[Dixielandjazz] Hot Club of Cowtown

[Dixiejazzdata]

That Western Swing sound was Bob wills and Texas answer to embrace Jazz
as presented by Django Reinhardt and his Hot Club, a natural evolution of the music
by hip players with big enough ears and ideas to add their own improvisational ideas 
to jazz of the day.  Just like in personal opinion, Django borrowed from Gypsy Music to make his own sound.

Then did not the Dorsey's expand upon the Western Swing sound bringing it back to more horn influenced ?

Music is nothing but a bunch of notes, it's what you do with them, and How you play them that makes them Swing and interesting or NOT!

 





Now this is what I mean.  The Hot Club of Cowtown sounds, at least on

After You've Gone, very jazzy.  If this is western swing, the answer

is unequivocal yes.  But it isn't always.

Cheers



On 8 January 2011 17:27, Stephen G Barbone <barbonestreet at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Is Western Swing OKOM? Before reading the below, check out:

>

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YUI15MuoRY&feature=related

>

> Cheers,

> Steve Barbone

> www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

>

>

> Swing That’s Smoked and Saucy and Will Stick

>

> NY TIMES - By JON CARAMANICA - January 7, 2011

>

>

> Thursday night, in the basement of Hill Country Barbecue Market, where pork

> ribs and slices of brisket are eaten off slick butcher paper and the napkins

> are rolls of paper towels, the smell of Texas was almost as pungent as the

> sound.

>

> “It certainly smelled like Austin when we walked in the door tonight,” said

> Elana James, fiddler for Hot Club of Cowtown, the revivalists of hot jazz,

> western swing and, in the case of at least one member, tight and slick

> pompadours.

>

> But thanks to an arsenal full of technique and joy, drawing attention from

> the nose to the ear proved easy for this group, composed of Ms. James, Whit

> Smith on guitar and Jake Erwin on upright bass and, presumably, Brylcreem.

>

> Individually, they’re all tremendous players, though as singers, they’re far

> less forceful. (Ms. James and Mr. Smith split lead vocal duties.)

> Nevertheless, Hot Club of Cowtown knows every workaround, every gambit,

> every way to patch its sound whole.

>

> They play loose with tempos, speeding and slowing both the songs and the

> playing inside them. They tweak the dynamics, putting their best sounds

> forward at any given moment: on a cover of a song by Dorado Schmitt, the

> French Gypsy guitar player, Mr. Smith played snarling, angsty guitar

> filigrees until Ms. James stepped up and snatched the song with easy

> swagger.

>

> There’s the virtuosic fiddling of Ms. James — she’s played with Bob Dylan’s

> band — and the aerobic workout that is Mr. Erwin’s bass playing. And there’s

> the band’s elemental warmth. Even a melancholy number described by Mr. Smith

> as “if Kurt Weill had been born in West Texas” was deeply affable.

>

> Several songs were drawn from the band’s new album, “What Makes Bob Holler”

> (Proper American), to be released next month and consisting wholly of

> interpretations of songs by the western swing pioneers Bob Wills and His

> Texas Playboys. Recorded in single takes and modestly produced, it’s one of

> the most consistent Cowtown albums, a showcase for its vibrant and sometimes

> risky faithfulness to the genre.

>

> A brief intermission followed the group’s first set, after which it returned

> for a second, less ambitious one, a lighthearted saunter that relied less on

> skill and more on collective, and possibly slightly soused, good cheer in

> the room. Mr. Smith expressed anxiety — genially, of course — on Wills’s

> “She’s Killing Me.” Ms. James sang a bittersweet song she’d written about

> her high school reunion. Mr. Smith winked his way through “Roly Poly,” which

> was popularized by Wills, and verged on lounge shtick during the standard

> “Cheek to Cheek.”

>

> On a cover of Tom Waits’s “Long Way Home,” the group tried its most complex

> three-part harmony, though it was overly tentative, as if the band members

> weren’t sure where to place all the voices at once.

>

> But just before the end of the night, during a cover of the Light Crust

> Doughboys’ western swing chestnut “Pussy Pussy Pussy,” Cowtown roared back.

> Mr. Smith and Mr. Erwin kept prodding Ms. James: “Ma’am, is this your cat?”

> It wasn’t, she proclaimed, as she teasingly coaxed naughty meows from her

> fiddle.

>

>

> _______________________________________________

> To unsubscribe or change your e-mail preferences for the Dixieland Jazz

> Mailing list, or to find the online archives, please visit:

>

> http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz

>

>

>

> Dixielandjazz mailing list

> Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com

>



_______________________________________________

To unsubscribe or change your e-mail preferences for the Dixieland Jazz Mailing 

list, or to find the online archives, please visit:



http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz







Dixielandjazz mailing list

Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com