[Dixielandjazz] Re: The "Jazz" Police

[Steve barbone]

on 5/18/06 5:39 AM, patcooke77 at yahoo.com wrote: (polite snip)

>I have a friend who said her favorite tune is Misty.  So I put on a track of
Erroll. >Garner playing Misty.  After the first chorus, he started to
improvise a little.  She said >"He's not playing it right, he's ruining it."
I said "he wrote it.  He can play it any way >he wants to."  She didn't
agree.  I knew it would be futile to say any more. . . .

snip to:

>It may come as a shock to some, but the present (young) generation regards
>traditional jazz as players like Dave Brubeck.  They really don't want to learn
about >real trad any more than the older generation wants to learn about
heavy metal.


Oh my, if the composer can't play it the way he wants to, who can? The
"experts" are something. I will never forget Kenny Davern blistering a fan
who came up to him and announced that Pee Wee Russell didn't know how to
play clarinet. What the fan did not know is that Davern is heavily
influenced by Russell, (any jazz musician/fan worth his salt, should be able
to hear that and if they can't, just ask Davern about it) and that he was a
great friend of Pee Wee's

Viva Brubeck. Here's Paul Desmond's tongue in cheek take on the quartet at
the height of its popularity when he was a member:  "We were playing the
music like it was going out of style, which of course, it was."

Cheers,
Steve Barbone