[Dixielandjazz] Baritone as Trombone (Pam Munter)

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Presumably there is something of a trombone function in the bass saxophone playing of Adrian Rollini,  a bass voice in the counterpoint.  Somewhere or other I encountered (long ago) a not entirely daft claim that the sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor was the initial model of Dixieland jazz, a sort of Franco-Italian-American counterpoint -- and indeed there seems to be some potential for an arrangement in the solo piano performance of the sextet by Donald Lambert, with the different voices coming in.  
There are a lot of different ways in which the trombone has been played and some are more like saxophone than others, just as some trumpeters etc. play more in a saxophone manner than for instance Louis Armstrong. 
And of course while playing not exactly Dixieland Hot Lips Page recorded on Mellophone c. 1940,  and some thirty years later Humphrey Lyttelton did wonderful things on alto horn, recording with Buck Clayton. 

Of course arguably the first serious tenor saxophonist, David Jones (Jones&Collins, Fate Marable etc.) seems to have modelled his playing on the French Horn he also played, and had played earlier. There are lots of inter-instrumental relationships based on the way different people played remarkably well on the different instruments.  The real contrast is surely not between baritone and trombone, but rather baritonist and trombonist. 
Of course a good lyrical bass-baritone singer should sing with some of the character of a flowing trombone, or a cello line, but also recognise that there was a point beyond which Ben Webster and Don Byas, each in his different way, revealed some expressive limitations of the human voice.  But so did Johnny Dodds in 1940, and so on.....

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