[Dixielandjazz] Was: alphonso trent, now Recorded Tempos

[Ken Mathieson]

Hi All,

Marek was entirely right when he wrote:

When Wilbur de Paris recorded "The Pearls" at a tempo MUCH slower than
Morton's, he was criticized by purists.
His reaction was that he had played with Morton, and his was the correct
tempo.  Morton tried  to squeeze all the motives int a three minute 78; he
did not.

It wasn't just Wilbur de Paris who said that: I'm sure I read (probably in William Russell's book Oh! Mr Jelly) that Omer Simeon had said exactly the same thing in his own words. Likewise, I met Spiegle Wilcox many years ago when I was playing with Fat Sam's Band. Spiegle was in the audience at a gig where we had played my arrangement of Bix's In a Mist and he wanted to know why we had played it so much slower than Bix's recording of it. I said it just seemed to work so much better on a musical level at a more relaxed tempo and Spiegle said "Well you know Bix used to play it at around the tempo you played it, but he had to speed it up to get it on a 78." In fact, Bix's recording doesn't quite manage to get the entire composition as published on to the 78.

Fast forward 15 years: after I started my Classic Jazz Orchestra in 2004, we recorded both The Pearls and In A Mist at the tempos we felt were right (The Pearls at 140 bpm and In a Mist at 130 bpm on the up tempo parts and 74 bpm on the slow passages). We rarely play them nowadays, but when we do they come out at pretty well the same tempos. As someone else once commented "it's as though they're telling us how fast they want to be played."

It just goes to show that the purists don't know what they're talking about most of the time and, in any event, a recording is just a snapshot on a particular day; if they all went in the studio a month later it would all come out sounding different.

Cheers,

Ken