[Dixielandjazz] Contradictions

[jazzchops at isp.com]

Mr. Barbone gave us the quote from Baby Dodds' book, but here is the first
sentence from the paragraph...

"I played with Big Eye Louis Nelson in different bands and at different
times. He used to play clarinet with the Duson band, not as a regular
player, but just now and then." (Duson lived in the downtown section of
New Orleans, and essentially took over Buddy Bolden's band when Buddy was
committed to the insane asylum in 1907.)

In the early 1890s a law was passed in Louisiana that stated that anyone
with a drop of black blood was black - period. The law was challenged by
Homer Plessy, a Creole whose great-grandmother was Black. Although Homer
could pass for white, he was arrested for sitting in the "whites only"
section of a streetcar. The case went to the Supreme Court and the law was
upheld, not to be overturned until 1954.

This law effectively changed the musical scene in New Orleans drastically.
Up until that time Creoles considered themselves a separate class from
Blacks - even though they had Black heritage. Creole musicians played for
Creoles, and for Creole functions. As Baby Dodds stated, the Creoles were
generally Downtown (in the French Quarter and the Faubourg-Marigny areas
of New Orleans), and the Blacks were Uptown. But some Creole musicians
began accepting jobs with Blacks. To them, a gig was a gig. So things
began to change, and Creoles started working with Blacks playing all over
town, especially younger Creole musicians like "Big Eye" Louis Nelson and
Sidney Bechet.

The problem is there are no hard and fast rules, such as "Uptown" music or
"Downtown" music, and it's a waste of time to try to create such
classifications, especially in a city like New Orleans, which is a totally
confused place anyway. I once had a musician tell me he didn't really know
whether he was white or black. So, maybe in 1889 there was a definite
demarcation between uptown and downtown music, but by 1909 things were
considerably different.

Another point I'd like to make is the importance of the dancing at that
time. Bands, whether white, Black, Creole or a mixture, played almost
exclusively for dancing. (Even brass bands played for dancing.) They
played schottisches, mazurkas, waltzes, one-steps - all kinds of popular
music for dancing. We tend to have a skewed idea of what New Orleans music
was like based on the recordings.

The recordings of Bunk Johnson are a perfect example. Bunk was NEVER happy
with the band that he was saddled with - George Lewis, Jim Robinson, Slow
Drag. That band was put together for him. When he had an opportunity to
work with a group of musicians he selected, he got to play the things that
he really wanted to - rags, pop tunes, etc., things that were written out.
(
available on the Delmark CD "Last Testament.") I personally had the
opportunity to look through Bunk's sheet music collection at jazz
historian Bill Russell's apartment. Although not a large batch of music,
it was definitely a cross-section of numbers geared for dancing, as I
mentioned above.

There has been a lot of false information written about jazz in New
Orleans. Fortunately, over the past decade or so there have been more
books published in attempt to give a more accurate picture of how jazz
came to be. One of the best I've read recently is Louis Armstrong's New
Orleans by Thomas Brothers. It was nice to read a book that FINALLY didn't
try to make "The District" (Storyville) the birthplace of jazz.

Sincerely,
Chris Tyle


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