[Dixielandjazz] Stirring the pot

[Joe Carbery]

Re definitions and other things:

"Dixieland" (as applied to music) conjures up for me a group of portly
grey-haired men in straw boaters (I forget what the appropriate US term is),
striped waistcoats and sleeve-gartered shirts playing multi themed tunes too
fast and with absolutely no feeling. I know Condon's music was described as
dixieland but he loathed the term.

"Trad Jazz" was a term coined by publicists in Britain to describe a very
commercial type of "traditional" jazz, typified by strident banjos and an
attempt to bend all sorts of tunes ( e.g."March of the Siamese Children") to
its idiom in an effort to have a pop-chart hit. Like all such attempts to
popularize jazz (boogie-woogie, the later ragtime revival fuelled by "The
Sting"), it quickly ran out of momentum because the impetus for growth came
not from within the music itself but from the publicists and ad-men.
The term "Trad" was misappropriated and misapplied in the US as a shorthand
for Traditional Jazz and leads to confusion. It's like the anatomical term
"fanny" as used to mean different things in the US and the rest of the
English speaking world.

With regard to Steve Barbone saying certain tunes are jazz tunes by
definition: A tune is not jazz until it's played. On the paper it's not a
jazz tune. "It ain't what you do.........." Or, as Bill Evans said, "Jazz is
a how, not a what."
Re "Jazz Instruments" the same criterion applies. Any instrument can be used
to play jazz if the instrumentalist is skilled enough.

Best Wishes,

Joe Carbery.
On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Rick <rickz at usermail.com> wrote:

> Dixie?   OKOM??
>
> Here's Jimmie Rodgers, doing "Any Old Time" in 1929.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXBWoaRWHrM
>
>  It starts with the typical guitar that we associate with JR and then...
>
> Holy Smoke!!   Here's a ?Dixieland Band??   I think It's dixie!
>
> One of my favorites.   I had an arrangement of "Waiting for a Train" for
> the Colorado Nighthawks, but we never did it.
>
> Rick .
>
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