[Dixielandjazz] Early Jazz Bands and musicians who read

[jazzchops at isp.com]

For the person willing to do the research, I think the end result will
yield more readers than non-readers among early jazz players. Granted,
there certainly were non-readers, but it doesn't take much digging to
mention Bix and Bechet...and Bix was not a New Orleanian and he could read
a little, at least by the time he was working with Whiteman. (Listen to
him lose the meter on Trubauer's recording of Dusky Stevedore.)

Early Louis Armstrong? Before he went into the waif's home in 1913, at age
11, he probably didn't read. But it seems pretty clear that "Professor"
Peter Davis taught the kids some basics of music. By 1919, at age 17,
Louis joined the Fate Marable band on the SS Dixie Belle, then later on
the SS President, both owned by the Strekfus steamboat company. If you
worked for Strekfus, you had to be able to read, period, although some
players (Pops Foster was one), skated by on their innate musical
abilities. (Foster admitted to biographer Tom Stoddard that he didn't
really learn "to read good" until he went to New York in 1929.)

While on the SS President Louis was helped with his reading by
saxophonist/mellophonist David Jones.

I think it's instructive to take a look at a arbitrary list of ten New
Orleans front-line musicians and their abilities to read. The asterisk
indicates those who are known not to have been able to read.

Cornet/trumpet
Buddy Bolden - controversy exists; Bocage stated he couldn't read, Willie
Hightower said he could)
Freddie Keppard - speller, i.e., could read a little
Louis Armstrong
Joe Oliver
Tommy Ladnier
Nick LaRocca* (although personally I think he could, see comment below)
Henry "Red" Allen
Willie "Bunk" Johnson
Sharkey Bonano
Oscar "Papa" Celestin

Clarinet
Lorenzo Tio, Jr.
Johnny Dodds
George Lewis*
Edmond Hall
Sidney Bechet*
Barney Bigard
Jimmie Noone
Irving Fazola
Larry Shields*
Tony Parenti

Trombone
Kid Ory (could spell)
George Brunies
Eddie Edwards
Honore Dutrey
Preston Jackson
Jim Robinson*
Roy Palmer
Santo Pecora
Earl Humphrey
Tom Brown

One could take this further into the Chicago jazz genre and probably find
the same results. And by the time the music center moves to New York you
either were able to read or switch vocations. (I enjoyed Mr. Barbone's
quote regarding Vic Berton, especially since he was a well-schooled
percussionist who, in addition to playing drum set, played timpani and
worked frequently for Broadway shows.)

The impression I get from reading the recollection of Jimmy Durante and
other early white musicians especially, seems to indicate that not being
able to read was a "badge of honor" lending more credence to their ability
to play jazz. Cornetists Nick LaRocca and Paul Mares stated they couldn't
read, but I have my doubts based on their recordings. The Original
Dixieland Jazz Band's recording of a tune called The Sphinx has LaRocca
playing almost exactly off the stock arrangement (which I have a copy of).
Other pop tunes from the same session sound to my ears as though the
musicians are reading, or at least using the stock arrangements for a
road map. Ditto the New Orleans Rhythm Kings recordings, especially of pop
tunes and of Jelly Roll Morton's numbers. (And we know for an absolute
fact that Morton's musicians read charts, written by Jelly, on the Red Hot
Peppers recordings beginning in 1925, especially since cornetist George
Mitchell mentioned that Jelly told him to "just read the dots.")

Just a few interesting quotes here. First, from The Baby Dodds Story:
Regarding his time with Fate Marable, in the band with Louis, "We played
strictly by music." When he joined the King Oliver band in Chicago,
"...the first piece of music they put in front of me was Canadian Capers.
I asked Joe how he was going to play it. He said 'from the left hand
corner to the right hand corner; from top to bottom.'"

The brass band tradition was very strong in New Orleans, and in fact the
jazz band is comprised of the three main voices of the brass band (plus
drums) and the other popular pre-jazz musical combo, the string trio. Just
a few quotes from Brass Bands & New Orleans Jazz by William J. Schaefer.
The first mentions clarinetist Achille Baquet, whose only recordings were
with Jimmy Durante in 1920, "...Achille Baquet and Dave Perkins were
widely known as teachers and instrumentalists, and Baquet was closely
associated with the
black brass band movement. His father, Theogene Baquet, led the Excelsior
Brass Band, the best black group of the era, and Achille's brother George
became one of the great New Orleans jazz clarinetists." A quote from
trumpeter Peter Bocage (who also played violin and composed such tunes as
Mama's Gone Goodbye), "All you had to play was just on that card..." (the
card here meaning the music card that the brass band players carried and
put on their instrument's lyre.)

Schaefer also writes, "Brass bands habitually played scored music like the
standard marches with their three or four strains, repeats, and rigidly
constructed counterpoint. They played complex traditional dance forms like
the quadrille. They read scores for dirges, often multi-thematic pieces
with contrasting sections, and they included some classic ragtime, another
scored multi-thematic form." I can attest to this, having played several
funerals in New Orleans with the Society Brass Band, reading off music
cards that were yellowed and dog-eared.

I had to chuckle when I read the quote by Jimmy Durante about not playing
the melody, since cornetist Frank Christian is quite obviously playing the
melody on the band's recording of Ja-Da!

And what about those Uptown New Orleans musicians who couldn't read? Oddly
enough, in perusing the list of musicians and their addresses in Don
Marquis book In Search of Buddy Bolden, I found that almost all of the
uptown musicians listed were readers, but so were the downtown musicians!
Of the better known uptown readers were Clarence Williams, Johnny St. Cyr,
Oscar "Papa" Celestin, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton (he lived uptown for
awhile), Bud Scott, Johnny and Baby Dodds.

BTW, what exactly do Vido Musso, Chet Baker and John Coltrane have to do
with this discussion, AND dixieland jazz?? I'm not particularly interested
whether they could or couldn't read, since the point of this whole
discussion was the blanket statement to the effect that EARLY jazz bands
learned everything by ear.

In passing I'd like to mention I have the greatest respect for Mr. Barbone
and his association with greats like Bechet, Coleman Hawkins and Charlie
Parker. But that association doesn't necessarily make anyone an expert
jazz historian by long shot.

Sincerely,
Chris Tyle

PS: I just listened to Yelping Hound Blues by the Louisiana Five on the
Red Hot Jazz Archive and it doesn't sound anything like yelping hounds to
me, since Alcide "Yellow" Nunez's imitation of a yelping hound is merely a
trill. But I do think it's a nice example of what some colleagues of mine
call "rag-a-jazz;" a sort of post-ragtime, pre-jazz music.





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