[Dixielandjazz] So who's this Jim Cullum...?

Thu Dec 21 23:37:37 PST 2006

Hi David:

  I am well over fifty and I think maybe you missed the point of my Post 
totally just like most of these fine artists that I discovered when I 
joined this list missed it 20 years ago, they never made it to the 
mainstream Unwashed Public Audiences, NPR is not the mainstream radio 
and TV no matter how much many who watch it may think it is. Neither is 
Prairie Home Companion, another program that I found only recently from 
my brother in law who live in the country.   Yes I know it has been 
around but I never had a reason to go search it out and see what it was 
all about, why because it was not promoted in the mainstream ion 
metropolitan markets sufficiently enough to reach guys like me.   Now 
how the Heck are we ever gonna get the hip hoppers and rappers  heavy 
metal heads, punk rockers, and such indoctrinated to this music ?   
Obviously it is up to forward thinking guys of my generation to find a 
way to communicate this music to them and go out and expose them to it. 

  And I might Add I have been out in the Public and the entertainment 
industry for well over forty years in several genres of the music 
industry, so if all these great guys could be functioning under the 
radar for that long and I never ran into them or heard of them my 
statements ring pretty true:

  Somebody never promoted them properly to the mass audiences but rather 
secreted them away into the semi private social circles of the OKOM 
societies etc. which means they are still not known in the Real WORLD 
OUTSIDE THEIR circle of admirers in this little world.

  So anybody out in the world who never heard of OKOM or had never heard 
or been exposed to a Dixieland Band would have no idea who these guys 
are no matter what they have been doing within the parameters of their 
own little world.

  Case in Point as much as I like and admire him for what he has 
accomplished, I would venture to say that You could Bring all of them 
to San Francisco on the same Bill in a major venue and you could not 
get a 25% audience at normal concert venue ticket prices.

  Especially if you did not advertise them to all the Trad. Jazz 
societies at lower prices, which means that all of the older folks in 
this genre prior to my finding it simply sold it out cheap and crawled 
off into semi obscurity under the Preservation umbrella. Preservation 
Hell you have all been killing it and sending it to a far premature 
Death.

  If all the so called preservation societies would get out and really 
aggressively PROMOTE this music and events like their existence really 
depended upon it they could, but from what I have seen and been told 
and read in the past 20 years it has been just the opposite, status quo 
and diminishing returns have dictated that they do nothing more than 
what they have been doing as their existing audience keeps getting 
older and dying off.

  And I have also read post on this very list about these fine players, 
working and scrounging for chump change gigs while being revered as 
Monster players, and being the cream of the crop of OKOM. So why are 
they not on tours selling out 3000 to 10,000 seat venues at
$30.00 a seat and upwards. I am sorry Dave but Somebody, perhaps a 
whole generation or two of ya'll simply missed the boat on promoting 
this genre of music. And now that another Johnny Come lately Wynton 
Marsallis came out and did it correctly and literally took over the 
scene in NYC what has happened to all the great Monster players, yet so 
many on this list jump immediately out to criticize him and Ken Burns 
for giving this music another kick in the ass and breathing some real 
life back into it so that these guys can continue to find gigs and 
actually work.

  Where are the folks from your generations that own radio and TV 
stations and still actively operate music programming for this music, 
and or have ANY influence over those who do own and operate the 
stations. Where are the venue owners and operators who promote it live ?

  A one hour a week or month station does not constitute Radio 
Programming guys, and what are they doing to attract new listeners, not 
much because they are relegate to miniscule spots and stations that 
almost nobody a=can find or receive anyway. Heck one of my favorite 
stations came out of Alameda KJAZZ and it is gone, and the best one is 
the one List mate Dave Richoux worked at , and I can't even get a 
signal where I live.

  Why aren't these fine monster players performing on the major JAZZ 
FESTIVAL ALL OVER THE WORLD and why have they not been doing it for the 
past 20 years. well for one reason Jim Cullum has been tied down to a 
STEADY gig at Riverwalk, a good thing yes but not without it's 
consequences of which we are now discussing. And please don't anybody 
get me wrong about what I am saying here, I am not disrespecting Jim 
Cullum or his decision to do it his way. So many of the older guys OF 
THE PREVIOUS DECADES dreamed of getting a STEADY GIG and not having to 
travel and play to a different audience every night live out of a 
suitcase etc. However most of the bands with real fire in the belly and 
touring as lean mean musical machines are long gone in this genre.

  Many have actually become complacent and boring doing the same old 
stuff night after night to the same audience in many cases, people are 
fickle at best and move from club to club to club in search of 
something new. Being a monster player does not guarantee that they will 
be so loyal as to come out night after night to spend money to see and 
hear you, hence the need to constantly promote to new people and 
acquire new audience members to replace them and keep the cash 
registers ringing. Other wise the joints empty and the band gets laid 
off again and again and goes form one joint to another as the OKOM 
scene continues to shrink and get harder and harder for them to even 
eek out a living as a professional musician.

  Trust me David I am on everybody's side here, just trying to motivate 
everyone to do more and more before it is indeed too late and guys who 
have caught the spirit of the music from my generation get burned out 
and give up the cause to further the genre.

I close by saying in a respectful way that all of these fine players 
are regionally popular acts, but outside their circle are still 
relatively unknown except to an astute OKOM festival circuit crowd, 
which is basically the same people traveling over and over in semi or 
full retirement in a loosely knitted social club getting together to 
hear their favorite and often ONLY kind of music.

 Cheers,

 Tom

 -----Original Message-----
 From: postmaster at fountainsquareramblers.org
 To: dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
 Sent: Thu, 21 Dec 2006 7:25 PM
 Subject: [Dixielandjazz] So who's this Jim Cullum...?

 Tom Wiggins wrote:

 > As an admittedly "Johnny Come lately" to this genre of music I had
 > never heard of Jim Cullum, Jim Beebe, Charlie Hooks, Kenny Davern, Ed
 > Polcer, Johnny Varro, Jim Kash, Vince Giardono, Tom Saunders, Duke
 > Heiteger, and countless others, why? Because they were hidden from
 > the Public Eye and ear if indeed they were ever there in the first
 > place, outside their hometowns or Trad. Jazz Society gigs.

  Tom, I agree with a lot that you¹ve said in recent posts but I¹ve just 
got
  to say that Jim Cullum and his terrific trad band is and has appeared 
weekly
  on NPR or PRI with his Riverwalk series from the Landing at San 
Antonio,
  probably for the last 20 years. Vince Giordano & the Nighthawks 
Orchestra
  are a fixture on the east coast OKOM scene, and Vince guests 
frequently on
 bass sax with the Shoe Band on Prairie Home Companion and was the music
  director for a couple of recent films, including ³The Aviator². He was 
also

  spotlighted in the Sunday NY Times about 4 months ago. Duke Heitger, 
the
  youngest of these players, reached a national audience with the 
Squirrel Nut
  Zippers retro-jazz band (if you¹re over 50 you may not have heard of 
them)
  and is out there nationally and internationally as a terrific jazzer 
out of
 the New Orleans tradition, etc. If you haven¹t heard of these monster
  players, it¹s not because they are hiding under a rock or failing to 
find an
 audience or not being excellent OKOM jazz ambassadors in the current
  cultural scene. Perhaps you should get out a little more, or at least 
turn
  your radio on over their in the Bay Area. A lot of good OKOM jazz has 
been
 going down since Turk Murphy stomped Earthquake McGoon¹s.....

 Fuerte y afinado,
 David Dustin
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