[Dixielandjazz] Re:WHERE DO WE DRAW THE OKOM LINE?

[john petters]

Dan asked
>But now I stop  and wonder: Where do we draw the line between them? By
year? If 
>so, what year?  By some artist?

I would say the best defined dividing line is the birth of BeBop, although
that was a gradual evolution. Prior to Bird and Diz, the rhythm and
harmonies of jazz could be appreciated by joe public and could be danced to.
The fragmented beat of Bop and the more adventurous harmonic construction,
with the very rapid succession of many notes makes BeBop a very different
music. The lines do get blurred. Artie Shaw was a very forward thinking
musician. Woody Herman's Herd was certainly influenced by the boppers. Gene
Krupa's drumming style was almost destroyed when he embraced BeBop and found
he could not do what Max Roach did. 
The cool school was almost a hark back, with the melodic music of Brubeck.
Contrast that with '50s Art Blakey and so called hard bop and the
meanderings of Coltrane and yes we have a very different music from that of
1920s Armstrong. 

Strange how some OKOM players were deeply affected by the new sounds and
others were not. Louis of course was Louis and his sound and approach
remained the same. Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge were messed up for a
while. Lester Young flirted with the new music, but settled back into a
swing groove (listen to Pres & Teddy or Jazz Giants '56).

When I discovered jazz in my teens, I was buying everything in the record
racks that was labelled jazz. So I heard the ODJB, Oliver, Bunk, Goodman,
Parker, Eric Dolphy, Coltrane, Kenton, Ellington, Bessie Smith, Louis, Jelly
etc. Over the years I rejected much of the be-bop and beyond and settled
into a comfort zone of what can broadly be described as pre 1945 swinging
jazz. For me the music has to be hot, has to have a beat and preferably
rooted in the blues. Does that mean I do not like be-bop? No, although there
are many styles of music I would prefer to listen too. Should I, as a
drummer, be constantly moving away from my roots (Dodds, Singleton, Krupa,
Jo Jones, Catlett etc) in order to become modern. I don't think so. Am I
going to change the world and say something new? I doubt it. What I do hope
I can achieve is to constantly improve my craft within the idiom. 

I spent two days last week recording a CD of Johnny Dodds material for a
forthcoming CD. Chez Chesterman, John Wurr, Martin Litton and Annie Hawkins
are some of the finest OKOM musos in the UK. We do not and could not sound
like the Dodds groups, but what I think we did capture was our own
impression of the music. Certainly, I played a lot of snare drum, rims and
chinese cymbal on the session and rather less Hi Hat and ride than I usually
play. There was a purity to the session in that the phrasing was within the
style ie, none of the  be bop runs that characterise many OKOM recordings by
players whose soul really belongs to a later incarnation of jazz. Am I
afraid of being classed a mouldy fygge? Certainly not.
John Petters
Amateur Radio Station G3YPZ
www.traditional-jazz.com

-----Original Message-----
From: dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com
[mailto:dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com] On Behalf Of DWSI at aol.com