[Dixielandjazz] What happened to Jazz?

[Steve Barbone]

Larry Walton Entertainment at larrys.bands at charter.net wrote:

> Could it have been that they just got tired of the old stuff and wanted a
> change.  I personally am very tired of two guitars and a drummer and am
> looking for the next new style that will wipe away all the rock as sure as
> rock wiped away everything before it.  Rock isn't forever and when something
> comes along that resonates with the collective soul of the people it will be
> in the past.

Actually, the Black Musicians who started bop wanted something that the
white jazz players hadn't heard yet. Plus, the innovators had one thing in
common, they were all virtuosos on their axes. Which you have to be to play
bop correctly.

I think they just heard "music a little differently and were able to do more
technically which enabled them to play what they were hearing. Some of what
they heard existed in classical music, and in Bix's music. They just took it
a step further, went to 16th notes and syncopated the rhythm a little
differently.

> Jazz just got too hard to understand by the 50's and lost it's beat in the
> minds of the audiences.  Bop just happened to be among the last major
> innovations of jazz and gets blamed for it's demise.  As I see it in the
> 40's a good player could at least come close to the really good players in
> sound and style.  Bop just got too hard to play and instead of copying the
> styles musicians misunderstood (IMHO) or couldn't pull it off in the same
> way that a Coltrane or several others could.

Certainly many jazz players of the times could not play bop. That's why many
of the out of work Big Band Swing players went to Dixieland in NYC. They
could play it, and Dixieland was really cooking in NYC until 1960 and still
going pretty well for a couple of bands until Eddie Condon died many years
later. 

Remember that Bird was a Blues player. He loved the blues in F. IMO he was
not so hard to understand. He just thought in 16th notes instead of 8th
notes. And Clifford Brown swung his ass off. It was the guys who followed
Bird, Diz and Brownie who became harder to understand. Like Coltrane, or
Miles after 1960, or Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and Charlie Haden. Some
white Dixielander's, like Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd graduated to bop
briefly in the late 1950s and then went on to avant garde when bop became
passe in NYC by 1960.
> 
> Bop was also a more radical departure that required real listening skills.
> No longer could the listener go away whistling or humming the tune.  The
> beat was gone too.  Rock came along with a hard back beat and everyone, at
> least the kids, listened.  You can't dance to Bop.  Who in the world wants
> to work at having a good time or relaxing. As I see it the last great gasp
> of jazz came when Dave Brubeck hit with Take 5.  Since then it's been a
> slide from the mountain.

You could hum some bop, like "Now's The Time". Or even "Confirmation" if you
took the time to listen a few times. No more difficult then humming or
playing Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke" today. But, as you say, jazz became much
more difficult for the average audience member to understand and/or like.
So what happened? From the audience point of view, it morphed into the
"Smooth Jazz" of today which may or may not be jazz depending upon how you
define it, but is quite popular.
 
> Couple all of that with the sin aspect of Rock and Roll.  If preachers had
> gotten up in the pulpit and denounced jazz and if radio stations had jazz
> record breaking sessions the kids would have been drawn to it.  The
> forbidden fruit aspect of early rock was a draw for the kids. The kids
> reasoned that if the preachers and parents hated it so much it must be
> pretty good.

The Preachers did exactly that in 1915 when Jazz became a big hit in Chicago
with Tom Brown's Band from Dixieland, closely followed by ODJB and the rest.
The venues filled up after the Preachers complained from the pulpit and the
Newspapers reported "shrieking women carousing" and "drunken laughter" etc.
That is exactly what made Dixieland Jazz so popular. You had to wait on line
to get into the joints. Then it became the "Speakeasy" music of the roaring
20's. Al Capone's favorite music. Bathtub Gin, Loose Women, Gangsters, were
all part of the appeal.

Even in NYC the joints were owned by the mob. Cotton club, et al. Slumming
in Harlem by bored white folks with money etc. There was no "art"
connotation. It was booze, broads and gangsters. In Harlem it was Duke
Ellington's Jungle Music, with light skinned black girls dancing on a stage.
In front of a Whites only audience. It was hep to be a jazz fan, and
slightly wicked to be a jazz flapper. If you are over 70 and from a middle
class background, think back to what your parents thought about jazz, jazz
musicians, and libertines.

Not you Don Ingle, your dad was a jazz musician. :-) VBG.
 
> Dancing at least ballroom is pretty much a thing of the past too.  People
> just quit dancing in the 60's and 70's and got a concert mentality.  Dancing
> was a chance to hold a girl close but by the 70's the cool thing was laying
> in a pile and smoking grass.

The musicians were all cool then too and smoking grass. Even those playing
Dixieland. The dancing venues like Central Plaza, Stuyvasent Casino, Glen
Island Casino, Savoy Ballroom all faded away by roughly 1960. But the kids
still danced and/or swayed. Those venues morphed into Discos and exist today
as Stadiums. Yes, there is more visual "show" but the kids still form mosh
pits and rub up against each other. Maybe not the way we danced, but it
still accomplishes the same purpose. If a band plays with a beat, the kids
will dance to it. Happened to The Ambassadors of New Orleans is Israel and
it happens with Barbone Street in the USA all the time. No doubt other
Dixieland Bands are having similar experiences with kids.
 
> The only thing that people dance to in any great numbers is C&W.   The
> appeal is that the music is easy to understand, it's fun, has a beat and you
> can go away humming the tune.  Another thing is that it doesn't take a super
> advanced player to play it credibly either.  Jazzers should take a lesson
> from that.

Yes, play more blues, play exciting music with a beat that the kids will
understand, and they will dance to it as well as book you back. They react
to much of the "esoteric" Dixieland the way we did to bop. They don't
understand what is so appealing about "Float Me Down That Old Green River",
Or "My Canary's Got Circles Under Its Eyes". They do understand "Tiger Rag"
ODJB Tempo); "Muskrat Ramble" (Pop's Ambassador Satch Tempo); "Margie" (up
tempo); Shine (Pop's All Star Tempo); and a whole bunch of Old War Horse
swingers that many bands don't want to play for the usual Artsy audience
these days.

And C & W played in Western Swing style is very close to Dixieland.

If we play it, FOR THEM (kids) they will dance.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone