[Dixielandjazz] Kids & Preservation Hall Jazz Band

[Steve barbone]

The below is excerpted from "Keynotes" the publication of the Pennsylvania
Jazz Society, August 2005. Remembrance of Ted Hagios about a trip to see
PHJB in NYC in the 1970s.

"About eight of us ventured to 'Fillmore East', a notorious rock venue ...to
hear Preservation Hall, which was shockingly on the same bill with 3 rock
bands, one of them the English 'Spooky Tooth' band. . .

I was certain that the wild kids would drive our guys, with their cornball
music, right off the stage. Fillmore East was a spectacle indeed; it was
bedlam. You could get high just inhaling the atmosphere. We were the only
antiquarians in sight. . .

(after 2 rock groups) Fearing the worst, PHJB came on. It was the old line
up, most now gone. De De Pierce, Ma Pierce, Willie Humphries, Cie Frazier,
Jim Robinson. Eight bars into the first gutbucket down home New Orleans tune
the mob quieted, started to writhe with the beat, and lo and behold, calmed
down. Shockingly the applause was thunderous, and we old folks began to feel
comfortable, thinking perhaps there's hope for these kids after all.

Humphries did his classic clarinet school figures in the 'High Society'
lead,. . . The house was ecstatic. When the set was over the kids stormed
the stage and wouldn't let PHJB off the stand. They kept Spooky Tooth from
coming on. The melee lasted 50 minutes!!. . . Indeed, the music was great.

It don't get more TRAD than that! It don't get no better that that."

- Ted Hagios

A lesson? Probably, for those of us willing enough to learn, at our advanced
ages and hard arteries. It is still like that with gut bucket, visceral jazz
and kids who want to be part of the show. Most of us haven't yet discovered
the real, raw, power of "Trad" jazz.

Cheers,
Steve