[Dixielandjazz] Bill Doggett

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

His organ playing might be all very well, but quite at home on this site is an observation about what a very distinctive pianist he was. 
Identifiable at once, anything but anonymous, without doing anything drastic -- 
bothering with swing, touch and phrasing to an extent which rules out the routine 

Like Marlowe Morris, Ram Ramirez and even begob Sir Charles Thompson (who I understand preferred not to use his feet?!) Doggett was a refugee to the electric stomach (as Humphrey Lyttelton once termed the organ of that entirely other sort) as means of earning a living, 
And for none of them was a piano merely one of a number of alternatives on the other side of an arrangement of ebony and ivory strips.