[Dixielandjazz] NEW TUNES FOR OKOM?

[LARRY'S Signs and Large Format Printing]

Up until 1960 or so rock 'n roll swung.  Later pop music didn't swing using
a literal reading of the rhythms that were written.  Older musicians would
look at a string of eighths and swing them while after the 60's the younger
musician would play them as written unless told different.  This influenced
pop music in that the kids didn't swing any longer.  The worst thing a band
leader could say about a band or tune is that it didn't swing.  That's why I
think that most music today really can't be adapted very well to Dixie or
swing is that it just doesn't swing.  Take a tune like the theme from
Titanic.  You could swing it but it would just kill the tune.  Listening to
today's kids play swing is often rather quaint.

While most of us take swing for granted it really isn't that easy of a
concept.  Most of the concept of swing isn't written, you have to know how
to play it.   Take for example accenting the second and fourth eighth notes
in a pattern or in Dixie accenting the quarter in an eighth quarter eighth
pattern.  Getting young musicians to play it is almost like pulling teeth.
When you get them to do it it's wooden and then only counts for the tune
that they are immediately playing with almost no transfer.

Let's face it the kids hear music differently than we did and the stuff they
write just won't work any more than adapting Bach or Mozart to swing or
rock.

Larry Walton
St. Louis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve barbone" <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
To: "john petters" <johnpetters at tiscali.co.uk>; "DJML"
<dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 7:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] NEW TUNES FOR OKOM?


> on 6/17/05 3:22 PM, john petters at johnpetters at tiscali.co.uk wrote:
>
> > I've got no problem with new songs IF you play them in a dixieland or
swing
> > style. The biggest problem is that a lot of recent songs lack the
quality of
> > the great American songbook. Also many do not adapt to a 4/4 swinging
> > rhythm.
>
> I'm with you John. so we're looking for the newer tunes that do adapt. I
> expect there must be at least 100 out there.
>
> > When a jazz band starts to play with a rock beat, then it becomes
> > something different and you might as well ditch the brass front line and
get
> > a set of electric guitars. Jazz has to swing for me.
>
> Me too. Of course quite a few of those old obscure tunes so popular with
the
> OKOM jazz literati (all 100 of them), don't swing either.
>
> No point playing Rock beat & Jazz unless you are Miles Davis, or one of
> those new wave smooth jazzers. :-) VBG.
>
> > Agree, some Beatle
> > tunes swing, Michelle for example, When I'm 64 etc. But try and get the
> > Spice Girls repertoire to work. Give me Snake Rag or Stockyard Strut
anyday.
> > Have a good weekend everybody.
>
> We do both of those Beatle songs. Agree about Spice girls, but then I have
> never heard them do any more than 2 or 3 bars before I tune them out. Only
> play Stockyard and Snake as a sideman with Tex Wyndham's Red Lions now.
> Because of Barbone Street's audience, we've discarded most of the older
> tunes/Rags except for special situations. Of course, we do play the
warhorse
> tunes, but they are "new" to our audience and among the most swinging 4/4
> tunes out there.
>
> A point I would make (60 years after Max Kaminsky did the first time), is
> that it is time for the MUSICIANS AND DANCERS to take the music back. Away
> from the critics, would be critics, the record companies, the art lovers
and
> the blue hairs etc., that would tell us what Jazz is, what instruments
> should be used to play it, and what songs should be played.
>
> Case in Point. We did "If I were a Bell" and "Fly Me To The Moon" during a
> set in a nightclub. Tunes swing their butts off. Blue haired lady about 75
> comes up to me after the tunes with a look of great distaste on her face
and
> says: "Humph, I didn't know THOSE were jazz."
>
> Like Mike Vax often says, when that happened I knew the band was also
> swinging its butt off. ;-) VBG
>
> Everybody else in the joint just LOVED them. Following set we played and I
> sang "Ain't She Sweet" to the old gal and she just beamed. She KNEW that
was
> jazz.
>
> Cheers,
> Steve
>
>
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