[Dixielandjazz] Pee Wee

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Of course according to Ruby Braff, in among other places the wondrous interview with Jim Godbolt, not liking Pee Wee is associated with a lack of  . . .   
Which people who can't listen to Pee Wee should appreciate is merely a quotation from Braff the abrasive. My own experience of PeeWeephobes (I am a PeeWeephil from the first time I heard him) is of trained clarinetists who cannot tolerate what to them are infractions of tone, an entirely personal matter. 
I recognised some similarity to PeeWee when I first heard Frank Chace, very recently and only shortly before his death, but at the same time -- as I might have remarked in print -- I also heard something in common with Gene Sedric, which suggested to me that there might have been something St. Louis in the broad initial conception, pre-rasp and squawk, etcetera.  A slight sourness, a little like Darnell Howard though less broad-toned. 
 
 
There is also the tale of PeeWee looking somewhat disconcerted when required to play something like a national anthem at one event, and of people supposing he could not play the thing.  It would seem rather that he was the only one who could play the thing, being a thoroughly accomplished and schooled musician.  
 
He had not it seems studied harmony to the extent Coleman Hawkins had, and indeed few musicians of their generation had, so that he did ask Hawkins about what he was doing; and Hawkins reassured him that he was perfectly correct. Whatever the raspy etcetera quality of the sounds made, the man played, indeed PHRASED some very interesting notes and passages.  Somebody should try some of the passages on trumpet, especially where PeeWee builds from an almost toneless squawk to an expansive climax. Especially on a blues. 
And Wally Fawkes did a WONDERFUL Pee Wee's Blues which he might not have recorded.
 
I once mentioned to Kenny Davern some peculiar LPs on the Storyville label, converted to fake stereo (including one I have where Sippie Wallace's voice comes out of one speaker and her own piano accompaniment from another, with symphony hall separation -- as if her hands were at one side of the stage and her voice the other).  I thought it might appeal to his sense of the stupidity of things to report how Pee Wee at times seems to skitter from one side of the stage to the other,  as if revolving round the music which switches from one speaker to another (I think the original was a live 1940s recording).
The report of this alas evoked no mordant witticism. KD said flatly and humourlessly that any issued recording which produced that was just dumb.  
Which is true.