[Dixielandjazz] "Sixty Women Rip Mask Off Vice"

[Steve barbone]

Funny how we sedate old folks excoriate the young for their likes and
dislikes in  music and sex.

Lets go back to the dawn of jazz popularity. April 1916

Background was that drummer Johnny Stein had formed a band consisting of 5
New Orleans musicians. The others were; Henry Ragas, piano; Yellow Nunez,
clarinet; Eddy Edwards, trombone and Nick LaRocca, cornet. They were playing
at the new Schiller Cabaret in Chicago.

The Chicago Herald reported a visit to that joint by 60 women of the
Anti-Saloon League. Purpose? Expose the evils of alcohol.

 - - begin snip -
"Sixty Women Rip Mask Off Vice" - Chicago Herald.

A line of taxicabs radiated from the Schiller to the east, west, north and
south. In front of the doors a crowd of people fought for admission. A
perspiring doorman held them back. "Can't come in," he shouted. "We're
crowded to capacity." Once inside it was impossible for anyone to be heard.
The shriek of women's drunken laughter rivaled the blatant scream of the
imported New Orleans Jass Band, which never seemed to stop playing. Men and
women sat, arms around each other, singing, shouting, making the night
hideous, while their unfortunate brethren and sisters fought in vain to join
them.
 - - end snip - 

As you might imagine, this "publicity" caused a sensation and doubled the
crowds of people trying to get into the joint.

LaRocca later said: "Women stood up on the dance floor, doing wild dances.
They had to pull them off . . . The more they would carry on the better we
would play.  .  . The crowd would yell give us more jass. I can still see
these women who would try and put on a show . . . raise their dresses above
their knees and carry on, men shrieking and everybody having a good time."

There are many more incidents like this one from the early days. So, if we
want to go back and hear it like it was, we damn well better think about all
those "YOUNG" people who adored what we now call OKOM and "CARRIED ON". We
damn well better realize that it was appeal to the GUT that made the music
popular in the first place. We better damn well realize that it was those
damn fool "KIDS" who made this music popular. Those same kids, whose musical
taste, we want so badly to revile today. Deja Vu?

It is time to realize that these "kids" were our grandparents. Yep, just a
bunch of wild, sexy kids. Do not pity them. Pity those of us who have tried
to hijack the music and re-form it (via revisionism) into something it never
was. "Sophisticated Art" for listening, and declaiming pretentiously about.

Yep, time flies and many of us old farts have atrophied. Now that too is a
great pity.

Cheers,
Steve