[Dixielandjazz] Relevant Dixieland

[Steve Barbone]

Gluetje1 at aol.com at Gluetje1 at aol.com wrote:

And by the way, just went to Tower Records to listen to some sound samples
of what you are saying from your CD, Live at the WestChester University Jazz
Festival.  Even just hearing samples makes it clear why you pack them in at
every age.  Loved it all, including Skylark, but who is your vocalist on
Skylark please and thanks?
Ginny

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barbonestreet at earthlink.net writes:
These kids are my target audience and so we play, 4/4 swinging Dixieland of
the style Condon espoused. And we add some tunes like "At Last", linking it
to the Etta James version in a funky blues style. And naturally we play the
old War Horse Tunes like "Once in a While", "Panama", "Wolverine Blues",
"That's A Plenty" etc., etc., ad infinitum. But without trying to sound like
a 1920s, or 1930s band. We try and sound like ourselves playing Dixieland,
for young people, in the 21st Century. We even go so far as to (heresy)
modify the chords by extending them should the mood strike. Skylark is a
perfect example of a tune that sounds much better (to me) with a few chordal
changes from the original. (Ducking as I'm sure that's a no, no to the
purists on the list) The version my band plays is far superior to the
version I play as a sideman in a revival style band. (in my ears)

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barbonestreet reply
Hi Ginny:

Thanks for listening. The Skylark vocalist is Connie Rainis, a 45 year old
"modern" jazz singer in Philadelphia. She and I work straight ahead stuff
together in trio form. She had never worked with this band before and we did
not get to rehearse this performance at West Chester U because of a blizzard
that shut the University down for 2 days. We were notified at noon that the
University was open again and we would perform that night. ( 5 day jazz
festival) So I scrambled to get everybody there and drove 3 of us with my 4
wheel drive Jeep through the drifts. Another SUV brought the others.

Did the whole program on the fly. Took a quick look at her charts, decided
to do her songs without charts and just did it 100% improv. That's "jazz".
:-) VBG.

On Skylark, we were going to do more chorus's but she made a hand gesture on
the last note that we mistook for her wanting to end it, so the guitarist
did. Don't know if you can hear her "oh" as it ends but she was as surprised
as we were.

We booked Connie for the gig because the jazz festival theme was "Women In
Jazz" and we felt a woman vocalist would be apropos.

The University students recorded the concert on a single channel so we were
unable to balance the sound but you get the idea. Nice venue. New Concert
hall seating 1500 or so. About 800 showed up in spite of the snow which had
not been totally cleared around the area yet.

Cheers,
Steve