[Dixielandjazz] Buddy Bolden, was Armstrong-Eldridge

[Ken Mathieson]

Hi All,

I've been enjoying your interesting, not to mention inflammatory, posts 
recently but have been too busy with other priorities to get involved. 
However I'm a bit mystified by some of the narrow definitions of jazz. 
I've never understood this as I've always thought of jazz as being "the 
one music", at least until the supplanting of swinging jazz time with 
rock rhythms by younger generation musicians whose rhythmic point of 
reference was rock and pop music, not jazz.

Jazz didn't produce any unique harmonic or melodic concepts, nor was 
improvisation an innovation of jazz - it has been around since man's 
first musical tinkerings. On the other hand, what was unique to jazz was 
its swinging rhythmic pulse in all its developments over the decades: 
that was something new and distinctive and it seems to me that the 
increasing tendency towards rock rhythms has effectively thrown the baby 
out with the bath water.

Jazz's enduring developments grew organically out of what went before, 
so Miles Davs couldn't have played as he did without Louis and others 
doing what they did in earlier decades. My own band's repertoire is 
based on the "one music" principle and our programme for a recent 
concert was as varied as you're likely to find:

Jelly's Grandpa's Spells, followed by Bechet's Old Stack o' Lee Blues, 
followed by Jobim's Waters of March, followed by Sam Jones' Del Sasser 
(popularised by Cannonball Adderley), followed by Bix's In a Mist, 
followed by Ellington's Jack the Bear, followed by Benny Carter's Easy 
Money, followed by Don Redmond's No One Else But You, followed by 
Charles Mingus' Jelly Roll and closing with Jelly's Black Bottom Stomp.

In the band's 13 year existence, only one punter has ever complained 
about our choice of material or interpretation: he wanted to hear 
Morton's tunes EXACTLY as they had been recorded 60 years earlier, since 
that was what he was used to hearing and any deviation from that was 
"tampering with sacred music!" I know Morton took his music seriously, 
but I'm pretty certain the wild-living Jelly (maybe there's a clue in 
the nickname?) would have been amused to be told his music was sacred!

Cheers,
Ken