[Dixielandjazz] How Good We Have It

[Dan Augustine]

Folks--
     OK, here i am in the afternoon, watching (unfortunately) Rice
lose to Stanford in the College World Series of baseball (hey, if
Texas can't win it, i'm going with any other team from Texas).  Then
i start cooking dinner (ignoring for the nonce "60 Minutes", which i
usually watch), listening to Joe Oliver and the Dixie Syncopators,
and drinking an original (so they say) Löwenbräu (from the recipe
putatively before Miller screwed with it).  I'm stuffing my sensory
inputs with smells (chopping onions and garlic), sounds ("Tears",
"Snag It", etc.), and tastes (beer followed by a nice
Chardonnay--hey! one doesn't have to ruin the other).
     I switch to the Bob Scobey album "Rompin' and Stompin'" (with our
own redoubtable Mr. Jim Beebe on trombone) and finish cooking a
knockoff of the Carrabas recipe of Pollo Rosa Maria (chicken breast
stuffed with Fontina cheese and prosciutto, with a mushroom and basil
lemon sauce--which while good is nowhere as good as what i ate there
last week--possibly because a) i'm not a chef at Carrabas and b) i
don't have Fontina or prosciutto, but Monterrery Jack and ham).
While eating this refection i watch the baseball game on TV between
the New York Yankees and the New York Mets, with Joe Morgan (perhaps
my favorite baseball-analyst) and whats-his-name (i try to find his
name just now on the ESPN website, which is determined and
successfull in denying me this intelligence; 'Jon' something?).  This
should almost be illegal: cooking, drinking, and listening.
     Now i ask you: how good do we have it?  Should we be a little bit
embarrassed by the fact that we can eat this food, listen to this
great music, drink these wonderful adult beverages, watch sports half
a continent away, and get instant details on any subject imaginable
(and some that aren't) on the internet?  Who else in the history of
the world, and the current geography of the world, can do this?
(Whoops, too political; retrenching.)  Second version: hmm, how good
we have it.
     I'm of the opinion (NB: 'opinion': "a belief or conclusion held
with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or
proof") that Joe Oliver's bands and Bob Scobey's bands are among the
best of this style we have ever had, and that the Bob Scobey version
of "Dallas Blues" is one of the best i've ever heard. The breaks by
Jim Beebe on trombone and Rich Matteson on what sounds like a bass
trumpet are marvelous (the album notes don't allude to any of this).
Beebe's breaks are better, i think, because they are closer to the
mood and flow of the piece and the music, but Matteson is of course
extremely gifted technically and not without melodic and 'blues'
expressions (language starts to fray when trying to describe human
experiences for which there are no words).  I've been collecting Mr.
Beebe and Mr. Matteson as exemplars of the art of playing jazz for
some years now, and i recommend this LP (i don't think it has been
transferred to CD yet) unreservedly.  Matteson is one of my
tuba-heros, but i'm not sure i would have liked him personally--he
sounds too driven, too determined to play faster and better than
anyone else.  Would be interesting to know if he ever played in a gig
with Vic Dickenson (that would be fun to watch).
     I have a lot of other versions of "West End Blues", of course,
including you-know-who, but that's what makes this experience so
great.  Someday in the (perhaps not-too-distant) future, we'll have
ALL recorded versions of jazz digitized and instantly available to be
downloaded (for a price, to be sure). How could this not be?  There
will be not only a Jazz channel, but an OKOM channel (there's tons of
material for both already). We'll be able to listen to 352 versions
of "West End Blues", by bands you've never heard of and ones you're
all too familiar with, and the versions we like the most (not "the
best" versions) will be available for pennies (in 1980-dollars).  But
i think we'll still judge Joe Oliver and Bob Scobey and their bands
to be among the best who ever played, which is the same conclusion
many of us come to now.
     So, how good do we have it?

     Dan

P. S. The Löwenbräu and chardonnay expired, so i had to switch to Red
Hook ESB.  Blame it.
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**  Dan Augustine     Austin, Texas     ds.augustine at mail.utexas.edu  **
**    "I don't jog.  If I die I want to be sick."  --  Abe Lemons     **
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