[Dixielandjazz] Sacramento Jubilee - The Way It Was 22 years ago.

[Steve Barbone]

Came upon this 1984 gem while surfing.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

NY TIMES - May 27, 1984 - By ROBERT LINDSEY

FESTIVAL FILLS THE WILLING EARS OF CALIFORNIA'S CAPITAL WITH DIXIELAND JAZZ

This city is paying homage to Dixieland jazz this weekend with a noisy,
stomping spectacle that has drawn 101 bands from 13 countries to play and
more than 150,000 spectators to listen.

California's capital, local partisans say, has replaced New Orleans as the
nation's capital of Dixieland. That is an arguable claim, but one difficult
to challenge amid the din of trumpets, trombones, drums, banjos, washboards,
tubas and singing ''red-hot mamas'' all over Sacramento this weekend.

The Soviet bloc has is not participating in the Summer Olympic Games, but
Dixieland ensembles came here from Poland and East Germany.

The Goose Island Jazz Band from Simi Valley, Calif., is wowing audiences
with a repertory of Dixieland tunes written about Charles A.Lindbergh. Franz
Biffliger, a Member of the Swiss Parliament, is playing a torrid piano for
the ''Red Hot Peppers'' from Bern, and a Scottish band wearing kilts is
stirring audiences with a fast-paced, Dixieland version of ''Peter and the
Wolf,'' along with more conventional standards like ''South Rampart Street
Parade.'' Food for Hungry Ears

All are catering to an apparently insatiable demand for Dixieland here and
an international resurgence of interest in traditional American jazz.

The Sacramento Dixieland Jubilee is the largest of dozens of festivals held
around the world to keep alive a musical art form so often declared dead.

Dixieland festivals are held annually in St. Louis, Seattle, Denver,
Decatur, Ill,, Sturgis Falls, Iowa, and many other communities. In Europe,
there are similar festivals in, among other places, Dresden, East Germany;
Breda, the Netherlands, Edinburgh, and Prague. What accounts for the
resurgence of Dixieland?

''It's happy music; it makes people feel good,'' said Rex Swann, the drummer
of the New Melbourne Jazz Band, which he estimated is one of more than 500
Dixieland bands in Australia. Besides standard American jazz, the Melbourne
band plays a Dixieland version of ''Waltzing Matilda.'' 'People Can Have a
Good Time' 

''I think America is discovering its musical roots,'' said David R. Doerr, a
senior consultant on the staff of the the Legislature here. Like many
Sacramento jazz buffs, he said he planned to listen to Dixieland for
virtually all the 48 1/2 hours scheduled for the festival, which ends
Monday. 

He said he agreed with his wife, Elaine, who said she thought tens of
thousands of people were jamming Sacramento this weekend ''because the music
is fun and people can have a good time listening to it.''

Traditional American jazz has its roots in the improvisations of black
musicians who played in funeral marches and in bordellos' bars in New
Orleans more than 70 years ago. That era was to produce some of the nation's
great musical folk heroes, among them King Oliver, Sidney Bechet, Louis
Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, Edward (Kid) Ory.

In the 1920's, Dixieland migrated north to Chicago, along with blacks from
the South. In Chicago white musicians such as Leon (Bix) Beiderbecke
amalgamated its improvisations with more traditional musical discipline. The
music was, in somewhat of a departure, put on paper. And on to New York

According to musical historians, The evolution continued in New York, where,
under Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman and others, jazz became swing. Later,
swing blended into the big-band dance music of the 1930's and early 1940's
and finally yielded in popularity after World War II, to bop, progressive
jazz and eventually rock.

Over the decades, traditional Dixieland was kept alive by a few New Orleans
bands such as the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, by the ''Dukes of
Dixieland,'' and Bob Crosby's ''Bob Cats.'' Meanwhile, musicians and jazz
enthusiasts established traditional jazz societies around the country to
keep a candle lit for the music.

But perhaps in no community does the candle burn brighter than in
Sacramento. The jazz society here decided in 1974 to invite a few bands to
play one weekend, and about 5,000 people showed up to hear them. The
festival has grown rapidly each year, along with a year-round preoccupation
with Dixieland among many people in Sacramento.

There are now at least 17 Dixieland bands in the community. Half a dozen
high schools teach the young people the musical glories of Ferdinand (Jelly
Roll) Morton, Beiderbecke and Oliver, and more than 2,700 people volunteer
to stage the annual jubilee. As for Making a Living at It . . .

More than 700 musicians are playing. While each will be paid several hundred
dollars, most, including those from abroad, earn their living other ways.
Even with a renaissance of interest in Dixieland, they say it is still all
but impossible to make a living playing it.

''I've played every jazz festival there is around the world,'' said Bob
Crosby, the ''emperor'' of this year's jubilee. ''This is the biggest and
the best jazz festival there is.'' It is centered, as in the past, in Old
Sacramento, a community of restored historic brick buildings. The area was
the main staging area for the Gold Rush 135 years ago.

It has grown so large that bands are performing, seemingly nonstop, at 49
different places, small cabarets to stages beneath freeway bridges.

Tapping their toes, eating pizza, popcorn and ribs, emptying 750 kegs of
beer, often rising spontaneously from their seats to dance to the beat, jazz
fans have taken over the city.

Friday night, after a performance led by Mr. Crosby during which he was
reunited with four members of the original ''Bob Cats,'' Hilton Napoleon
(Nappy) Lamare, Bob Haggart, Eddie Miller and Yank Lawson, a middle-aged man
turned to a companion and said:

''That was almost like going to church. That was a religious experience.''