[Dixielandjazz] Observations and comments

[Tim Eldred]

Thoughts/comments on various subjects:

On the Headliners and festivals thread, my guess is that some individuals/festivals have not defined what their purpose/intent is.  For Sacramento, what, exactly, is the defined mission of the Festival?  Preserve and present traditional jazz?  Offer a wide variety of music?  Draw xxx number of people to Sacramento to listen to music?  Maria Muldaur has a very good New Orleans album, but neither my wife or I associate her with jazz or with what we think of as the music of the Sacramento Festival.  (And I've been there since the first one--)  I recognize that good people work incredibly hard year-round to make the festival work, but do they all have a common goal/understanding of the purpose?

Bought a Harry Connick concert CD of his big band recorded line at Quebec.  The largest ovation during the concert came after a rousing, roaring Bourbon Street Parade in which Connick just stood and held the mike for the soloists.  The audience appeared to be a mix of ages and everyone enjoyed it.  Connick played a marvelous piano solo on Sweet Georgia Brown, providing his own percussion with feet and hands hitting the piano.  John Allred had a great solo number as well.

At a wedding in South Carolina two weeks ago, there was a overly loud cover band.  Except for those dancing, the rest of the crowd seemed to ignore it (well, as much as they could, with the volume cranked beyond high--).  But, when the band played a cover of Louis Armstrong's Mack the Knife, including a pretty poor Armstrong imitation vocal, the crowd quieted, listened, then responded with the night's loudest applause.  The crowd was mostly in their 20's and 30's and came from all over the country.  Don't know what that means, but it was very interesting to me.

Do I think that there is potential for keeping alive the music this list is devoted to?  Absolutely!!!  But, new fans aren't going to seek out the bands - somehow, there has to be outreach to those people who connect with what we love.  Marketing?  New approaches to music?  (Personally, I love when a band finds a new approach, rhythm or beat to an old song that makes it fresh and alive, instead of the same old, same old with a different face.)  I don't know the answers (altho I can envision a host of possibilities), but hope that this music I love and feel in my soul can keep finding a way to re-invent itself to find an ongoing audience.


Tim Eldred
Roseville, CA
What we play is life.
- Louis Armstrong (1900 - 1971)