[Dixielandjazz] Re: Military bands and OKOM

[LARRY'S Signs and Large Format Printing]

You know I'm not so sure that account is accurate.  Just how many bands did
they have? Considering the number of troops sent to Cuba I don't think they
had that many bands.  The typical band wasn't very large judging from the
photos I've seen.  Usually around 30 pcs if that many.  Multiply that times
six (maybe six bands) and assuming that they all dumped their instruments
when they hit port.  I really don't think that this constituted a flood of
instruments.  Hundreds is plural so assuming that if there were 200
instruments available that would mean that the six entire bands hocked their
instruments when they hit New Orleans and that they were after coming back
on the troop ships in any sort of serviceable condition.  This  assumes that
these military musicians would not have been required to turn them back in
when they got out and also assumes that none of them decided to take their
horns home with them and become professional themselves or hang them on the
wall.

There is also an interesting historical fact about that war.  There was a
military band that took a direct hit killing almost all of them so I guess
that we should deduct at least one of the bands that were flooding New
Orleans with their instruments.

I think that it would be reasonable to question that assumption but at the
same time allow that some instruments may have gotten into street musicians
hands in this manner.  This is an easy leap to make to explain the source of
instruments but I think that there must have been other sources of
instruments available.

We should consider theft as a viable source of instruments, estates of
musicians and instruments left over from the civil war.  It's not a stretch
to think that instruments left over from the civil war might still be
serviceable.  If an instrument isn't damaged they have an almost unlimited
life.  We are also talking about the "bottom" of society and theft is a very
real possibility in this equation and is probably more viable than the
Spanish American War instrument theory.  Theft also casts a politically
incorrect non romantic version of how things might have happened though.  I
had an instrument stolen once so it does happen.

Larry Walton -- St. Louis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Haesler" <bhaesler at bigpond.net.au>
To: "David Richoux" <tubaman at tubatoast.com>; "dixieland jazz mail list"
<dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>; "Luis Daniel Flores" <luda at arnet.com.ar>
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 7:10 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Re: Military bands and OKOM


> "Big Band Jazz, according to one historian, had its start in New Orleans
in
> 1898 at the end of the Spanish-American war. Military bands returned to
the
> port to decommission, flooding the city with used band instruments. And
> African-Americans interested in music quickly bought up hundreds of these
> instruments and quickly began to form bands. Starting from square one,
> aspiring African-American musicians taught themselves to play."
> Bob Thomas (1994). From "Music of London" web site.
>
> Dear Luis and Dave,
> An intriguing topic, touched on frequently by jazz historians but not yet,
> to my knowledge, the subject of a dedicated book.
> Dr Fred Spencer, Dan Hardie, Charlie Suhor - any information?
> Jazz history books, from Frederic Ramsay, Jr and Charles Edward Smith's
> "Jazzmen"  (1939), Rudi Blesh's "Shining Trumpets" (1946) through to
Richard
> Knowles' "Fallen Heroes (1996) and Daniel Hardie's "The Loudest Trumpet"
> (2000), touch on the subject.
> However, the historical connection between military bands, brass bands and
> jazz (from its beginnings to the present) requires a book, rather than an
> essay, based on extensive new and original research.
> Probably best left to a non jazz-influenced researcher.
> An ideal thesis for a PhD.
> Kind regards,
> Bill.
>
>
>
>
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