[Dixielandjazz] Empirical Recordings..Who Where They?

[Mazie Havens]

Bud,
I'd like the Halen/Queen City restoration CD.  Give me an address so I can send you a check.
FYI  I'm Dan Havens, once ldr of The Boll Weevil JB (Ann Arbor, MI).  When I moved to Cinci in the early 60s, Carl Halen had had some ear surgery and was told not to blow his horn, so he asked me to take over the cornet, while he played guitar. By then, the original GB7 format (banjo/tuba) had modrenized to gtr/sb, as had Carl's preferred style--far more Bixish and embellished than in his early days w/ Mayl's DRK. Also we played a lot of straight dance gigs (as opposed to jazz clubs, which were pretty much gone then), AND the so-called dixieland revival was running out of gas among the younger audience, for whom "In the Mood" was the beginning of jazz.
By that time, too, Mayl had pretty much put aside his sousaphone for sb, as well as the charts/lead sheets  he used with the DRK. I worked in his bands a lot--mostly Condon-style dixie/4 beat, etc, tho once in awhile he'd pick up his tuba and we'd do something in the Watters style. Mayl didn't have anything steady then (like the Hitching Post gig in Dayton in the mid-50s), and--I'm guessing--it became harder for him to pick up sidemen who could do the Watters trad stuff, tho a lot of older swing players (big band fugitives) could play the "dixie" standards. Then, too, Gene often did brief road swings, one nighters here and there, picking up sidemen enroute. He didn't want to haul both sousaphone and sb on the road, so he used sb. Mayl would hire some interesting players to play , loosely, 4-beat classic jazz, with a lot of swing/riff tunes mixed in. One night we used the ex-Ellington trombonist, Booty Wood, a bop alto sax man whose name I can't recall, and Clarence Hall on piano. Hall had started life as Ma Rainey's DRUMMER, but later switched to a Kansas City-styled piano. Did we play some dixie? Sure....well, those tunes like "Struttin' with Some Barbecue," which adapt well to swing. (Surprise! Surprise: Louie was, from the beginning, a swing player....never trad.)
Anyway, tell me where to mail you the $12.
Dan Havens