[Dixielandjazz] Super Bowl National Anthem

[Roy (Bud) Taylor]

This performance by Christina Aguilera was acquiescence to the current
notion that "good" art is defined by what the public wants.  (Or what the
new youth promoters are defining as what the public wants.)  This is
epitomized by the television series "America's Got Talent" a program that
she is now a judge with.  My wife and I saw the movie Burlesque that starred
Ms.Aquilera and Cher Bono to portray a Burlesque club on Sunset Strip.  Boy,
was this ever a fantasy and entertained us about as poorly as did the entire
Super Bowl show (outside of the actual game itself.).

Burlesque was a degeneration of vaudeville in my opinion and at its best was
somewhat seedy and taking advantage of the people, both the performers and
the patrons.  It was the closest thing to XXX movies that one could attend
without actually seeing anything more revealing than a string bikini. This
is not how the Burlesque show was portrayed in the movie. The movie showed a
fantastically lighted club stage that included a clean and spacious dressing
room and customs as elaborate as you might find in a Vegas show. The five
piece band included a tuba on the sound track, but not even a string bass on
screen. Christina was a just kid from Iowa that just HAD to get a lead spot
as singer and dancer and this show was in her gunsights. The owner (Cher)
was trying to make the club work so she could pay the mortgage.  In spite of
the fact that she filled the house with $50 a seat patrons, she was facing
foreclosure.

As a kid in high school in the 1950s, part of the process of "coming of age"
was to attend the Burlesque Show at the Palace Theatre in Buffalo.  They
still had a couple of comedians, but dirty jokes had become the norm.  By
the 1960s in Rochester, there were two burlesque shows that hired house
bands.  These consisted of 2 or 3 piece bands that played drum heavy music
while the girls (mostly in their mid-thirties) would bump and grind until
the brassiere was finally  removed just as the house lights were doused.
Over the years we have been privy to playing in clubs who were balancing
between keeping the electricity turned on and trying all kinds of
entertainment to manage some cash flow.  Soft drugs (and probably some hard
drugs) were available for bar change.  They did not spend any funds on
amenities for the performers.  They often tried to bargain their way out of
the agreed pay for the band, even on good nights.  In one place, the band
assembled in the basement to get ready for the show.  This was illuminated
by a couple of lights on extension cords and smelled only slightly worse
than the rest rooms upstairs. So the Burlesque show featured in the movie
was totally a fantasy while the shows portrayed were vocal gargling up and
down the harmonics to lyrics that did not have to be accurate.

Poor Ms Aguilera didn't realize that the Star Spangled Banner deserves to be
sung correctly and with honor to all the past that America cherishes.
However, I did notice some of the football players had tears in their
eyes...so maybe we have to give in to the "America's Got Talent" standards
that are defining the future.


Roy (Bud) Taylor
Smugtown Stompers Jazz Band
Rochester, New York
Traditional Jazz since 1958
"we ain't just whistling dixie!"