[Dixielandjazz] Do records capture greatness?

[Steve barbone]

on 6/11/05 12:26 PM, Burt Wilson at futurecon at earthlink.net wrote:

> Pardon the plug, but on the DVD I made of Anne Davison, "Wild Bill's
> Woman," there is a clip of Bill (rare) doing an interview with a Danish TV
> host in the club where Bill played. In the interview, Bill declares that
> the musicians never did their best work on recordings because of the
> pressure to get it right. He also talks about the fact that most recording
> sessions were at 8:00 AM. "What are ya gonna do." Bill exclaims, "you play
> until 4:00 AM, are you gonna sleep until it's time to go to the studio?.
> No. You just have a few shots of scotch and and stay up till it's time to
> go play. At least we were feeling happy. Well, at least I was!"

I'm with you Bert. Much of the recorded stuff was made at a time when the
musos were tired from gigging all night. And as WBD implied; "the pressure
to get it right" inhibits CREATIVITY. So the individual musos rely more on
tried and true licks/patterns that they know will work, rather than create
and thereby risk a "mistake".

That mind set occurs today with most of us who record these days, erasing
mistakes, dubbing in correct notes etc., etc. I prefer to record exactly
what we played, warts and all because that's what we did, not what we wanted
to do in a "perfect world". Why not dub and fake the whole CD and have "The
World's Greatest Jazz Band"?

Some of the live recordings are truly magnificent. Like that Canada session
with Bird, Dizzy, Powell, Mingus & Roach at Massey Hall. Stunning
performance by all. You can still get either version, the one with the
overdubbed bass of Mingus, and the original without the over dub. To me, the
original sounds a whole lot better.

IMO, that album is much better "JAZZ" than all of the studio work done by
all of them.

CREATIVITY at it's finest.

I guess it depends upon what the listener wants to hear. Perfection, or
Creativity. I prefer to try and get inside the mind of the players, listen
for creativity and try to understand their creative processes. So their
mistakes, reed squeaks, clams, etc., don't bother me at all.

Even Artie Shaw (Mr. Perfection himself) has been quoted as saying something
like; (paraphrase) if a jazz player doesn't make a mistake here and there,
he isn't trying hard enough. AMEN.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone