[Dixielandjazz] In search of a non-tragic jazz hero

[Bert]

If I might make a suggestion:
Benny Carter seems to have been a very decent person and pretty succesfull swingband leader/arranger/player of woodwinds and brass.
- A great arrangement was his sax chorus on Charleston Is The Best dance After All, 1928
- Some of his compositions have easy melodies, When Lights Are Low, Blue In My Heart, so might be usefull in educational purposes.
- He was leading succesfull racially mixed bands in Europe allready in the mid thirties.  (Before Goodman did, who usually gets lots of credit)
- He reached a very high age. Always very much respected.
- Did not drink. Did not chase the girls.
I spoke to a old woman once, Mrs Muller. Her parents rented rooms in the Hague in the '30's. Benny Carter lived at their place, so the woman became friendly with him at the time. She assured me that Benny always was a perfect gentleman. Not drinking, not smoking and touring decently together with his wife. :-)
She also told me that Benny decided that since he was living in Holland, he needed a bike, and he took her to the shop to choose a good one. So she was very proud to have been sitting on the back of a bike brandnew owned by Benny Carter!
He also made some fantastic recordings with Coleman Hawkins and Django Reinhardt.
And later he also wrote music for films.

Just a thought,
Kind regards,
Bert Brandsma

> Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2014 21:44:32 -0500
> From: garym at teledyn.com
> Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] In search of a non-tragic jazz hero
> CC: dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
> To: mister_bertje at hotmail.com
> 
> thanks for all the tips; I may now have a few ideas to do a few more
> years of shows and I will be hunting up that Creole Trombone book (esp
> since Ory is our trombonist's fave too)
> 
> my hope and *dream* is to attract enough kids who will take music
> seriously enough to (a) get an instrument (b) practice and (c) nag
> their parents sufficient to let them join our band that I can count on
> them to be at every show ( 'c' is a surprisingly difficult step) so I
> can put together even a 3214 lineup that would be the *minimum*
> hot-jazz swing band a la Lunceford or Goodman or Dorsey etc -- I have
> heaps of charts for such an ensemble, my trouble is the mrs has
> declared a moratorium on us having more kids of our own (which is fair
> since we're both well over 50) and other folks kids have progressively
> more trouble with parts a b and then c :(
> 
> but I keep hoping!
> 
> On 12/9/14, Charles Suhor <csuhor at zebra.net> wrote:
> > Going back to your criteria below, it seems that you're looking to get
> > (a) the most educational mileage (vis a vis the history of jazz)
> > (b) a good story (some drama in it) that
> > (c) doesn't have basic negativity or a bad role model (alcoholism),
> > (d) with accessible charts for the live band to play as "illustrations."
> >
> > Louis was perfect for this, but a lot of great players don't fill the bill
> > well for one or more of the criteria. As an educator, I'd be focused on (a)
> > as a starting point. Since you've done Louis, maybe swing era figures like
> > the Dorsey Brothers, Glenn Miller, Goodman, or Duke Ellington would meet all
> > the standards. An interesting question--thanks for posting.
> >
> > Charlie
> >
> > On Dec 9, 2014, at 2:24 PM, Gary Lawrence Murphy wrote:
> >
> >> just to be clear, we're not *telling* them about jazz music, we
> >> *demonstrate* the music by playing it for them -- it is a musical
> >> show, so what we need to do is to bring together 15 or so tunes that
> >> can be strung together to tell the story.
> >>
> >> would be very hard to do a Bria Skolberg with myself cast in the lead
> >> role -- even youngsters can only suspend belief so far before it snaps
> >> ;)
> >>
> >> The Dorsey Brothers or even to build a show around Nat Shilkret or
> >> Goldman's band is maybe a workable idea, it binds together what was
> >> happening in the pre-war Chicago that is then channelled into the
> >> swing era by the youngsters in the band!
> >
> >
> 
> 
> -- 
> *Teledyn Addendum: teledyn blogspot ca*
> *eso: **EighthStreetOrchestra blogspot ca*
> 
> _______________________________________________
> To unsubscribe or change your e-mail preferences for the Dixieland Jazz Mailing list, or to find the online archives, please visit:
> 
> http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz
> 
> 
> 
> Dixielandjazz mailing list
> Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com