[Dixielandjazz] vibrato

Wed Sep 19 08:52:15 PDT 2007

If it sounds good - it is good."
>
> Defect ot not - that's what made these pople great!
_________________________________________________

I said before that I don't particularly like the very fast, twittery, Dolly 
Parton / Minnie Mouse vibrato but it's also very obvious that millions of 
people out there do like it and that it's a style that Dolly and some others 
make work for them.

Many musicians and singers do something that is all wrong but either through 
accident, unique anatomy or hard work they overcome what to others is a 
gross defect to produce something that is positive.

An obvious example is Louis Armstrong's voice.  He sounded like he had 
severely damaged his vocal cords at some point (Selling Coal?) and was 
probably afflicted with vocal nodes.  A lesser person might never have tried 
to sing but Louis turned a gross defect into an unmistakable asset that no 
one else had which illustrates his consummate showmanship.

Too many musicians and I include myself in this group are intimidated by 
people who are better at something.  I use myself as a case in point.  I 
never considered myself to be a vocalist and I didn't particularly like 
singing.  If I needed a vocalist I hired someone which almost universally 
was a pain in the a**.  Years went by and I started working a duo.  The 
smaller the group the more versatile you have to be so that your sound 
doesn't get boring.  I had always sung a little with bands but only one or 
two tunes.  Basically I didn't like the way I sounded.  BUT! I started 
singing  OKOM tunes and my bookings started going up.

This started me thinking and I looked at many different singers and 
especially the ones that shouldn't be successful.  Louis Armstrong was one 
of them.  I found that to be successful as a singer you did not have to have 
a "good" voice.  It helps but is not necessary to success but there are two 
things that are necessary (if your voice isn't "good") and that is to sing 
in tune and to have showmanship and what trumps all is showmanship.

If that weren't true Louis Armstrong would never have been successful as a 
singer.  People respond to showmanship much more than anything else.

After figuring out this fairly simple truth and what's more important 
internalizing it so that the old shyness is gone, I now sing a lot and am 
making money from it.  Go figure.

If we look carefully at other artists we can learn a lot that we can turn to 
our advantage.  Every human has some defect or another and it's up to us to 
overcome them if we can.  Many of those defects are simply in our own mind.
Larry
St. Louis

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marek Boym" <marekboym at gmail.com>
To: "Larry Walton" <larrys.bands at charter.net>
Cc: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 9:31 AM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] vibrato

> Hello Jim,
> I am at the "consumer end," not the "supplier end," meaning - I don't
> play an instrument, just listen  And I'm going to believe the Duke
> (after all, he is the author of my Gospel - It Don't Mean a Thing...),
> who said :"If it sounds good - it is good."
>
> Defect ot not - that's what made these pople great!  The late Sandy
> Brown was self taught - he played with records in India.  When he came
> to Scotland, he was told that his fingering was all wrong.  It might
> have been so - and might have made him one of the most original
> clarinet players in the business!
> Cheers
>
> On 19/09/2007, Jim Kashishian <jim at kashprod.com> wrote:
>> Marek, I'm speaking as a person who has studied & played the trombone for 
>> 57
>> yrs now.
>> I have spent over 40 yrs working in recording studios as a session 
>> musician
>> & sound engineer.  I have toured with Julio Iglesias (& recorded many 
>> songs
>> with him), Tom Jones, Liza Minelli, and played under the baton of Henry
>> Mancini, etc.
>>
>> I'm a great admirer, and have been since a kid, of Turk Murphy.  But, the
>> trombonist that imitates his rather raunchy tone, and can't play any 
>> other
>> way, is playing the horn incorrectly.  Turk did it, it was his trademark,
>> but he would never have learned to play the horn that way from a teacher.
>> It is a defective manner in which, in his case, worked out very well.
>>
>> Wild Bill Davison played over to the side of his mouth.  Very, very
>> wrong...but, for him it was great.  Still, an incorrect way of playing.
>>
>> We had a sop sax player (French) that imitated Bechet (naturally), and
>> couldn't play a straight tone EVER!  Wrong. Our guy had never studied the
>> instrument, and learned it by himself, only copying what Bechet had done,
>> without knowing that that kind of wild vibrato, while very effective for
>> Bechet, is not the correct way of playing a wind instrument.
>>
>> It's one of the first things you learn from a teacher..."play a long,
>> steady, flat tone for me, please".
>>
>> Cheers, Jim
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> To unsubscribe or change your e-mail preferences for the Dixieland Jazz 
> Mailing list, or to find the online archives, please visit:
>
> http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz
>
>
>
> Dixielandjazz mailing list
> Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
> 