[Dixielandjazz] Blase Barbarous Crew (BBC)

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Ah, yes, we have again excerpts on TV from what was left of BBC2's Jazz 625 series, some very valuable irreplaceable music dear to members of this list having been destroyed by an earlier generation of blase barbarous clowns. 

Alton Purnell I see from a caption spliced the Harlem Stride Piano style with elements of his native New Orleans culture -- I read also that Harlem stride is some sort of blending of blues and classical melodies...  

I see it was the fact that he learned piano as well as trumpet which gave Dizzy Gillespie the harmonic insight to ....

Are we to presume that if only other horn-players had had piano lessons ...  ????

Was it really John Fordham, blamed in the credits for SCRIPT, who scribbled these contemptible bits and pieces. 

THERE FOLLOWED ANNOUNCEMENT OF A RAGBAG OF FAMOUS JAZZPERSONS SPEAKING
Beginning with the British neurosis about Lord Reith, linking the first philistine director of the sometime Public Service broadcaster with Hitler in that both disapproved of jazz...  Hitler did make some pretence to cultural superiority, snobbery of inferiority complex, but Reith doesn't seem to have been much happier about Mozart. 
Fortunately more knowledgeable people were given responsibility, though the first conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra was retired compulsorily at sixty.  He lasted barely another thirty years. 
Well, knowledgeable people do seem to be talking about music after that cheap start. 

Oh, dear, and here is more and more Louis, and my soul is soothed 
-- not to the extent of making me forget the patronising which preceded.
Presumably the same stuff has been on before, but it all goes to show me how the irritations of the modern world have their panacea ...  
An intelligent interviewer in the late much lamented Kenneth Allsop! 

Jazz a force for peace in the world? 
I'd not previously encountered Louis' response: 

"Stronger than the Masons!"

Give the man a handshake!

Robert R. Calder