[Dixielandjazz] was Spanish, or maybe not

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Ten years ago I was shown by a friend who was reviewing it some book involving what might have been taken by some for Spanish Tunes,  and one of these was Bechet's "Egyptian Fantasy"  given a ludicrous genealogy, in a book revoltingly ignorant it seemed of anything written less than 25 years after Bechet's death.  


Morton does some interesting things with "Miserere" from Verdi's IL TROVATORE on the Library of Congress recordings, and at least the opera does have a Spanish setting -- but there should be no shortage of options either in actual Spanish tunes or tunes with a suitable rhythm.  Yank Lawson once upon a time produced an LP of what was supposed Dixie with a Latin beat, and somewhere in the past I remember seeing details of a CD by a contemporary ragtime piano performer which had a blurb about his trying to restore some of the rhythmic interest there might have been in ragtime and jazz-related music before a more four-square approach was taken.  

If the RedHotJazz archive is accessible it ought to provide a large area for sampling, Mediterranean rhythms animate numbers of 1920s recordings, displaced I think by fashion on one side and by very positive developments which did not accommodate Mediterranean rhythms with so much else going on.  



Little Brother Montgomery used to perform a "Bob Morton Blues" allegedly composed by one Bob Morton, but poor Bob's name kept getting lost, starting with Paul Oliver mishearing the name as Bob Martin, (Bob Martin's I remember was a tonic for dogs!) and it's been "Old Louisiana Blues -- a name shifting between various compositions recorded by Brother).  Anyway Bob Morton Blues is just, as Brother remarked, Dippermouth Blues played slow. The process generates cross-rhythms and allows a bit more playing around -- which is what I think the ragtime-latin experimenter was doing, and probably Yank too.  


Hasta la habanera 

(and as the great Spanish singer Conchita Supervia observed, 

she was Spanish and Habanera was NOT)

Robert R. Calder