[Dixielandjazz] Pee Wee

[Charles Kercher]

Enjoyed your posting about Pee Wee!  chuck
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ROBERT R. CALDER" <serapion at btinternet.com>
To: <ekercher at tampabay.rr.com>
Cc: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 1:22 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Pee Wee


> 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.
>
>
>
>
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