[Dixielandjazz] Ben Webster & Danny Boy (was Charlie Parker ~ Dixieland?)

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

I do remember seeing a documentary on Ben Webster, which also had the  eerie 
scene of Ben's Grave with Hal Ashby at his most Websterian playing  in homage. 
Harrysweets (as Buddy Tate called him -- even called to him  when he was trying 
to catch his attention when I was talking to Buddy)  Edison was reminiscing 
about the Webster-Tatum recording session. Sweets  was appalled at the lese 
majeste of Webster stopping one number and  telling Tatum the duties of the 
accompanist -- and how the pianist's oar  should not be put in quite to the 
extent Tatum was doing it. "Ben...  that's Art Tatum you're talking to .... you 
don't say things like that  to Art Tatum..." All those years later Sweets still 
looked shocked. 

Actually the most memorable moment in that whole recording is where  Tatum 
introduces a complex little dancing figure into "All the Things  You Are" -- 
something worthy of Barney Bigard.
I'm fairly sure it was Peterson on the record I remember Humph playing,  and 
have myself. Not that it matters, since that was one case in which  the 
soloist's dream wasn't to be disturbed.  


As Ken Mathieson observes, Parker was doing almost no really new thing,  he was 
doing things which had been done before, but concentrating on  some things to 
the exclusion of others, for musical reasons of his own.  With Jazz as with 
every art there is at one extreme the risk of  narrowness, and the other the 
danger of falling back into a lot of  mutually neutralising qualities. Which is 
something Oscar Peterson could  at times slip into. I always found Parker a bit 
restricted in his  emotional range, circumscribed by the rhythmic conception 
which led  Panassie to declare his music not jazz. Ken's suggestion that Parker  
might have been inspired by the virtuosity of some New Orleans style  
clarinetists certainly has something to it. 


If you want to talk about Parker and older musicians less remote from  the 
interests this site exercises, there's on the one side Rudy  Williams, who did 
amazing things with A; Cooper's Savoy Sultans but  later had his timing mucked 
up by attempts at emulation, and there's  Earle Warren, who integrated his 
lessons from Parker into an overall  conception at home in Dixieland and a wider 
range of contexts. Like some  wonderful clarinet on a Henry Allen LP, a quartet 
gig with Laurie  Chescoe on BBC radio. A successor of Trumbauer? 

Of course the really amusing thing about Bruce Turner's appearance on alto in  
Humph's 1950s band being greeted with GO HOME, DIRTY BOPPER is that Bruce not  
only disliked Parker's music but spelled out what he regarded as its  
deficiencies.