.  The only way on earth that I can hope to swing over such a
contraption is to ignore it--and banjos, whatever else they may be, are
mortally difficult to ignore.

    That sort of banjo playing does not at all "leave the time alone"!  It
drives nails into the time, each remorseless chink after chank after chonk.
"Leave the time alone"?!  It bludgeons the time like a heavy hammer that
never stops!  It dares the soloist to play over it, to play IN SPITE of it.

    But I'll allow it one virtue, if virtue it be: it'll separate the iron
shoes (who must clump along over it) from the dancing feet I hope I never
lose.  Talk about "pre-packaging" a band!  That sort of rhythm makes a rut
of any groove I could feel.

    Obviously you feel entirely different, and that's what I find
interesting.  I've never heard you play, but all the guys tell me you are a
very fine player indeed.  So, go figure... [I think I may feel stronger
about banjo style than Beebe, even--which doesn't mean at all that I
disapprove the instrument--Buddy Lee, here in Chicago, for example, plays
his rear off.]  

    Maybe what we are both saying is that chink/chink banjo helps you but
hinders me.  Just two different ways of feeling.

cordially,
Charlie