[Dixielandjazz] Why Most Music Critics Don't Like OKOM

[john petters]

Interesting article Steve
> Bottom line view seems to be that playing/singing the
old stuff, just like the old musos, is not enough. You must bring something
>new to the party if you expect to be taken seriously by the media critics.

For that I read, get as far away from swinging jazz as quickly as possible
and retreat into the safety net of square rock rhythms or latin wastelands,
where you don't have to swing.

>I love Rene Olmstead's version of
Summertime and have put a similar head arrangement together for Allison
Landon, one of the 13 year old female singers who sits in with us from time
to time. It includes a funky beat plus two modulations, each up a step for
>successive chorus', and we love to do it with her.

Why? Isn't swinging in jazz time enough. There are thousands of bands that
could play Summertime with a funky rock beat - but far fewer that can play
it at ballad tempo and make it swing. Pop stars have been ruining the
American songbook for years - when seasoned jazzers contribute to the demise
of the music, then something is wrong.

> But then, like Phil Woods says, when you are still playing jazz in
your 70s, you are way ahead of the game and able to do things that the kids
>haven't learned yet.

The kid's haven't learned to swing.

> The youngster who best understands this conundrum is Cullum, who wrote a
talky ditty called "Twentysomething" about being a disaffected kid out of
step with his peers - and whose reckless renditions of the canon seem
destined to keep him slightly out of step with jazz orthodoxy as well. He's
not trying to croon tales of failed romance as if he's suffered terrible
trials.

He'd rather be who he apparently is: an impulsive rebel applying the
freewheeling looseness of jazz to modern song structures. This attitude
gives his treatments of standards and rock-era songs by Radiohead and Jimi
Hendrix, as well as his originals, a playful irreverence with none of the
>awkwardness of trying to appear "mature."

I saw a documentary on Culham, who is flavour of the month with the BBC. He
is only an average piano player and a vocalist of very limited ability. His
pitching is poor. He is however very visual, to the extent of bashing the
piano. No problem with that, but I lose interest because he cannot stay with
a swinging rhythm. He is not naturally at home in a swing environment,
relying on the aforementioned rock / latin beats to get himself out of
trouble. As Duke said, "it Don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing".
Diana Krall on the other hand, can do it. Her first CD of Nat Cole material
demonstrated that she was at home with the music, and the piano playing was
good as were the other members of her trio. Seems she has gone down the pop
route with her latest offering. Seems its fashionable to 'do' the jazz
album, but the fact that so many pop artistes fail with this material comes
down to a lack of paying ones dues.

I believe in playing the music in the traditional way. I am not in the least
interested in getting up to date, selling out, or whatever. If my band
sounds old fashioned then that is fine by me. My gigs are rock free zones.

John Petters
Amateur Radio Station G3YPZ
www.traditional-jazz.com