[Dixielandjazz] Noses in Charts - Listening - Jazz

[David Richoux]

On Sep 3, 2004, at 8:40 PM, barbonestreet at earthlink.net wrote:

> snip

All of this talk about the improv concept is great - but when the 
result of every song is the same damn thing of Head, trumpet solo, sax 
solo, t-bone solo, piano solo, guitar/banjo solo, bass solo, drum goes 
crazy and back to the head to the out for every song makes me want to 
quit! (I know we have had this topic before, but it still happens 
whenever "all-stars" meet or too many substitutes are in the group..)

Several of the bands I have been in have worked (tightly or loosely) 
either from the Lu Watters charts or other "San Francisco Jazz" books. 
A lot of the bands in this area have used the Watters, Murphy, and Ted 
Shafer arrangements books but after a while they all sort of mush 
together and I want to go find some Country Western band to play tuba 
with!


Anyway, for the last 20 years or so the printed arrangements we have in 
"And That's Jazz" are very simple outlines - how do we think the song 
should go between verse, chorus, special breaks or introductions, 
vocals, solos or duets, who might be backing a solo, things like that. 
Key changes and special tricks are noted! We don't always stick to the 
outline (either due to leader memory failure or hoards of dancers 
demanding another 3 times around) but at least we have a rough idea of 
how the songs will progress. We work all of this out in rehearsal and 
often modify the outline after a few public performances. This works 
for us, regardless of the style of song - rag, march, New Orleans 
stomp, Chicago "Dixie" or whatever. Usually we do not have written 
notes or chord symbols - just something like a line saying "B times 1 
t-bone with tenor sax back-up to the bridge, vocal takes it out, 4 bar 
ending" and that is enough for us to make it all work.
We don't have to keep looking at the book while we are playing - it is 
just a guideline!

And when somebody requests a song that is not in our book we can still 
usually do a damn good version, even if half of us never heard of it 
before ;-)

Dave Richoux