[Dixielandjazz] Dogfight

[Bill Haesler]

Stephen G Barbone wrote in reply to my observation:
> Regional indeed, humph! So then is "jazz" regional. Invented in the US of A and copied throughout the rest of the world. But if you are going to copy it, than copy the history also, lest you misinterpret the genre. VBG.
> BTW, many bands, at least in the USA, correctly use the term and leaders using "head" arrangements, will call out "DOGFIGHT" after several solo choruses to indicate where the ensemble should come in.

Dear Steve,
You've done it again old friend and sparing partner.
Misread my email to make your own points.
What I said was:
"In well over 60 years of listening and reading about JAZZ [emphasis], I have never, ever, heard the term 'dogfight' used. 
Until this week. Must be a regional US thing."
Maybe I should have said, "Is it a regional US thing?"
I had in mind your West Coast trad mob.
But Bob Shultz (via Scott Anthony) has shot down that suggestion.
Other listmates have also revealed that it, allegedly, had its origins in early US brass and concert bands.
Maybe so but I repeat, I was talking about JAZZ.
We certainly never used the expression back in the late 40s when I played trombone for several years in the local brass band. 
But then our traditions in this field go back several hundred years to old mother England. Not the US of A.
I've met, and listened to many of your jazzmen and bands live, here and over there, and have never heard the term 'dogfight' used by Eddie Condon, Wild Bill, Kenny Davern, Bob Wilber, Alvin Alcorn, Sammy Price, Art Hodes, Louis Nelson and Turk Murphy. 
Nor, when we were in New Orleans in 1975. And Chicago and San Francisco several times since then.
Then, in a later post, you lectured my dear old Pommy mate, Pat the Lad, with:
"Probably because your musicians skipped the Ragtime era, and the Marching Band era as a precursor to the development of jazz."
Wrong. Ragtime circled the globe, including Australia and Britain, in live performance and via sheet music from the US and was performed by professional Oz musicians in theatres and dance halls from the late 1880s. This is well documented and can be verified from contemporary sources. 
Ditto jazz in 1918. 
"Musicians who picked up on jazz directly from the USA, apparently did not research how it developed in the USA."
I'll take that as your personal opinion.
8>) 
Regarding <http://www.youtu.be/watch?v=EXrJ6E7SKhQ&feature=related>
Uploaded in 2009. His opinion. As are some of his other statements in similar videos.
"In addition to the book section I posted previously, here is another book section explaining the word "dogfight: "Music Listening Today" by Charles Hofer. Page 290."..."Dogfight is a term band directors often use to describe a part of a march in which there is a rapid exchange  of musical material among sections of the band."  
That book was written by a musicologist and first published in 1998.  
Remember the book you put me on to recently?
'struggling to define a nation. american music and the twentieth century' [sic] by musicologist Charles Hiroshi Garrett.
Competent research but full of interesting but distorted interpretations regarding the influences on Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong. And a complete misunderstanding of the classic blues recordings of the 20s. More musicology.
"Or, from a book on Early Circus Marches."
By? Published when? Is JAZZ mentioned?
"The breakstrain separates two statements of the main trio theme.........The original nickname for the breakstrain was evidently 'dog and cat fight' and many older musicians still refer to that term." 
Older JAZZ musicians?
Then to your conclusion. "Anyhow, this is where the term comes from and American Dixieland musicians picked up on it from the beginning of jazz. I guess jazz bands outside the USA copied the music, but not all the conventions." 
I'll take that as another personal unfounded statement.
And, "Heck, it might be fun for these band leaders to be among the first internationally to yell out "DOGFIGHT" during those tunes which contain them."
It would be chaos! 
I can imagine startled JAZZ musicians here, the UK and Europe and even in the US wondering "what the bloody hell is he talking about."
My turn for a VB (one-eyed) G. 
*>)
The term 'dogfight' is not in Robert S Gold's 1975 book 'Jazz Talk', nor mentioned, to my knowledge, by jazz and ragtime experts Rudi Blesh and Conrad Janis's mum Harriet, Edward A Berlin, Ian Whitcomb, Dan Morgenstern (to name a few) or even Gunther Schuller or James Lincoln Collier. 
How about some pre-21st century JAZZ sources?
Does your colleague and ragtime authority Terry Waldo have historical references for the use of the word 'dogfight' in ragtime?
I repeat.
"In well over 60 years of listening and reading about JAZZ [emphasis], I have never, ever, heard the term 'dogfight' used. 
Until this week."
Fact.
Very kind regards as usual,
Bill.