[Dixielandjazz] Dogfight

[Stephen G Barbone]

Dear Bill:

Condon had many codes for the dogfight. "Listen to That's A Plenty" on  
the Mosaic reissues. Disc 4, Song 5 I think. During the bass solo,  
right before the end before the band comes in on the dogfight, Condon  
says something like barbaricci which IMO signaled the band to come in  
on the dogfight. I'll bet no one ever heard that term before either.

If bands are reading music, and/or playing memorized arrangements,  
there is no need to use the term as everyone knows where to come in.  
So I can understand why you may have never heard the term.

However, I can assure you that I heard the term dogfight often used at  
Condon's joint when the band had a sub or 2 in it. As you know, he  
worked with a lot of musicians and if he did not have his usual  
suspects, he had to cue them where to come in if the band was playing  
a song with several strains and a dogfight between them.

I think almost any touring band using the same personnel etc., as you  
would have heard in OZ, or anywhere for that matter, would be using  
set piece arrangements probably memorized. So they would not need to  
cue the band on where to come in after a solo etc., on dogfight tunes.

Having heard Kenny Davern in many different bands, I can also assure  
you that those bands used the term dogfight and so did he if he was  
fronting a pick-up group. Once again, the term was needed to cue the  
band personnel where to come in after solos in a multi strain tune  
with a dogfight.

And, as you know, several listmates here in US Bands on  both coasts  
use the term dogfight. And apparently the term is "taught" at jazz  
camps. I suspect most working US bands that play a variety of gigs  
sometimes using subs, regularly use the term.

Much of the Dixieland work here, with those bands that play a lot of  
casual gigs, involves sometimes playing with a sub or two. So you need  
to be able to cue them where to come in with terms like "bridge" or  
"dogfight". Or in my band, for example, our bass player was  
unavailable for 4 months because of a cancer operation and I had to  
use several subs. To a man they knew what "dogfight" meant.

Yes, it is my opinion that both OZ and the UK (and the rest of the  
world) have a different view of jazz then most Americans. That is not  
a bad thing, but rather a result of the different filters we have in  
our minds. e.g. British Trad is a bit of an Oxymoron no?

Anyway, IMO jazz developed from Ragtime and March Music as well as  
from popular tunes. So also IMO the terms used in march music/ragtime/ 
pop music would also be used in jazz. Especially terms like"dogfight"  
since early jazz includes March Music. Though I have no idea wether  
Terry Waldo researched the term or where it may appear i older books.

Regarding my "Probably because your musicians skipped the Ragtime era,  
and the Marching Band era as a precursor to the development of jazz."  
I think you misunderstood it. I was referring to the usual story that  
in the US jazz developed from those sources and coalesced into jazz  
about 1917 with a bunch of US jazz bands forming.

I don't think there were too many bands in OZ and the UK that were  
playing jazz say from 1917 to 1925. I could be wrong and you will know  
better than I if I am, but I am of the opinion that jazz bands oversea  
were copies of jazz bands in the USA after we invented the genre.

And, if you did not go to the below site mentioned prior in my note to  
Jack Mitchell, please read it now. (nothing to do with dogfight, but a  
VERY INTERESTING view of early "jazz", by a respected researcher from  
2005)

http://www.odjb.com/Documents/New%20Orleans%20International%20Music%20Colloquium%20ODJB2_Jack%20Stewart.pdf

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband



On Dec 28, 2011, at 6:27 PM, Bill Haesler wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>