[Dixielandjazz] Getting serious for a minute

[Bill Gunter]

Hi Russ (and all),

You wrote:

>Question:  Why have a tune in Gb when with just a half step lower it
>would be in concert F, which everybody could play?

For some reason this reminds me of a party I played at for a friend's wife's 
birthday.  My friend plays dixie and his wife is in the local symphony.  My 
friend asked a bunch of us to get together and sort of sneak up on the wife 
while she was at a birthday party for her out in someone's back yard around 
mid-day.

My friend asked several dixie musicians and several symphony musicians to 
participate in this "musical surprise" for the wife.

Naturally the song we all were supposed to play was the "Happy Birthday To 
You" song which, as you all know, is in the key of F.  This is because 
that's the easiest key for everyone to sing it in and that's just the way it 
is.  The song is in F!

Anyway, None of the symphony players wanted to play it in F.  They 
apparently don't play this song a lot in performances while dixie musos do 
it all the time.  Also, they were uncomfortable with improvising in F (they 
mainly play from the printed score) and the best key that could do it in 
was, of course, A (3 sharps).

Symphony dudes can play in A pretty easily. Violins are tuned so that it's 
natural to play in A and the orchestras always tune up on A so everyone is 
reasonably familiar with A.

Now here's the neat part of the story . . . The dixie guys COULD play it in 
A without much difficulty but the symphony guys COULDN'T play it in F.

QED: we played it it A.

Can you sing " . . . Happy Birthday dear Myrtle, Happy Birthday to you!" in 
A?  I can't. Well, not comfortably anyway.

Respectfully submitted,

Bill "Washboard" Gunter
jazzboard at hotmail.com