[Dixielandjazz] Re: The Great Revival

[Brian Towers]

Nice post Steve Barbone  but I think we need to clarify what most of us mean
by the term "Revival"   You and I seem to differ on this.

I agree that traditional styled jazz has always been there and always been
played in the USA and Europe.  However it was a revival of INTEREST in
the1940's and 1950's - yes a revival of interest whereby the kids adopted as
popular music.  In the U.K. trad' jazz numbers were reaching the top of the
hit parade -  tunes like "Midnight In Moscow" "Stranger On the Shore"  "Bad
Penny Blues" etc were the singles being bought in great quantities and
numbered among the top of the pops.  Many of the kids buying "hip hop or
rap" today would have been buying Humph, Barber,Bilk or Ball in those days .
This is what I personally mean by "Revival"
At weekends teenagers would camp out in tents or sleep rough in country
estates like Beaulieu, to attend festivals with headliners like "Acker Bilk"
, "Chris Barber",  Kenny Ball". We even had riots!
This is what I mean by "REVIVAL"  It became a cult, almost, which embraced
the way one dressed, the way one spoke, the way one danced or jived etc.
Even the BBC featured it and you could hear featured in places like the
Albert Hall or the Festival Hall.    The 1940's and 1950's was the time of
jazz revival because, all of a sudden  the "man in the street" , the average
Joe or Judy, knew what it was and could even name a trad' band  -this was an
amazing happening.  It was a REVIVAL for jazz.    The young generation found
traditional jazz, besides being intellectually stimulating and rich in
historic interest,  was also fun, lively, had a melody and you could dance
to it.  For them it was new and exciting.
Swing music and the big bands of the 1930's had become "ho hum" to them and
the new pseudo-intellectual music under the mystical title of bebop was just
an irritating and pretentious noise - totally incomprehensible to the vast
majority.
There was always good jazz in the UK - in the 1920's and the 1930's and in
the war years..  Players like trombonist George Chisholm or saxists like
Freddy Gardener, pro's playing populasr music in dance bands for a living,
knew how to rip off the hot stuff we call Dixieland, when they played in
small groups for their own pleasure.   The masses were into swing and
dancing was the popular thing.  The true jazz was there and kept alive by a
smallish group of devotee fans, musicians, collectors, rhythm clubs etc but
it was not big time, just a tiny dedicated minority.   It swept the world as
popular music in the1950's, having had its re-birth of popular interest in
the 1940's, thanks to the likes of Bunk Johnson, Turk Murphy, George Webb,
Humphrey Lyttleton, Sidney Bechet, Graham Bell, Claude Luter, Kid Ory,
George Lewis etc who showed a new generation that jazz could be fun and
entertaining - great days!
Sorry to ramble on......
Brian Towers
Toronto

P.S. Does the jazz of Fats Waller; 1920's Ellington, Benny Moten, Earl
Hines, Art Tatum, James P Johnson, or the ragtime of Joplin, Lamb, Scott etc
etc   all fall under your umbrella term of dixieland?   Using the term
"dixieland" to embrace all the old jazz is a bit daft, as well as confusing,
in my opinion but then all the old DJML members will know that already!
The great trail blazer himself - Turk Murphy,  fervently denied that his
music was "dixieland" and I believe he was the first to coin the expression
'trad?

Steve wrote (small snip)
> My two cents is that here in the Eastern USA, there was no "Great
Revival." Because Dixieland, or Trad Jazz never died here. By way of
explanation, let me define "Dixieland" as ALL styles of
> early jazz (Buddy Bolden et. al., through the current style that our band
plays, "Modern
> Dixieland".
>
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone