[Dixielandjazz] C melody fun

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

In Greenwich Market one London jazz festival I once saw Lol Coxhill, famous English avant-garde-ist (He once did make a wonderful this site sort of music recording with Eggy Ley the rather different soprano player). In Greenwich he was solo, "free improvising" and not unmelodious. He would do twenty minutes, pause, and then another twenty. He used the pauses to readjust the rubber bands which he would be throwing away once the Greenwich gig fee let him have his soprano serviced. 
A very few people wandered the market with him in the rain, Lol keeping under roofs of stalls or in doorways. While he was adjusting the bands during one pause he was asked what he's been doing. Playing in the Gl*n M*ll*r ghost band, actually playing a tenor through a varitone because no baritone saxophonist could be got and he'd himself no baritone. 
He said he was pondering getting a C-melody he'd seen. I'd been tempted by one myself at the time  (20 years ago, I think, but didn't buy it) which sat a long time in an Edinburgh instrument shop. Obviously there were then two out of captivity in the UK. 
Trouble is, says Lol, how would I fit in with other instruments? 
Then again, he added, I do play most of my gigs unaccompanied. 
If he did buy the C-melody, it might have been interesting to see what expressive effects he achieved.  What is the expressive scope of that horn, given various problems of tuning and indeed everything apart from realising expressive potential?  We also have the example of THE BAD PLUS trio and the pianist Ethan Iverson to demonstrate how while playing all the right notes in the right order it's possible to do everything else countermusically (and not as a joke, they aren't funny!).  
The real question is how much it is possible to do, not just how easy it is to avoid clinkers, on any jazz instrument. Maybe the C-Melody is confined to Tram-lines (sorry!)?




       
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