[Dixielandjazz] Maryland My Maryland - Was O Tannenbaum

[Steve Voce]

GEORGE WEBB

The music that pianist George Webb played in London in 1941 with his first band, Spider Webb and His Cobs, was the first “English”
  New Orleans-styled jazz ever played in this country. Although an amiable man, Webb was as much a crusader as a pioneer and his
struggles in the early days gave birth eventually to the Trad jazz boom of the Fifties typified by the bands of Acker Bilk and Chris
Barber. In Webb’s heyday, the musicians and their audiences were partisan and there never can have been so much hatred in jazz
as there was between the followers of Bebop and the adherents of what came to be known as “revivalism”. With the name changed
to George Webb’s Dixielanders, the Webb band became the citadel of jazz retrogression. Webb’s piano playing, based broadly on that
of Jelly Roll Morton, tended to trundle rather than to swing.

   Born in the East End of London, Webb’s father and his uncle had a singing harmony act in variety. At the beginning of World War Two
Webb (and three other members of his band-to-be) worked in the machine gun department at the local Vickers-Armstrong factory.
  Webb had already taught himself the piano and organised a band from the staff to entertain his fellow workers. His first New
Orleans-styled band began to play in public in 1942.

   Webb’s trombonist in those early days was a mild mannered and gifted man called Eddie Harvey, who plays delicate modern jazz piano
to this day. Harvey, even then a forward thinker, was caught fraternising with dance band and ‘modern’ musicians and was called to a
Kangaroo Court by the rest of the band. He was ordered to explain his aberration and instructed to desist from it and return to the true
purity of the real music. Jim Godbolt, the band’s manager when it became semi-professional, recalled “I was present at this meeting.
George Webb led for the prosecution. I shudder in recollection of its absurdity.”

   Although Webb’s band by now had the title George Webb’s Dixielanders it followed the New Orleans party line relentlessly and
benefited from another dogma when it was booked for a series of concerts in central London by the Young Communist league.
“Liberals” of the day revered the music as an expression of working class culture.

  The band’s regular weekly home was out of town at the less than glamorous but now legendary Red Barn pub at Barnehurst in Kent.
By now Webb had collected two cornet players, a clarinet, a trombone, a tuba, a banjo player and a drummer. Some were only learners
but the band tried, with enthusiasm rather than skill, to emulate the two-cornet lead that had been created back in 1923 by King Oliver
and Louis Armstrong in King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band.

In an attempt to get in to hear the music without paying, the band entered the “Melody Maker” dance band competition.
Understandably it didn’t do well in the Waltz category, but its music stood out so starkly from that of the other bands that it was given a
  huge amount of publicity.

   “To our great surprise we were adjudged third,” said Webb. “This happening was to become the curtain-raiser to the start of the
Jazz Revival and writers have credited us with starting it from that day to the present.”

   The band was paid £40 for recording four titles for Decca, and several broadcasts for the BBC followed.

   In those early days the only good musicians in the Webb band were Harvey, Wally Fawkes (later to become the cartoonist Trog and a
world-class jazz clarinettist) and, from 1947, trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton.

    “Jazz was a serious music to be studied,” wrote Lyttelton, “and you couldn’t give it your full attention if you were being buffeted and
trampled underfoot by dancers. At the Red Barn, people who jigged about in their chairs too vigorously were discouraged by petulant
frowns from their neighbours.

   “I joined George Webb’s Dixielanders in 1947, when hostilities with the Modernists were still at their height. Although still amateur
in spirit, they had by this time risen financially to the status of semi-professionals...We were in deadly earnest about our jazz. Every
job was followed by an intense post-mortem, in which the faults in our performance were picked out and examined.”

   The Dixielanders disbanded in 1948 when Lyttelton decided to form his own band. Webb joined it and Wally Fawkes made the
transition too. It was then that the great Lyttelton-Fawkes partnership matured.

     Webb, a small man best described as a Cockney sparrow, was an amiable fellow gifted with a sharp sense of humour. When the
Humphrey Lyttelton band arrived for a gig at a faceless town hall near George’s home, Lyttelton couldn’t find the way into the building.

   “Where’s the front?” he asked Webb.

   “Round the back,” piped George.

    Although he had trouble climbing onto piano stools, Webb’s diminutive size proved an advantage when the Lyttelton band was in
the Parlophone recording studio. Someone threw a cigarette end into a barrel of plastic swarf, refuse from a disc-cutting machine.
The studio immediately filled with flames and dense smoke. The band realised that the smoke hung about two feet off the floor,
and the tiny Webb was sent in to scurry around underneath the thick black cloud and rescue the instruments.

   Webb stayed with the Lyttelton band until 1951 when Lyttelton’s music began to move forward from the New Orleans ideal. Webb
gave up fulltime playing and then ran several jazz clubs and worked as a booking agent. He remained a legendary figure and appeared
at festivals and jazz anniversaries, although he didn’t often play.

   He returned in 1972 to lead another band for two years and then continued to play over the years at his own pubs and at the many
Lyttelton band reunions.

                     Steve Voce

George Horace Webb, pianist, bandleader: born London 8 October 1917, married Minah (deceased; one son deceased, one daughter);
died London 10 March 2010.




On 23/12/2010 11:14, Judy Eames wrote:
> On 23/12/2010 00:03, Stephen G Barbone wrote:
>>
>>
>> This was the start of the N.O Revival after WW 2. Swept the USA back 
>> then and probably was the basis for British Trad.
>>
> George Webb who died this year is credited with the UK 
> classic/dixieland jazz revival. He started a Dixieland band in 1941 ( 
> he was a machine gun fitter so didn't have to join the forces)
>
> The "trad" boom started over a decade later and Humphrey Lyttelton, 
> who was in George's band for a while was part of that boom. I 
> certainly remember "Maryland" being a great favourite around 1960. 
> People are often amazed to find that Barber, Bilk and Ball are not 
> only still alive but still playing. Kenny Ball was "sprung" from 
> hospital a few months ago to fulfill a gig commitment.
>
> George was a regular at the Donnington Christmas parties and will be 
> very much missed this year.
> If you'd like to know a bit more about him here's a link to an obituary.
>
> www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/7442993/George-Webb.html
>
> Jude
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