[Dixielandjazz] Cool trumpet players

[Stephen G Barbone]

I think kids play cool trumpet because that's what they hear.

Think back, oldster musicians, to what you heard when you first  
started to play jazz. For me, a reed player I was first hearing  
Bechet, Dodds, Darnell Howard, on the radio. So I tried to play hot  
like them. Then I heard Goodman and Shaw so I tried to play like them.

Then I started playing in a High School Dixieland Band at the same  
time as I was being taken to jazz clubs in NYC. I saw Edmond Hall, Sol  
Pace, Bechet again, George Lewis, Steve Lacy Omer Simeon and a bunch  
of others. So I borrowed a little more.

There was no jazz taught in my schools back then. It was considered  
degenerate music.

Then I went to Loft sessions with a young Kenny Davern and played  
along side them, and a group of players like Bobby Gordon. Then, as a  
teen,  I sat in at Nicks and other joints, and finally, in college,  
started playing gigs with some of the Dixieland greats in bands at the  
Melody Lounge, The Kit Kat and the Hotel Carleton Rathskeller etc.  
(with Bob Haggart, Yank Lawson, Pee Wee Irwin, Miff Mole, Charlie  
Traeger, Lee Gifford, Jack Fay and others)

Then I saw Tony Scott, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Al Cohn, Jimmy  
Hamilton, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus,  
Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Max Roach, Duke Ellington, Count  
Basie,  el al at other clubs. And so my jazz horizons were further  
broadened

That was a rich musical environment.

Now, where can a jazz wannabe get that today? There isn't much on  
radio or TV. There are not a lot of Jazz Nightclubs. Yes at least in  
NYC, there is a lot of "hot" jazz but it isn't OKOM by any stretch.  
And the schools teach Miles and cool jazz, except for a few that also  
teach Maynard and Kenton..

Then to top it off, many old fart Dixieland bands don't want the kids  
to sit in. And many old fart Dixieland bands don't play hot either.  
Most of them fell off the Festival scene.

So why should we expect kids today to play hot?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband