[Dixielandjazz] More on reading and non reading jazz musicians.

[Steve Barbone]

More on reading and/or non reading jazz musicians.

CVheers,
Steve Barbone

Quote of Baby Dodds from "The Baby Dodds Story":

[Big Eye Louis Nelson] "lived downtown, and I lived uptown. He was on the
north side of town, and I was living on the south side. In other words, he
was a Creole and lived in the French part of town. Canal Street was the
dividing line and the people from the different sections didn't mix. The
musicians mixed only if you were good enough. But at one time the Creole
fellows thought uptown musicians weren't good enough to play with them,
because most of the uptown musicians didn't read music. Everybody in the
French part of town read music."

>From the Red Hot Jazz Archive web site:

Many of these virtuoso musicians were not good sight readers and some could
not read music at all, nevertheless their playing thrilled audiences and the
spontaneous music they created captured a joy and sense of adventure that
was an exciting and radical departure from the music of that time.


Excerpts from the oral histories at the Tulane Jazz Archives. (The Professor
Jim Humphrey referred to is of cours, Willie Humphrey's grandfather and a
well know music teacher in New Orleans)

Sonny Williams

Joseph 'Sonny' Williams was born December 26, 1889 in Lecompte, Rapides
Parish, about 18 miles New Orleans side of Alexandria. Sonny Williams
studied guitar with Professor Jim Humphrey, who taught all instruments. He
took it up around 1908. Sonny came to New Orleans' mardi gras for the first
time in 1902."I never took a trumpet lesson. I always have been a reading
musician, I seldom played without music. That's why I don't like to rehearse
with (A.B.) Spears (Gibson) Band, as they don't use any written music. I
played clarinet several times with Jack Carey. Jack Carey's band was good,
although it was routine, it didn't use written music. I liked John
Robichaux's band and Piron's band, they always read music."'

Hypolite Charles

"My full name is Hypolite Paul Charles and I was born in Parks, Louisiana on
April 18, 1891. My father, August Charles, played baritone horn. My father
was strictly a reader at first, but when we organized the smaller group, he
began to play by ear, of necessity, as did the rest of the group.  The music
my band played was called 'rhythm', but might have been called jazz, as many
times we didn't use music, just picking up the tunes as we could. The music
was like that of the New Orleans bands. In fact the New Orleans bands copied
the style of my band. We used to call ourselves adding, adding something to
the band, and some of the boys that didn't know no music at all, they could
put more than we did."