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

[john petters]

Tom said
>So If I have to put it to a rock or Latin Beat to get their attention so be

it, I have a very funky rendition of Summertime that gets airplay all over 
Europe and is always requested at our concerts, and I guarantee you we can
also 
play it as a ballad and make it swing just as good as anybody else can.  The

difference is about 5000 people who paid $30.00 to get into the event Vs  50
in 
>the audience at an OKOM event who paid $5.00 to get in.

But Tom, that is not playing traditional jazz! I make no apology for
insisting on playing THE MUSIC as I believe it was meant to be played. If
that makes me a mouldy fygge, so I'm happy to be one. If you have confidence
in your product, ie, traditional jazz, go out and sell it, don't dilute it
with pop music to make it commercially viable. If however your motivation is
making money, then arguably jazz is the wrong business to be in. I make a
reasonable living putting my money where my mouth is. We play straight ahead
swinging jazz, which stylistically varies depending on what show we are
performing, eg, Friday we did a Hoagy show, Saturday & Sunday,Swinging Down
Memory Lane - The American songbook (not a rock rhythm in sight) and this
coming Saturday we will be playing Walkin' With The King, a spirituals
concert which leans towards Bunk Johnson & George Lewis. All of my shows
give 100 percent jazz and no compromise. I eat or starve on that.

> As to Rock Rhythms and Latin wastelands as they were called by listmate
John 
Petters, try to do it sometime and see if it is as simple as it seems, those

Latin wastelands have so many counter rhythms going at once that it is 
frightening.  I have been fortunate enought o play concerts and on festivals
with some 
of the great ones and I assure you they swing their asses off.

I am not suggesting that rock or latin rhythms are easy, but they do not
swing at all in the sense that I understand swing to mean. A good jazz band
can build and play dynamically (especially if they are acoustic and playing
close to each other and listening). Rock is all at one level and is
rhythmically square. Rock'n'Roll is another matter, and Fats Domino, Bill
Haley and early Presley swing.

We are in a strange position with early jazz because we have recordings by
the greats which other earlier music forms did not have. Without the
phonograph the music may not have survived. As jazz musicians, we either
decide to follow the holy grail or go off and do something else. Fine - but
don't call that something else Dixieland or traditional jazz 'cos it ain't.
John Petters
Amateur Radio Station G3YPZ
www.traditional-jazz.com