[Dixielandjazz] Non-old age stride piano

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

One of the problems afflicting "dixieland" -- and with a lot of jazz -- has been the moronic press non-coverage of the music, going back to the British Klutz in the 1930s who referred to Clarence Williams patronisingly as "hotcha clarinet music". And the hacks thereafter who deploy a vocabulary of casual intimacy talking of things known only at second hand and out of focus....
And another one has been the equally simplifying failure of some musicians to appreciate that there are some aspects of their music which the moral lethargy of the press and similar factors have rendered inaudible to lots of people. Something gets recognised as "dixieland" and immediately misclassified as something called "dixieland" which may be dixieland but which sure is mediocre, and not only do a lot of people not hear much beyond the original classification of the music, they hear only the background noise of non-surprise which confirms them in their delusion. 

I suspect what gets called OKOM here tended to get clogged up during the period when "dixieland" was marketed as pop music, and when saxophones were stigmatised on account of their accusers' lack of interest in history and music. It's a great shame nobody recorded the trio of Lonnie Johnson on twelve-string guitar, Frank Melrose on piano (a sort of marriage of Bix and Jelly) and Lee Collins on trumpet. 
That sort of thing surely cries out for emulation, or the 1950s band Bob Koester told me about, in which the St. Louis clarinetist Norman Mason worked with guitarists -- and in which other sources suggest Mason was much happier than when compelled to abandon his native style he played the stock sub-dixieland band music paid for by customers not interested in listening,


Robert R. Calder