[Dixielandjazz] The Arrogant Woody Allen

[Steve Barbone]

on 12/17/06 2:07 PM, Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis at
larrys.bands at charter.net wrote:

> Steve Wrote: Perhaps some folks don't understand what "Uptown New Orleans
> Jazz" is? Here
> is an approximation:
> 
> 
> Personally I'm not a fan of Woody Allen for other reasons so I have never
> wanted to hear him or his group play.
> 
> Your description of  Uptown  NO Jazz is horrible to say nothing of his
> apparent stage presence.  Now I can describe the worst bands in town.  My
> names for them is nowhere nearly as elegant as "Uptown New Orleans Jazz".
> Now I no longer have to be crude.

I don't disagree with you Larry. But I described exactly what Uptown New
Orleans is. More important, it is THE historical foundation of jazz. A bunch
of players who almost by accident taught themselves to make sounds on their
instruments and play what they felt.

Even if only from a historical point of view, it is very important to the
genre and our understanding of how jazz developed. And if somebody wants to
recreate that sound, that should be OK with us, whether we like it or not.

Perhaps the worst jazz bands around are those who are schooled musicians but
cannot not play jazz. They exist all over the world, thinking that they are
hip. But they sound like, if I may borrow a Kenny Davern expression, "a fart
in a bathtub," saying about as much.

Unlike Judie, when I watched "Wild Man Blues" (numerous times) I did not
hear the 4 squawks out of every five notes from him. Nor when I've seen the
band in NYC, do I hear that. I heard a guy and a band playing what this
music was in the early 1900s, according to anecdotal evidence before
recordings, and what the New Orleans Revival sounded like in the 1940s,
which I heard in NYC.

Squeaks and squawks? Heck, Pee Wee Russell produced all sorts of squeaks and
squawks, but he is acknowledged by many of the top jazz musicians of his era
as a harmonic genius.

Like it or not, that's a choice for each of us and a valid one whichever way
we choose. Bottom line, if there is an audience for what a musician does,
than whatever it is he/she does has merit. Woody has an audience. Many of us
do not.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone