[Dixielandjazz] Dress Apparel

Mon Apr 23 15:32:05 PDT 2007

HELLO! OKOM is dated - Most of us are past just being adults.  Yes we are 
mostly geezers and dated too.  You would think that in a city as large as 
St.Louis you would be able to find young players for trad jazz.  It's not 
happening.

I can understand not wanting just black pants and a white shirt.  That is 
rather plain so you need a little color to add to it.

I have over the years (I'm an old guy) seen so many guys come to gigs 
dressed just wrong for the job.  Trusting musicians to dress well is to me a 
stretch.  You would think that in the military where everything was 
furnished nothing could go wrong.  One of the trombone players showed up in 
his dress blues wearing white tennies.  He made it sort of OK by taking off 
his socks and putting them over the shoes and since he sat on the back row 
maybe no one would notice.  They did.

What you seem to want to do is blend in with the crowd but I just don't want 
to blend in.  I guess that's OK if people want that and in the last 50 years 
dressing down has become a fetish with almost everyone .

I think it's most important to look nice and look like a band and be 
appropriate for the gig.

The reason for the Black suit / Tux deal was for many years and may still be 
the rule in the union that leaders had to buy uniforms if they wanted 
something special.  You could not make a player buy anything.  If you wanted 
jackets the leader had to buy them and so on.  It could cost a lot of money 
to outfit a band and if you had different guys playing you needed a lot of 
extras. (been there, done that) So the standard wear became the black suit / 
tux.  You could call anyone and that's what they showed up in.

Coop and hobby bands have some advantage here because each will buy his own 
but then you are more dependent on each other and I don't care for that. 
But after being in each kind of band I prefer the pro model because it's 
more flexable.

Should anyone want vests I buy them from www.uniformalwearhouse.com they 
have a lot of different kinds.  They even have derby's in multi colors and 
lots of other things that a musician might need.  They sell Boaters. 
Skimmers, fedoras and top hats too.
Geezer Larry
St. Louis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "billsharp" <sharp-b at clearwire.net>
To: "Larry Walton" <larrys.bands at charter.net>
Cc: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2007 3:41 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Dress Apparel

> List-Message-Recipient: larrys.bands at charter.net
> I think that the idea of Black Pants/White Shirt is antiquated. In fact 
> whenever I book a gig, I generally say, wear "Nice, long (or 
> short)sleeves, plain color (or maybe stripes) with a tie" - -anything but 
> black pants white shirt. (you can wear one but not both  - -That is unless 
> of course the situation absolutely demands it).
>
> Many years back I discovered that all the "old guys" always dressed that 
> way, because that's the way the custom was in their time. Thus I felt that 
> the minute everyone was told to show up in black/ white, I knew that the 
> leader (as well as a lot of of guys in the band)  were going to be coots 
> and geezers. It felt similar to being told to show up in straw hats, red 
> vests, and red bow ties - -  definitely a "look", but very dated.
>
> These days we have so many more options.
>
>
>
>
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