[Dixielandjazz] Sittin-in and Practice

[Marty Nichols]

I  enjoy posts by fellow trombonist David Dustin.
Around here (East Central Florida) If there were a professional OKOM jazz band to "sit- in " with, I would most likely be in it myself, since on the few occassions in the last several years the local "Jazz Society" has featured dixie style OKOM I was in the band., There are exceptions of course like the presentation of the Allred band once in a great while.   Nowadays, if I get "horny enough" to go "sit-in somewhere" it has to be in trios or duos playing what can be described as mainstream swing/bop/standards etc. I have personally found playing for free to be unsatisfying, so I go to my "music room" where I can play along with Jamey Aebersold recordings and whatever else I feel like playing. I even record my own CDs and listen to them in my car when I can stand them. 
  Marty Nichols
  Some of my music is on: http://myspace.com/freemarty
   
   
   
   
  Message: 12
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 23:08:13 -0400
From: David Dustin <postmaster at fountainsquareramblers.org>
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Sitting in and Practice
To: DJML <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Message-ID: <C2B9C1DD.884D%postmaster at fountainsquareramblers.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
  Steve wrote:
No, I said exactly what I meant. Practice is/was, a different subject.
 IMO
practice by oneself, or with jazz musicians who are not competent, will
 not
help make one a competent jazz musician anymore than performing live
 with a
professional band will, without prior practicing. They are both
 important.
By the same token, however, again IMO, if one wants to become a
 competent
jazz musician, one must perform, live, with professional jazz bands. I
 would
call that "paying dues", simple as that.
====================
I?m simple enough to get it: someone who is not a competent jazz
 musician
but desires to become one must find a professional jazz band
 unprofessional
enough to allow an incompetent jazz musician to pay dues in live
performances and achieve jazz competency.  The proverbial self-eating
watermelon.
  If the incompetent jazz musician possessed sufficient means, could
 hiring
professional jazz sidemen and forming one?s own (largely) professional
 jazz
band serve the same purpose, and without the risk to the jazz
 incompetent of
being voted off the stand after one chorus?  That would be my choice,
 if I
had the means, as I don?t know any professional jazz bands likely to
 let me
within a bargepole of one of their hard-won live performances with
 anything
more musical than a beer ?n a brat.
  Or you could simply enroll in any of the vibrant community college jazz
programs scattered around this country, led and populated by some
 highly
competent jazz musicians from diverse walks of life, and pay dues that
 way.
I will never have the chops of Russ Phillips Jr or Sr, but I sure
 learned a
lot about jazz (and improvisation) performing live for years with
non-professional jazz bands in those environments. One community
 college
band I played in was directed by a Maynard Ferguson prot?g? (I got to
 share
the stage briefly with Maynard through that association), and another
 by a
man who had played with Stan Kenton and remained close to him for
 decades.
(It?s not OKOM, but it sure felt like jazz to me.)
  David Dustin