[Dixielandjazz] Western Swing OKOM

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Milton Brown was a surprise to me when I first heard a recording by the band. 
There are various very interesting things in the early recordings of performers 
whose public place was taken subsequently by so-called Country Music  (Country & 
Astern) when rather than playing up to standardised pop there was some attempted 
updating with indeed the engagement of one or another Dorsey or friends as 
studio sidemen. 


I'm also rather fond of various non-OKOM early Country performances with a 
strong European side -- and of course some of the fiddlers were playing what 
their ancestors had done in an old or Ould country. Great fun too to find a 
cowboy-looking band with song-titles in the original Ukrainian.  


It is interesting if not inspiring to observe the extent to which the Western 
displaced the Swing or the Eastern or the Erin,  and a product for the masses 
vanished into the sausage-machine of fusion with sacrifice of colour and 
character (a process which has of course occurred in the musically larger area 
of jazz).  


I do remember noting, when I heard the young Keith Jarrett and some others 
playing music whose utter jazzlessness (I don't mean anything like OKOM) I noted 
along with various unmistakeable echoes of the more sentimental twiddlings of 
piano-players I once had to endure when (because of y job at the time) lunching 
in Scottish pubs a few decades back --  the scar it left, staggering in dry 
after a hard morning, ordering a beer and seeing that the barmaid was if not 
into petty crime at least Patsy Clyne....  I once had to endure a barmaid 
dilating to one of her customers on the importance of all the b****s who had 
ditched the lady in buckskins whose LP was filling the room (Princess of Wails?) 
to the soulful depth of et cetera. The singer's name wasn't Billie, but I did 
feel I needed a holiday.