[Dixielandjazz] McQuaid's Rhythmakers/cartoons

[dwlit at cpcug.org]

As a devotee of 20s large/chart-reading band music, and collector of
recreation band CDs, I think of the music as being in 2 basic categories:
1. 20s dance orchestras (ie commercial)
2. [20s] "Hot dance" orchestras (ie jazz oriented)
   This category has a sub-category, jazz orchestras, where danceability,
at least re many of the records, doesn't seem to be an aim.
Like the categories of dixieland-style jazz, the boundaries are fuzzy, but
they serve adequately to help me sort out my CDs.

One reason for the fuzziness is that commercial bands often recorded jazz
tunes, sometimes at hot tempos and even with solos. I think this reflects
the popularity of jazz as a commercial music.

When I had my 20s-early 30s reading band, the categories helped me decide
on the band's basic direction, to wit I decided to go commercial and play
pop tunes, some familiar, some less so, because I thought they'd sell
better than the hot dance approach. I did include some jazzy charts like
"Davenport blues", "Bugle call rag".

Most of the recreation bands seem to emphasize hot jazz, with a few nods
to the commercial.

The early 30s repertoire is a different topic.

--Sheik
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Charlie Suhor wrote:
> The focus of the discussion is for me, and has
> returned to:  the style of the early cartoon music and its resemblances
> to other “hot” music such as  the dance music charts played by vintage
> bands of the early years and current bands like McQuaid’s Rhythm
> Makers, the New Leviathan Band, S.F. Starlite Band, Portena Band, etc.
>
>...
> The refinement of our discussion was made along the way by a DJMLer who
> said that, only if you name your criteria for what constitutes jazz can
> you talk to someone else about whether a given performance is jazz. I
> shouted hooray and added that some “hot” performances will meet all of
> the criteria, others will meet some, still others just a few. In my
> list, the music of the Portena, McQuaid, Leviathan, Starlite bands has
> very few of the qualities on my list of criteria for jazz, and a lot of
> the qualities of pre-jazz. Too much to enumerate here, but for
> instance, the McQuaid band purposely plays ricky-tick ragtime phrasing
> (in common with my criteria for cartoon music) but the clarinetist is a
> fluidly swinging improviser (one of my many jazz criteria).
>...
> The disagreements outright among us might well be what’s in our implied
> but unstated lists of criteria. Mine lead me to say, along with John
> Farrell and others, that that Portena, McQuaid, etc., aren’t “cartoon
> music”-- but to agree with Mssrs. Barbone and Wiggs, that they aren’t
> “red hot jazz.”  I call them—take a deep breath—mostly corny. As
> mentioned earlier, we just don’t have an untainted vocabulary to apply
> to those old-style bands. It’s not “early jazz” in the sense that
> Oliver, Louis, the NORK, etc. were. We’ve inherited terms like “corn,”
> “razzmatazz,” “Mickey Mouse,” and “cartoon music.” If we could adopt a
> term like “razzmatazz” or defuse “corn” of it’s pejorative
> connotations, those terms might be generic descriptors of the music
> we’re talking about.
>