[Dixielandjazz] RE: Wow on WING...; humor in music

[Dan Augustine]

>From: "Bill Gunter" <jazzboard at hotmail.com>
>Subject: RE: [Dixielandjazz] Wow on WING...
>Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 15:52:34 +0000
>
>Listmates,
>The question was asked:
>>Do you know something we don't, who is Foster Jenkins?
>Florence Foster Jenkins was a lovely lady - loved the arts (especially opera) and fancied herself a soprano of the first order. Her wealthy husband, deeply in love with Florence, catered to her every whim. For a few years he would rent out Carnegie Hall for a special recital featuring Florence.
><snip>
>You can't include Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in this genre because they were actually engaged in a comic put-on deliberately performed to make people laugh. Foster Jenkins and Mrs. Miller, on the other hand, actually believed they were blessed with a great talent.
>Respectfully submitted,
>Bill "More Power to Wing" Gunter
>jazzboard at hotmail.com
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Folks--
    And, as long as we're talking about humor in music, let's not forget (if in fact we ever knew) the famous Guckenheimer Sour Kraut Band of San Francisco, and their LP "Music for Non-Thinkers".  They did polka and band music exactly wrong, but it was so funny because they sounded like a lot of bad bands we've all played in (terrible intonation, wrong entrances, fluctuating tempi, poor dynamics, etc.).  You actually have to be a pretty good player (or singer, as in Jo Stafford) to sound as if you're accidentally playing something wrong (she was great at singing about a quarter-step sharp), but doing it in such a way that it's humorous (at least to those who know what it should sound like).
    Hoffnung Music Festival, of course, injected humor into classical music, as did Spike Jones, Stan Freberg, and others for popular music.
    However (and here's the ticklish point), who has done this for dixieland? I'm afraid that people wouldn't recognize intentionally bad dixieland as being humorous--in fact, some might (gasp) like it (at least as much as they like other 'good' dixieland).  So why is this?  I'm not talking about humor in the band's introductions to their tunes, but humor in the music itself.  The Firehouse Five sometimes did humorous things with their music (like the siren, or the duck-quacks), but i don't recall that they ever deliberately played out of tune (or did other similarly wrong things) to be funny.  Lots of bands (in fact, some of the best bands) use humor, but do any deliberately play badly for a comic effect? 

    Dan
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** Dan Augustine - ds.augustine at mail.utexas.edu             **
** Office of Admissions, University of Texas; Austin, Texas **
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