[Dixielandjazz] Sittin-in and Practice

Wed Jul 11 12:46:47 PDT 2007

Marty:  I have personally found playing for free to be unsatisfying,

Me too -

Occasionally around here some bar will feature a sit in night and hire a 
piano player.  Some even have trios or just a drum set setting there.  I 
usually find out about these things about four months late but the couple 
that I have gone to have been OK but not really worth the drive of sometimes 
a lot of miles.  I think bars miss a good bet by doing that.  The couple 
that I have gone to were well attended and it looked like everyone was 
having a good time.  The last one was standing room only.

It's a win for the bar because it brings in more customers.  It's a win for 
the background musicians because they attract a bigger crowd and they get 
paid and it's a win for the wannabee to get to play with some good 
musicians.  I also think there may be a bigger entertainment pay off for the 
club too.  People just like to see people play instruments especially in 
this canned society that we live in.
Larry
St. Louis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marty Nichols" <marnichols at yahoo.com>
To: "Larry Walton" <larrys.bands at charter.net>
Cc: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 6:59 AM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Sittin-in and Practice

>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
>
>
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