[Dixielandjazz] Buck Clayton Jam Session LP

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

As I recall, and the details should be in the Mosaic set, one of the sides of the Buck Clayton jam session CD was originally issued in an edited form, so that instead of hearing Urbie Green develop an idea stated earlier by Henderson Chambers the listener got the equivalent of Henderson Chambers following up with a snippet from Urbie Green's solo.  I am sketchy about the details (which were probably in the sleevenote of the mid-price reissue of the jam sessions c.1970) but obviously this indicates that somebody thought switching the course of the performance around lessened impressions of monotony by pushing one bit of the sequence into an earlier position.
Perhaps some misguided person supposed there was a sort of extra interest in Urbie's solo when what he was really hearing was the echo of the Henderson Chambers bit?  

There is always the problem with performances such as those, of falling between the one ideal of the symphonic poem, and the other of music to drink along with. Some sections fall into a background category, others thrust themselves forward and the glasses go down as distractions from attention, and to leave both hands free for applause. Of course if everybody is really going, and on form, the solo determines its own length -- when Bobby Watson did his Johnny Hodges programme in Edinburgh a few years back, it was nice to see him convening meetings in the middle of one and another performance and deciding with Alan Barnes and Joe Temperley and Bancroft the saxophone etc. on riff support etc. Just like a general on the battlefield meeting with officers to organise the continued pursuit of the battle. In fact even more like Buddy Tate on the bandstand doing the identical business. 
If you want an extended Dixieland performance get a chair or two, and let two hornmen have the floor letting the other(s) sit out, and forget any notion of so many bars each. 
Let alone Mulligan and Brookmeyer, there have been and are two-man front lines -- and either three together or simply a solo is just too limited an approach.