[Dixielandjazz] Kenny Baker & Chris Barber

[Ken Mathieson]

Hi Gang,

To pick up on a couple of threads currently running, I remember hearing some of the Kenny Baker recreations of the Hot 5s and 7s (The Louis Armstrong Connection) when they first came out and remember thinking "interesting experiment, but why bother?" Kenny was a truly exceptional trumpeter and all the others on the records were outstanding players (George Chisholm, Vic Ash etc), but it did sound as though it had been thoroughly rehearsed and everyone was reading off the dots, and that it was missing that electric sense of instant creativity which is so apparent in the Armstrong originals. It was also very incongruous hearing highly skilled and sophisticated players like Chisholm and Ash recreating some of the more erratic playing of Ory and Dodds.

There's a bit about the project in the article below. I think it's all the one URL, which you'll have to copy and paste into your browser:

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:uza91rdR_5MJ:www.wordtrade.com/arts/music/jazzR.htm+Kenny+Baker%2BArmstrong+Hot+Five&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

Re Barber's Petite Fleur, I seem to remember that Barber played bass on the original recording and that they had got the tune slightly wrong (again from memory I think there's an extra bar in one of the themes), so every band in UK played it wrong, even after Bechet's correct version was released here.

Cheers,

Ken Mathieson
www.classicjazzorchestra.org.uk