[Dixielandjazz] Fordlandia: The Failure Of Ford's Jungle Utopia

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

I passed on the reference to Henry Ford's desire for a renaissance in non-jazz of an older sort to a Latin-Americanist friend. Who sent me the link below about Henry's rubber plant plans 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105068620

and suggested Henry's next step could have been to send these performers to improve music in Brazil, if his plans there had panned out.

I can see it now, like one of those films of wartime concerts 
the factory is perhaps as quiet as a Swiss concert venue I know
(whose daytime silence is compromised by proximity to a Swiss Army Rifle Range)

and in come the bleached head and bounded bounce of Dolli Partoa 

of the Gradol Dopri singing 

"Stand by Your Machine" 


I think I would prefer Whistlin' Alex Moore's "Rubber-tired Hack"

although there is something to be said for Cleo Gibson's 

"I got Ford Engine Movements in My Hips" turning commerce into art:
developing the rhetoric of a Ford commercial into one for her own performance. 

Mr. Ford presumably also attracted the visually handicapped,  for the virtues of working for him, presumably and fatefully NEVER TRANSLATED INTO PORTUGUESE were recorded by Blind Blake "Goin' to Detroit"

Perhaps Mr, Ford would have regarded the Brazilian music which survives and persists as in need of a new set of springs? 
Then again "Broke Down Engine" (Blind Willie McTell) does suggest something of what has come to be known as heavy metal, although broke down engines do stop, like one or two which in my youth made me realise how limited can be the appeal of the silence of a remote country road. 

Perhaps an OKOM band with a sense of humour might emulate Dick Wellstood's Toronto recording  of "The Entertainer" (which implies all through that he has performed the number considerably more than one time too many) with something called "Trudgin' ('tain't Budgin'?)"  alluding to a contrary of one of the livelier tempos of ambulation etc. cited in Zez Confrey's titles, or the variously qualified (with or without "the Blues" or "by Myself")  1950s "Walkin' " compositions implying a stroll without undue briskness. 
To quote Chris Barber and band and sometime guests 
Walk on!

RRC








Ms. Whitmire, who came to mind earlier, referred not to Horse but Cow, of course, in Texas, on a recording like the later ones of Joseph Lamb indicative of the efforts of younger ragtime pianists to develop their music without it turning into something else. As one can hear on YouTube ///


slainte!
Robert 


From: Michael Stone <michaels at jazzon2.org>

To: 'ROBERT R. CALDER' <serapion at btinternet.com> 
>Sent: Tuesday, 1 May 2012, 22:56
>Subject: Fordlandia: The Failure Of Ford's Jungle Utopia
> 
>
>He wanted to import them to Brazil!
> 
>http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105068620
> 
>From:ROBERT R. CALDER [mailto:serapion at btinternet.com] 
>Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2012 4:15 PM
>To: MichaelStone
>Subject: FORD 
> 
>Reading a newspaper from Jan 1926 a correspondent to a webpage I read  found 
>
>WAR ON JAZZ
>
>Campaign to revive old waltzes..
>Henry Ford, maker of motorcars has declared war on jazz by instituting a
>mass production revival of the old dances which were fiddled in farmhouse,
>kitchen and barn.
>He intends to collect them from old time fiddlers who remember the mellow
>airs.
>It is
claimed by Mr Ford that the old dances are what a jaded generation has
>been looking for.
>The old music,the neighbourly  mingling of people in square dances, the
>rollicking reels and joyous gigs as well as the vocal harmony of the calls
>are all found `he says` to impart a pleasure which the more sophisticated of
>the manufactured dances cannot give.
>
>