[Dixielandjazz] Re: [Sextet from Hunger]

[Charlie Hooks]

on 7/12/03 6:17 PM, Don Ingle at dingle at baldwin-net.com wrote:

> Someone commented that they didn't like his heavy vibrato.
> Well, for the record it was a lip vibrato and perfectly controlled, if fast.
> (I use half and half  hand/lip on trumpet/cornet, and lip vibrato fully on
> valve trombone, but a slower wave rate.


I'm that someone; and "perfectly controlled" it may have been, but still
nanny goat.  I've never understood why an automatic nervous-tic
always-use-it mannerism could add the slightest musical content and could
not surely subtract from it, Bechet bedamned!  Controlled--shumtrolled: who
needs that crap?

Vibrato should drift off the emotion of the note.  If at all.

 Vibrato can be used to great and legitimate effect: but not spasmodically!
Charlie Teagarden was a great musician.  Only a bit less than his brother,
Jack!  I'm just commenting on one characteristic of his.  I can't account
for it!

Although I do know that vibrato is now in and then out of musical
preferences.   In Brahmses time the clarinet vibrato matched the cello's in
width and intensity!   So played the great Mhuellfeld, Brahm's clarinetist,
reported by an ancient musician interviewed in his youth by Jack Brymer.

OK.  Sidney Bechet was a great genius.  Genuflect.
    
Now: 

Can we really listen to him?

God--what an attack! what continuance! what a super muscular growling
demand!  What invention!  Holy Smoke!  He sounds like Franz Jackson in a
tiff, demanding that we appreciate him and his entire culture, no matter how
ugly.  

Don Ingle (whom I love dearly and admire even more!) justifies Charlie's
playing; who am I to deny?

way it goes,
Charlie