[Dixielandjazz] Ye Olde Cornets vs Lamps

[Bob Romans]

This is mainly for the cornet players on the list...there's a mention of Dixieland being played at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair...oops! I don't THINK so...also the writer of the article doesn't know how to spell CORNET....(CORONET), and Dixieland before Ragtime??
This whole thing started when I forwarded the story to the TPIN that Jim Cullum wrote about cornets/lamps...
Where would we all be with out GOOGLE???
Bob Romans
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Art Ibach 
To: Bob Romans 
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 7:23 AM
Subject: Re: Ye Olde Cornets vs Lamps




    Thanks for sending me YOUR post...The "Cornet Compendium" is GREAT!!
    I would love to meet Rick Schwartz sometime! What a "Magnificent Obsession" he embarked on!
    Warm regards,
    Bob Romans
    Cell Block 7 Jazz Band
    1617 Lakeshore Dr.
    Lodi, Ca. 95242
    209-339-4676
    www.cellblockseven2002.net
    Cell 209-747-1148
    Because I play trumpet, I envy no one.
    """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
    Bob,
    In addition to the "Cornet Compendium", I'm also interested in his 1904 St. Louis World's Fair reearch project. Here's a little write-up about what that contains:
    Art
      
    When we think of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, we conjure up images ranging from children eating ice cream cones and riding the giant Ferris wheel to the movie images of Judy Garland singing "Meet Me in St. Louis" and uttering the now-famous last line: "I can't believe it. Right here where we live. Right here in St. Louis!" 

    But for Richard Schwartz, a musician, music historian, and scholar on concert and brass bands, no imagined scene holds quite as much pull or charm as May 7, 1904. 

    "On that particular day practically all the major cornet soloists played something, spread out throughout the day with different bands," says Schwartz, a native St. Louisan who is now an associate professor of music at Virginia State University. "Opening day might be the obvious favorite choice for everybody else, but the 7th of May actually choked me up when I saw the official program for the day—when I saw all those great names in print." 

    Schwartz can quickly rattle off the names of those musicians, names perhaps forgotten by all but their families, names like Llewellyn, Clarke, Rogers, Bellstedt, and Kryl. In fact, given a little time Schwartz could tell you the name of every band as well as every piece of music—more than 12,000 compositions—that was performed during the Fair's 184-day run. He wrote the book on it. 

    Schwartz spent more than three years researching and compiling Bands at the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904: Information, Photographs and Database, a highly documented work that contains more than 450 pages of information about the bands and music at the St. Louis World's Fair, including some rare color photos. Luckily, he didn't have to work alone. His collaborator on the project is his wife, Iris J. Schwartz, also a St. Louis native and also a musician who is a performer on the flute and piccolo. She also is the conductor of several wind ensembles in the Richmond, Virginia, area where the couple resides. 

    The book, completed to coincide with the centennial of the Fair this year, even includes specifics about soloists, instruments, and the place, date, and time of the performances. It has already been picked up by a number of research libraries, and Schwartz has received inquiries from band directors across the country. 

    "Concert and brass bands were the central vehicle for music at the Fair," says Schwartz, a clarinetist and coronetist who attended graduate school at Washington University before beginning his 30-year career as a performer, composer, arranger, conductor, soloist, and scholar. "Of the approximately $450,000 budgeted for music for the Fair, the bands were provided with 60 percent of that money, which was an incredible amount of money for that time period." 

    Music at the Fair ran the gamut of musical influences, ranging from the European compositions of Wagner and Liszt to popular American music that included Sousa marches, Dixieland, cakewalks, and even a few of the then-newfangled ragtime pieces by the likes of Scott Joplin. The job of compiling a near-definitive account of all the music had never been attempted, and Richard and Iris Schwartz liked that kind of challenge. 

    "We wanted to unearth the names of the lesser-known bands and rediscover the names of musicians who played there, so their families could rediscover a part of their own family history," says Schwartz. "We wanted to do service and justice to all the great band musicians who were present at the Fair." 

    Mission accomplished. 

    —Steve Givens 





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