[Dixielandjazz] Dixieland, Fletcher

[Bert]

Hello,
Nice conversation devellopping here.
A few thing that I would like to add :
- Fletcher Henderson's band before Armstrong was not a live playing band, it was for recording purposes only.(Fletcher had heard Armstrong in N.O. while he was on tour backing a blues singer, might have been Ethel Waters, but not with his regular band, in fact a load of rather well paid New York session musicians were not very keen about going on tour, and certainly not to the south)
- Henderson had strong connections in the world of music publicers. He worked for Black Swan, the first big publishing company in the hands of Afro-Americans.First only to demonstrate in the shop how the sheet music sounded. Fletcher was a prety good sight reader. (as were most of the later Henderson band members)
- Black Swan started a record company with the sole purpose to sell more copies of the sheet music. At first they had big successes during the blues craze, when Fletcher with smaller bands backed singers. Actually that had not even been the goal, but it brought money.
- Pretty soon the blues craze was over. The reason why the bands went to 3 reeds, 3 brass and later even more was simply because the stock arrangements of the day were written for that number of musicians. Carefull analys of Ellington's recorded output shows that even in his band lots of stocks were used. It was definitly not all Ellingtonia.But both the Henderson and Ellington bands had a practise to "doctor" the stocks, they would insert solos, or release a clarinet player, like Bigard or Buster Bailey in the out chorus, to give it an exiting ending.That is simply because some ODJB records had sold very well. They never had the intention to make that the only goal, but some influences from that were incorporated that might give it some extra variation and exitement.
After Black Swan collapsed, Fletcher's office was still where the publicers were located. That is no coincidence.
- Another influence that should never be overlooked is Paul Whiteman and Adrian Rollini's outfits. Rollini's influence on Hawkins is way too much overlooked.
- What my current band leader, Chris Barber thinks about the highest achievement in both the Dixieland or/and New Orleans styles is to arrive at a point of CONVERSATION. This is when the horns more or less improvise simultaniously while listening to each other AND reacting to each other. A few set of "rules" to make it sound better are :
- avoid doubling of lines. A unison note in itself is no problem, but should release in seperate ways.- leave gaps, to give room to the collegues- usually best results come when trumpet stays in the middle register, trombone not too high, clarinet not too low.- react to what the others are playing in a complimentary way. No competition, but achieving something nice together.
If that would be the ideal than Henderson etcetera hardly ever played dixieland, but they hinted at it, like in the out chorus with the released clarinet.What is lacking though is the conversation aspect. They improvised solo, but the listening part to the collegues is lacking. Imagine the big ego of Coleman Hawkins listening to someone else while improvising, he simply never did that. My guess is that in New York the life is so much about competition that it hardly was possible to think in another way. You still feel the difference between life in N.O. and N.Y. today. Maybe the difference in music just is a reflection? 
Those elements mentioned above can be heard though in some parts of the Morton Red Hot Peppers, some of the Oliver Creole Jazz Band, the hot Fives/Sevens, definitly in the 6 great small band recording with Rollini and Bix (How well they listen and react!) Some very good examples of the collective thinking are of course the Sam Morgan's, and the Johnny Dodds New Orleans Wanderer's efforts.The wanderes's had a less dominating trumpeter than Armstrong was. Maybe the Armstrong exitement is not there, but the conversation element definitly is.
Someone like Kid Ory might not have been the greatest trombone player seen from a technical point of few, but it is no coincidence that he is on so many of the succesfull records like the Hot Fives, the Morton's the Wanderer's. His way of playing in the conversation ideal is without equal.
Kind regards,
Bert Brandsma