[Dixielandjazz] What is "Trad Jazz"?

[Graham Martin]

Ivor Jones in Portugal said in part:

["In retrospect, and maybe it was the company I kept, most of the bands in our 'circle' venerated George Lewis above all, and played what we thought was 'New Orleans Jazz'. I have the feeling, sorry John Ding, that it was a simpler (not to mean, inferior) kind of jazz, and only the top pros could handle the likes of the original New Orleans masters like Jelly. Having played in two 'New Orleans Jazz Bands', one here in Portugal I am still confused by the nomenclature 'New Orleans Jazz' as if Armstrong, Dodds, Morton et al never existed.  So what does the term 'New Orleans Jazz' mean? Was it just a British 'trad' term? What do the Americans mean by New Orleans Jazz? The same or something different?"]

G'day Ivor,

You have opened up another huge can of worms here and, just by coincidence; one I was discussing offline recently with Tom Wiggins. I am somewhat sympathetic to Tom's viewpoint but I will leave him to explain it, if he wishes.

In one of my replies to Tom, I said, "It has always seemed a little unfair to me that a group of mainly Europeans had the bloody cheek to purloin the name of New Orleans to describe a style of jazz that probably only represents a minute tasting of the musical flavour of that city. But unfortunately New Orleans, even America, long ago lost control of what happens to the music they invented. Like I said, blame Ken Colyer, who BTW did actually visit and play with the ageing greats, And probably blame writer William Russell. Who knows what he and his associates discovered when they went searching for the origins of New Orleans Jazz and revived Bunk Johnson?

So 'yes', I believe 'New Orleans Jazz' is just another British 'Trad' term but a sub genre that, once again, has a huge number devotees all round the world - including some very good old mates of mine back in the old dart. It even has devotees in America but I do not think they call it NOJ (the abbreviation) - although an American listmate was recently 'thinking' of using the name for his band and asked our opinion. There general opinion was that it was okay providing they played New Orleans Jazz. Somehow I don't think he would have understood that response.

So for those of you who still do not understand, I would refer you to the following website which will explain it all. As I understand the situation (hushed whisper!), Ken is still directing New Orleans Jazz activities these days from another place:

http://www.kencolyertrust.org/index2.html

Quoting this time from one of my other favourite reference books, "Bluff you Way in Jazz", they say of New Orleans Jazz (NOJ):

"Once the original New Orleans jazz musicians had blown themselves out and eventually expired, there was nothing else to be done except produce faithful imitations. This was rarely attempted by young black musicians, who had turned to much more cerebral things (see Minton's), but generally by a breed of bucolic white musicians whose main affinity with the originals was that they could knock back a pint or two. They quickly laid on to the principles and sought out what battered cornets, tubas and banjos there were around, poured several pints of beer into the piano, found out that B flat was just a bit to the left of middle-C, of off they went. The American ones had fine names like the Yerba Buena Jazz Band and the State Street Stompers while the British ones, lacking these affiliations but sensing that rivers were essential to jazz concocted names like the Crane River Jazz Band and the Kennett and Avon Canal Footwarmers."

Please do not take the above too seriously; just look at the title of the book, but it is not to far from the truth. Of course I don't think that, even thought the Yerba Buena set out to play like King Oliver, they ever had the 'neck' to call themselves a 'New Orleans' jazz band - the Poms, of whom I am one, reserved that stance for themselves.

Mention of the Yerba Buena brings me to the email from Bob Ringwald where he said:

[" I do know that Turk Murphy did not like the word Dixieland.  He used the 
term Traditional Jazz.  When he started using that term, I don't know."]

That is very interesting Bob, because I had always suspected we Poms were not really the inventors of the expression and it would be great if somebody could maybe date his use of it. I will say that Turk was not a huge influence on British jazz because, of course, we had our own parallel movement going on. Actually, I have found that San Francisco Jazz (sometimes called West Coast Jazz) was more of an influence on Aussie jazz.

(A final note that has nothing to do with the subject of this post. I have noticed that my emails get published in the digest (which is what I take) with double line spacing between the paragraphs - that is a bit tedious and probably because I use an extra line between paragraphs. So in this email I have eliminated those extra lines to see if I can make my emails look like everyone else's)

 

Best,

 

Grah


Graham Martin
Email: grahmartin at bigpond.com
Website: http://tromjazz.netfirms.com
REDLAND BAY
Queensland, AUSTRALIA