[Dixielandjazz] Dizzy and Cuba

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

As I recall, and it should be checkable from YouTube, Dizzy Gillespie was quite clear that he regarded the Caribbean influence as a restoration of an African heritage effaced in Protestant even Calvinist Carolina (there should be something about that in ole Marshall Stearns, THE STORY OF JAZZ, who goes into pre-jazz influences to an extraordinary depth, what parts of Africa slaves in which state came from, and what parts of Europe their owners -- Ken Mathieson might remember the merry palaver when Dizzy was in Glasgow, pretending to or maybe actually keeping a book on how many namesakes he had in the audience  --  "send that pretty Gillespie down here!" -- and collecting money from sidemen).
My father was a legendary drummer, at least in being one of the bass drummers whose marching band career (Boys' Brigade) included an emergency with the retaining strap on a hill.  But he was as Ken says of BB drummers very well trained (happily didn't make a habit of hitting me, but I was startled by his competence years after he'd last been near any drum). The various sorts of social dancing continuous in Scotland from the 1920s had the Boys' Brigade for nursery, and my father remembered the dissatisfaction of Scottish dancers pre-1938 (BGE or Before Goodman Era?) with American recordings as quasi- or half-jazz to dance to.  Metrically too loose!  

The earliest American fiddle recordings are very European, but so are the early recordings of Bert Williams, no jazzier than the jazzophobic Englishman George Robey, startlingly.  I remember Willie Ruff (not to be confused with the MacSploitation play but a non-white hornman-musicologist) got a little publicity when he was in Scotland some years ago talking of Scottish influences on early and later jazz.  The sorts of influences which were required to rescue music from being too metrically restricted.  

Robert R. Calder