[Dixielandjazz] Early Jazz Bands and musicians who read

[Marek Boym]

Hello,
Clearly, many of the early New Orleans musicians could read.  There
seems to be some evidence taht Freddy Keppard, although Creole, could
not (most Creole musicians could).  Some stories have it that the
non-readers joined playing only after havin heard a tune at least
once, and improvised the passages they missed.  I don't know whether
the ODJB could read or not, but tend to believe them.  Of course, J.
Russell Robinson, who replaced Ragas with the band, could (and,
according to the story, was asked not to admit it).  As to NORK, even
if Mares could not, the others could.
I don't remeber listening to the Durante band, but I have recordings
made in 1918 with Durante, and the band there plays the melody.  I
have not heard the Yelping Dog Blues, but I have heard other Original
Indiana Five records, and they si\unded quite well organized, even too
much so; rather than chaotic, they tended towards blandness.
I wonder why you have not mentioned "Kid" Thomas.  Sure, he did not
record in those days, only much later, but, despite his rather
"primitive" (i.e. - pre-Armstrong) style, he certainly could read, and
often brought new tunes for his band to play.
Cheers
SUPPORT LIVE JAZZ

On 14/10/2007, jazzchops at isp.com <jazzchops at isp.com> wrote:
> 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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