[Dixielandjazz] Contradictions

[Marek Boym]

I believe that the Spicy Advice sessions on a GHB LP (reissued, if I
am not mistaken, on an American Music CD) are a better example.  Buk's
West Coast recordings, not only those with the Yerba Buena, are also
good, but to these jaded ears, the Spicy Advice session is the best!
Cheers

On 15/10/2007, jazzchops at isp.com <jazzchops at isp.com> wrote:
> 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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