[Dixielandjazz] King Oliver

[Ken Mathieson]

Hi all,

Many thanks for all the info about King Oliver and his various arrangers. Thanks too to Bill Haesler for the link to the Melrose Collection in the Library of Congress - fascinating stuff. All the discussion sent me scurrying to listen to the complete Brunswick, Vocalion & Victor recordings on the Frog label. If you don't have these, it's worth seeking them out. Sound restoration was by the late and much-missed John R.T. Davies and there are loads of alternative takes (although it has to be said there is sometimes very little musical difference, even in the solos, between takes).

My band, the Classic Jazz Orchestra, already plays Sweet Like This and I'm Watching the Clock but following my listening session, there are a few others that I'll think about arranging. One certainty is Slow and Steady, which somehow passed me by on earlier listenings. It also dawned on me that my arrangement of I'm Watching the Clock is something of a compendium of that title and Oliver's Can I Tell You (not really surprising, since they are the same tune, but with slightly different arrangements). My chart has re-voiced the parts radically, but I kept the clarinet duet from Can I Tell You  and tacked on the duet from Watching the Clock as a second chorus. When the two choruses are played one after the other, there is a natural thematic progression from the first to the second, which (to my ears) makes for a more satisfying passage.

Regards,

Ken Mathieson
www.classicjazzorchestra.org.uk