[Dixielandjazz] St Louis Blues - Why do bands play it diffrently from the original?

[Rocky Ball]

Sorry if this reply is late...

I have heard this "original sheet music" argument for many years and  
it is made more complex by this fact...
Many of the pieces of original sheet music, that we often rely on as  
the gospel, or the 'source', in these arguments were ARRANGEMENTS by  
the staff arranger(s) at the music publishing houses. Often these  
were not arrangements by the composer at all.

I'm not speaking of Handy specifically, and maybe the copyright  
office has a document that was written out by Handy himself, and  
maybe not.... I just don't know. Often, though, research into the  
original sheet music brings up a published piece that was never  
touched by the original author. Most sheet music publishers were  
publishing music with a purpose and that purpose was to create an  
entertaining piece that could be played on the parlor piano by the  
end user.

Before the mass acceptance of recordings, sheet music was the  
offering to the end user. And often that sheet music was created by a  
staff arranger who used his or her own creative judgement in making a  
piano arrangement that would sell... not with creating a historical  
piece for preserving the author's complete original intentions.

Besides, the whole question here is meaningless... "Why don't bands  
play the song the same?" Maybe because they are playing jazz! It  
seems that rearranging the song is one of the critical things that  
allows the performing artist(s) the opportunities to "own the  
song".... as when Randy Jackson of American Idol each year suggests  
to the new contestants that you "make the song your own... own it dog!"

Don't we all differentiate between "that's how Louis did it" and  
"that's how Mugsy did it?". I was on a recent recording of a new CD  
by a local Atlanta band, The Peachtree Strutters, called HANDY MAN:  
The Music of W.C. Handy. We recorded 12 Handy tunes. Part of our  
preparation for the album was to listen to numerous historical  
recordings of these songs by artists as diverse as Louis, Bessie  
Smith, Cat Anderson, The South Frisco Jazz Band, Turk Murphy and  
more. Each of the tunes was played completely differently by each  
artist and we ended up using head arrangements that were different  
from any of those... that's not just part of the jazz tradition....  
that's part of the MUSIC tradition. Even classical recordings of the  
same piece differ wildly with regard to tempo, volume, energy and  
'interpretation'. I have a CD of Satch playing Fats Waller tunes that  
has multiple recordings of the same tunes from different eras of  
Louis' career and they vary wildly with regards to arrangements and  
"groove".

My .02 cents.....

~Rocky Ball
www.rubyredsband.com