[Dixielandjazz] More Time Machine

[Ken Mathieson]

Hi Folks,

You've pinpointed some of jazz's crucial events over the last few days on this thread and come up with some great suggestions, so trhanks for making it so varied and interesting.

I've got a couple of more off-the-wall suggestions: One would be to drop into Jelly Roll's rehearsals for his abortive big band project in LA in 1940/41. He had written a pile of charts, some of them new compositions, some re-thinks of existing works, and had tried unsuccessfully to sell them to the likes of Goodman. A very few of the scores survived and are in the HNOC in New Orleans, but it would be marvellously instructive to hear the whole repertoire in order to see how Jelly rehearsed his bands and to see where he had got to stylistically. For all his self-importance, he had wide-open ears and must have assimilated a lot from other composers, arrangers and pianists, although he would almost certainly have denied it.

Another would be to drop into the after hours joint in Toledo Ohio the night in the late 1920s, when the Fletcher Henderson band came in to hear a young local pianist called Art Tatum. The city slickers were totally blown away by Tatum's harmonic adventurousness, audacity, technique and imagination, so much so that Coleman Hawkins completely rethought his approach to soloing as a result of hearng him that night.

Actually this raises an important point: that the truly outstanding players have a very short formative period and emerge into the public consciousness more or less fully formed. It's the public (and other musicians) who have to catch up. Tatum's earliest records contain most aspects of his mature style, as did Armstrong's, Bechet's, Teagarden's, Getz's etc. All that's missing is the polish, the pacing of solos etc that comes with experience.

Cheers,

Ken Mathieson
www.classicjazzorchestra.org.uk