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

[mophandl]

Pat writes:

 

"Draw the line????  Why does there have to be a line?  Here we go
again...the classifiers, pigeon holers and the "knowledgeable" experts
will all now come out and give us their version of where "the lines" are
drawn....Each of them totally agreeing with each other....yeah, right.

Of course, none of us discriminating jazz lovers want to admit to liking
something that was deemed to be something other than the "expert's" idea
of true jazz.

A question:....If you really liked Artie Shaw, and the "knowledgeable
experts" all agreed that true jazz did not include Artie Shaw, would you
stop liking Artie Shaw, or just stop admitting that you like him??"

I'm definitely a line-drawer. I believe there must be a line. The line
is WWII. It's not about what you like, it's about being able to talk
about the music intelligently. 

The pre-war and post-war realities were literally worlds apart both
economically and socially, and as you would expect, pop music and esp.
jazz reflected this. During the war, most bop did not get recorded, so
when the it finally did get on record after 1945, it seemed like a
sudden seismic shift, but bop had in fact been developing steadily
throughout the war years unrecorded. 

But early boppers still swung. Riverwalk even ventured out into the
post-war jazz area by producing a show about Zoot Sims and Al Cohn
starring tenor saxophonists Harry Allen and Ron Hockett. Here's a quote
from Jay McShann that sums it up nicely for me:

"They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I've heard a
lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn't swinging." 

Players like Roy Eldridge, Illinois Jacquet, Charlie Shavers, Clark
Terry, etc. were somewhere in between. I like to call them Swing to Bop
after a quintet that appeared for years on upper Broadway in NY (led by
Frank Wess and included other Basieites). 

NOT to draw a line between this kind of jazz and that played by Ornette
Coleman, later Miles Davis, and John Coltrane is being just plain silly.

Don Mopsick
Riverwalk Webmaster and Bass Driver
www.riverwalk.org
www.landing.com