[Dixielandjazz]Professional jazz musicians

[TCASHWIGG at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/9/04 12:10:22 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
jpettjazz at btinternet.com writes:

> I decided long ago that this was not for me. If I was to present a quality
> product then the venues would have to pay the right price. I guess Steve and
> Tom would agree as would Mike Durham.
> 

You Bet I agree John:

And I also agree with your fine post earlier about what constitutes a 
Professional Musician/Entertainer.

While I admire and appreciate many of the Great Jazz Educators and members of 
the IAJE organization, and have hired a good number of them over the years in 
my bands and shows, I still find a great fault in many of them who are highly 
compensated Educators teaching youngsters how to do what they themselves have 
never done and most likely never will do.  They are great educators of music, 
but most do not know their ass from a hole in the ground about the business 
of MUSIC and or how to operate a working Bookable Band for enough money to earn 
a living for themselves and the families of the sidemen they employ.

Having a PHD in music or ethnomusicology will not get you booked as a 
professional musician, but a guy or gal who has played their butts off for years in 
funky old barrooms and on concert stages in front of thousands of people for 
ten or twenty years can walk on a major concert stage and kick their musical 
butts every time.

I took four  technically excellent top educated IAJE musicians on my last 
tour with enough Degrees in music to make me a sheepskin overcoat, while they 
played well when called upon for solos and adequatelyu in ensemble work, they 
totally lacked any stage presence whatsoever and did not even know how to do a 
sound check on a major Jazz Festival stage.   These gentlemen consider 
themselves to be Top notch Professionals but could not function in a real touring band, 
and two of them freaked out and went home without their paycheck or return 
airline tickets.  The only explanation was I can't deal with this.

We performed 80  one hour shows in 40 days living in four and five star 
hotels, eating gourmet meals, and had all expenses  and transportation paid,  and 
got paid $100.00  to $300.00 an hour to put up with it.   If anybody on this 
list who is not a recognized Star Attraction Entertainer makes a better 
professional living playing Dixieland music consistently with a ten to fifteen member 
band I would like to meet them so I could improve my operation.  These are 
conditioins that I call professional and successful especially for non star 
players.  And if I forgot to mention it all of them are Black American Musicians 
except me of course, I am the token Honkey, well to be honest a couple of them 
are considered to be HIGH YELLOW, or on the Creole side.

I have been fortunate enough to play great festivals with my show like The 
North Sea Jazz Festival in the Hague, which hires about 200 acts for 15 stages 
over a three day period, Every one of them Top names in Jazz & Blues from 
almost every genre of Jazz, except Dixieland that I could see on our last 
performance there.  We performed between and alongside the greatest Acts in the 
business and the Festival Directors said to me:

"You Boys Brought a Real Breath of Fresh Air to this Festival, and we look 
forward to you coming again."

   We received similar comments from the Fabulous Pori Jazz Festival, in 
Finland and Vitoria Jazz Festival in Spain, and headlined Festivals in Italy on 
the last tour.

And we can't even get a Dixieland or Traditional Jazz Festival in the USA to 
even answer our mail or request a Promotional package.  Why????  Because most 
of them are operated by amateurs who have done more to destroy the marketplace 
for Dixieland and Traditional Jazz than Rock & Roll and Bebop combined.

Does it not seem strange that groups like mine and Steve Barbone's and John 
Petters and Mike Durham, and Bob Craven, and Kurt Bowermaster seem to play 
major venues and High profile shows and festivals while many of our beloved 
listmates are still trying to find any gig that will let a Dixieland band on the 
stage.   I would also venture to say that any one of us could go into any 
reasonable venue between 300 and 3000 capacity and promote our own shows and sell 
enough seats at $15 to $35.00 to make it a very profitable endeavor  and sell 
thirty percent of the audience CDs to take home with them.

No doubt there are others in this category on this great list, but we don't 
hear from them because as Bob Ringwald said they lurk and do not often post.  
Please guys and Gals when you have people like us on this list giving out 
everything we can think of to help those that may not have learned what we have or 
have not been fortunate enough to get to the right places at the right time 
and become more successful, take the time to participate and talk back to us.  
We are accessible and so far have been forth coming in spilling our guts to try 
and help any band or musician we can to at least enjoy some of the success we 
have been fortunate enough to garner for our efforts.

And many of the legendary players on this list and the USA Festival circuit 
can only get booked in Jam session situations as ALL -STARS instead of touring 
with a well rehearsed hot fire in the Belly Band like the one they earned 
their reputation in, that could and would sell tickets enough to pay them what 
they deserve to make as real Professional Musicians.

Perhaps there is a deeper explanation to this burning question of who is a 
Professional Musician and who is not.

Well, folks I learned many years ago about a week after I joined the great 
old American Federation of Musicians, that Musicians and wannabe musicians are a 
dime a dozen, and usually starve to death trying to be the baddest 
technically perfect cat in town, and those who could also Entertain got booked at all 
the better places and made much more money and a living as a Professional 
Entertainer/Musician.   

When you speak to the average person on the streets, about being an 
"Entertainer" they usually say "oh like a musician in a band that's so cool" where can 
we come and "SEE" you?   

So to sum it up, it is not so much the music, but who and how they play it, 
just go to any Dixieland Festival and listen to the bands, it is quite obvious 
to Professional Musicians who is and who is not and usually is expressed in 
the level of performance put on in direct correlation to the response of the 
audience if they have one.

I personally know some musicians who could be termed Professional Musicians 
simply because they have earned a living playing music all their lives, 
although never being successful in any one of the myriad of bands they have played 
with or formed and operated.  These same musicians would not even be allowed to 
sit in with my show, and some of them are good personal friends of mine and 
they have enough professionalism to not ask to sit in.  Several of these guys 
have played almost seven nights a week and a wedding or two every weekend with 
almost every amateur band in California, for any money that was available, that 
however does not make Real Professional by Professional standards.  And not 
one of them could sell two tickets for anybody to see or hear them.

A difficult question to answer by any means.

We keep turning out well trained educated students with music degrees but 
nobody has taught them what it means or how to be  Real Professional.   Nobody 
taught me either, I had to go out in the big old world and learn how to do it 
every step of the way.  I have always made my living in this business and have 
been fortunate beyond all my expectations, but I assure you I had no medical or 
law or accounting degree to fall back on, no safety net, I have made a lot of 
money in this business and I have spent a lot of money and will continue to 
do so till I am gone to play with the big band in the sky, or the big  OKOM 
Band down below.  

So I would conclude that a Really True Professional Musician is one that 
makes Music and the delivery of it, his life long work which if done correctly 
will eventually reward him for his efforts and contributions if he or she is 
lucky and does not give up and self destruct his life and previous efforts on the 
ladder on the way up or even down.  It also helps if they can avoid the 
abandonment of everything they have worked for and keep starting all over again and 
again with three hundred bands.


That's my take on it today folks

Hope it's useful to somebody.

Cheers,

Tom Wiggins