[Dixielandjazz] Butch Thompson album notes

[Kurt]

I was rummaging through the record bin at our Local Half Price Books store
yesterday and came across the album: "A Prairie Home Companion Presents Live
from St. Paul The Butch Thompson Trio".  There is no date on the album.
Butch is accompanied by Red Maddock, drums / vocal; and Bill Evans, bass.
Tom Lieberman plays guitar on a couple of tunes, as does Charlie DeVore on
vocal and cornet.

On the album liner notes, Garrison Keillor says, "When the Trio took up
residency on the show last January, there were people who told us that
bluegrass music, not jazz, was the right thing for a family-type radio show.
They associated bluegrass with home and farm and Mom and Dad and all that
was good and true and beautiful, and they associated a jazz trio with Mom
and Dad staying out until dawn at a sleazy club filled with smoke and women
in strapless dresses - what we call 'secular humanists' nowadays.  But I
know and you know that when music makes you happy, it doesn't matter what
anybody calls it."

There was a surprise inside the album jacket.  A single sheet slightly
smaller than the jacket that had photos of the musicians and a nice message
from Butch.  Here is some of what he wrote:

"Now for something about the music we play.  We like to call it traditional
jazz, by which we mean music of an era roughly 1890-1935.  The trio's
repertoire includes the classic ragtime of Scott Joplin and others ("Easy
Winners"), New Orleans jazz ("The Pearls"), dixieland standards ("China
Boy"), 30's and 40's pop tunes ("I'll Dance at Your Wedding". "Home", et
al.), and anything else which we can lay our hands on that appeals to us.  

We try to play this material as though it were brand new.  We don't copy
anybody in particular, but we've learned from many musicians we've heard
both live and on records.  We don't believe in the theory that jazz is a
progressive music, because we don't think that a style or attitude in music
becomes obsolete as it recedes into the past.  We think that the notion of
"validity" has nothing to do with us or any other musicians; we just like
what we are playing and hope that you do too."

------------------

That is the best $3.98 (marked down from $6.99) I ever spent.





Kurt Bowermaster
Bowermaster Group
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