[Dixielandjazz] Charlie Parker

[Jazzjerry at aol.com]

In a message dated 31/1/04 9:43:48 pm, barbonestreet at earthlink.net writes:


> There you go again taking a line out of who knows where and adding your
> petty vitriol to it. What on earth are you talking about? Did I make
> such a claim or do you have Alzheimer's? ;-)
> 

Steve,

The line was taken from your message earlier and I copy below the message as 
it replied to one of Mike Durham's.

"Of course. Ken Colyer and your band are those "couple of exceptions" that I
mention below. Than goodness he listened. Pity some others didn't."

You also previously stated in a message:-

"Perhaps if UK trad musos had listened to more Parker, the world would have
avoided all that "awful British Trad" (only kidding, VBG ;-), not including
the couple of good bands)"

These comments strike me as coming from someone who has an opinion to express 
based on a wide knowledge. If no such extensive knowledge exists then the 
opinion is somewhat tainted.

Over the past 40 years or so I have heard literally hundreds of bands live on 
on disc composed of British musicians playing in the style of what you 
Americans refer to as Dixieland and we refer to here as traditional   jazz and 
whilst during that time I have heard some pretty dire bands the vast majority have 
been composed of musicians who had a genuine love of the music, studied it, 
listened to many of the 'historic' players and performed either live or on 
record to the best of their ability. I have number of these musicians on my books 
as customers and I can assure you that their purchases of recordings generally 
reflect a wide jazz taste although I have not sold them too many copies of the 
latest Sun Ra karoake album!

I may not be able to play an instrument and I have not claimed to be an 
expert on 'British Trad' but if a comparison had to be made I would suggest that I 
had a more expert knowledge on the subject than your good self.

Cheers,

Jerry
Norwich,
U.K.