[Dixielandjazz] bixing jesse james

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

One of the ultimate benign Bixings concerns the pianist and singer who called himself Jesse James 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x75WmATNzYM&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=AVGxdCwVVULXe7gI-s65Y3Ff5pxqYuoTJS


Malignant Bixing is of course "Clarence Williams, hotcha clarinet merchant" (Melody Maker 1930s, cited in the notes to a Fontana LP of considerable antiquity) or the Readers' Digest tribute to Ellington which cited his concerted compositions and mini-concerti, and said he also composed simple pop-songs like "Do Nothin' till You Hear From Me" (I do remember long ago Ellingtonians discussing the minute differences between the vocal adaptation of that name and the original "Concerto for Cootie")  

The Jesse James was at last identified as a performer longtime resident in Cincinnati -- what is benign in the standard Bixing of him is that the story of a convicted murderer taken in chains to a studio to record as the granting of his last request (not one thinks plausible in the case of an African-American in 1936) does actually serve as a metaphor of the intensity of  his 'Lonesome Day Blues' 

It was a little undermined by the recording of a bawdy song at the same date, 'Sweet Patuni' bootlegged once as 'Ramrod' which is musically interesting because it's a dialogue and instead of the last and rude word of each of the first couplets the alternating couplet comes in at a higher interval of the chord and the key changes for the next eight bars. Great fun. 

Only in his dissonant playing is this James unique, and he is unique. Perhaps from some pre-blues pre-jazz source James transferred to piano -- the song forms are rather like chain gang repertoire 

Fortunately, although James never recorded again, it wasn't the prospect of death the following day that so wonderfully composed his performance. The standard references to a lack of discipline in his playing are silly, and indeed a different form of Bixing --  a heckuva lot of discipline is necessary to sustain the dissonances they way he does. 


what would dixieland be without disciplined dissonances!

Robert