[Dixielandjazz] Lu Watters

[Marek Boym]

> LU WATTERS*
>
> Oddly, because he was only a moderately talentedtrumpet player, Lu Watters
> became one ofthe most influential
> musicians inthe whole of jazz. It was he who  started the traditional jazz
> revival which eventually produced musi­cians like Chris Barber, Hum­phrey
> Lyttelton,
> Acker Bilk and the entire revivalist movement ofthe Forties and Fifties.

Yes, Lu Watters was the man who invented traditional jazz as we know
it.  He became so influential not due to his proficiency on the
cornet, but because he had the vision to revive traditional jazz.
>
> At the height of the Swing era in 1938 some writers were insist­ing that jazz ... had moved too far away from thetrue New Orleans music.
> Thesewriters and many fans were de­manding a return to what
> they saw to be something purer and LuWatters set out to provide it.

> Turning profes­sional, he toured with Carol Lofner's band where he stayed
> forfive years and then sailedto
> China as a ship's musician.

And was a proficient big band arranger.
>


> Ycrba Buena Jazz Band. It made its debut at the 1939
> SanFranciscoWorld'sFair.Thegroup
> was devoted to the authen­tic recreation of the music of JellyRoll Morton
> and particularly JoeKing Oliver.
>
> Watters and Bob Scobey pro­vided a two-cornet lead for theband in the way
> that Louis Arm­strong and Joe had done in theKing Oliver band a couple of
> de­cades
> before.

But his style, though modelled on King Oliver and Morton, was very
different, as if harking back even farther.


>
> The Yerba Buena jazz band(Yerba Buena-"Good Earth"- was the original name of
> SanFrancisco) used a tuba and abanjo in the rhythm section, asopposed to
> string bass and guitar in the conventional bands of the time.
>
> This meant that the band had mo­mentum rather than lift, and it didnot swing
> so much as lurch.

For many years, the "misguided Watterites" would deny this.  But the
band certainly tended to thump.  Both Murphy's  and Scobey's later
bands had a much more flowing rhythm.


 >"It certainly is
> funny to hear those youngsters trying to play like
> oldmen," was trumpeter Bobby Hackett's comment on the band.

I wonder.  Watters was four years Hackett's senior, and Murphy was
born the same year as Hackett.  Certainly not youngsters to him!



<However his music sur­vives,most notably
> in the recreation of his recreation by the Merseysippi Jazz Band, formed to play
> Watters music in 1948 and still, with most of the original band members still there, playing it today.

I have heard the Merseys more than once, both live and on record.  In
1989 they might have been a West Coast style band, but the band I know
(still with some original members) is a very polished and swinging
band, and does not use a brass bass (even as far back as 1954 it used
a string bass)

Cheers
>

>
> /Lucius//`Lu"Watters, trumpeter,  band leader, composer, born SantaCruz
> California 19 December 1911,died
> Santa Rosa California 5 No­vember 1989./
>
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