[Dixielandjazz] Dixieland

[Gary Lawrence Murphy]

People can get averse to the darnedest things.  But as I've said before,
Louis Armstrong called it 'dixieland' and that's good enough for me -- hard
to argue with West End Blues in anyone's book.

But labels are a marketing thing anyway, not a musicology thing.  Back when
I had my record store, I organized the records by geneology.  Those who'd
been in Ellington's band were tagged by one colour, those who'd played with
Whiteman another, and tried my best to weave a technicolour tapestry right
through the shop tagging from Jelly Roll Morton up through to Anthony
Braxton and Grover Washington (who, with Barry White, would then begat
Kenny G!) The system wasn't perfect, but when someone picked up an LP they
had *some* idea who an unknown might appeal to.  Mostly it was just fun for
me to spend idle time with the label-maker tagging the backing cards.  I
had a wall display where I featured albums in a chronological ordering in a
double-helix with one strand being what I decided was "serious" jazz vs the
other being more the "fun and entertaining" strain. Of course, Louis
Armstrong violated ALL of my clever schemes :(

but given recent discussions, would it be blasphemous of me to suggest we
call it The ORIGINAL Dixieland Jazz Mailing List?  ;)


On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 3:33 AM, ROBERT R. CALDER <serapion at btinternet.com>wrote:

>
>
> I would suppose aversion to the word "Dixieland" derives from extreme
> misuse of the word and popular expectations of something rinky-dink and
> cheery and shallow.
> Ah, the media. Last week on SKY  a News presenter prefaced the break with
> the statement that when the programme resumed they would "tell you what you
> think" ...
>
> There was the young man who said that he knew the name Charlie Parker from
> his father, and Parker had been a "dixieland saxophonist"
> Then there was a reviewer in the New York Review of books who misapplied
> the word Dixieland to the impressive Commodore recordings of Hot Lips Page
> with Albert Ammons.  Not to mention the lady who thought me odd for saying
> "no" when she said "Dixieland" when I mentioned New Orleans Jazz,
> specifically Sam Morgan.
>
> I suppose these new players are very understandably and justifiably wary
> of their music being mistaken for sterile and vacuous cheer. I can remember
> several decades ago a young New Yorker I met saying he had seen posters for
> a concert by Louis Metcalf (I've never heard the highly reputed LP Victoria
> Spivey issued on her label, of Metcalf). The guy told me that he would have
> been interested to hear more older music, but whenever he went along to a
> gig it was old-fashioned pop music playing down to the audience. Actually
> Albert McCarthy told me that when he recorded the Mainstream session for I
> think the Felsted label (c. 1960 including Joe Thomas and very notably
> Herbie Nichols on piano on some tracks) that it was hard to induce some
> musicians to play what was wanted, and stop worrying about non-jazz
> expectations of the conventional mass audience of
> a certain age. Actually I seem to recall Johnny Letman from that same
> date, turning up in Edinburgh with an initial impression that he was there
> to do the imitation Louis (for people who don't really like JAZZ) he had
> been using as a staple. Happily it was not long before there was the
> characteristic single bum note, which Letman produced when he was starting
> to play seriously.
>
> We can call this list what we like, as long as it doesn't conform to
> elderly expectations of a tame "Dixieland" which scarcely merits the name
> of jazz.
> The word should be avoided where it is liable to mislead. And of course
> "Trad" was also used by some folks at a certain time as a term of
> dismissal, and confusion.
>
>
> it may all be music, but some examples are better than others
>
>
> Robert R. Calder
>
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