[Dixielandjazz] Ride Cymbals

[Steve barbone]

Dear Fred et al.

Thanks for the info. Will buy it. Along those lines I remember Krupa in the
Early 50s in NYC playing a lot of "ride" behind guys like Charlie Ventura,
Marty and Teddy Napoleon et al.

Also, somewhere have a tape of Davison, Armstrong, Baby Dodds et al from a
radio broadcast in NYC. Dodds definitely playing some ride, along with his
great accents here and there. Swings like crazy.

Spargo (Sparbaro) doing quite a bit of ride in his days at Nick's and
teaching "ride" to his young drummer students.

Sometimes we loose sight of the changes that occur in styles and freeze the
action by virtue of our own likes, dislikes. Very self centered way to hear
the music especially if we try and convince others that only our way is
"right", or "trad", or whatever.

If Krupa, Sparbaro and Dodds graduated to ride, who are we to say as a
generality that it's wrong, or not trad?

That's what Max Kaminsky bitched about publicly 50 years ago when he said:

"Jazz no longer belonged to the musicians and the dancers. It was taken over
lock, stock and barrel by the fans, the record collectors, the amateur
critics,  . . . the lecturers, the writers . . . (they) very nearly snuffed
the life out of it."

Hey, is he talking about us?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

on 9/9/04 11:51 AM, Fred Spencer at drjz at bealenet.com wrote:

> Dear Steve et al.,
> With a further apology for pedantry, but I am a "bookaholic", "The Cymbals
> Book" by Hugo Pinksterboer contains two pages of a ten page chapter on
> "History", about ride cymbals, and says that Dave Tough and Gene Krupa
> played a distinct part in its use, which practically did not occur until
> after 1945. This is an extraordinary book. For more details, "Google" the
> author.