[Dixielandjazz] two comments

[Fuzzy]

Many of these New Orleans camp kids have gone on to make a name for themselves, or at least play with New Orleans bands.  Doyle Cooper (The Red Hot Jazz Band), Catie Rodgers (Gentilly Stompers), etc.  

On the contrasting side: As a 15 year old kid – I knew of Benny Goodman, and was just getting to know Artie Shaw’s records.  I had seen Maynard Ferguson twice, and Buddy Rich twice…even got stuck on a closed road in a blizzard trying to see Buddy Rich a third time…not because I understood anything he was doing – but because we were told how great these men were at the thing we longed for…”Jazz.”  Yet the jazz we produced ourselves sounded harsher than a room full of dropping pans.  It wasn’t our lack of passion.  It was a lack of understanding.  A lack of exposure.  A lack of access to music and musicians…and a lack of skill.

About a year later, I happened across a CD in the store – I bought it because of the photo on the cover (a bunch of guys in tuxedos with a tuba, trombone, etc.).  “Tiger Rag Dukes of Dixieland” ProJazz label…not the original Dukes – I had never heard playing like this before!  What kind of music was this?!  WOW!  I was so excited that I immediately took my “boom box” to school and had my band teacher listen to it.  “Oh, that’s Dixieland…I used to play in a Dixie band when I was in college.”  He spoke of this music with the same magnitude of excitement as if I had just pointed to a potted plant in the corner of the room!  How was it that I had never heard this music before?!  Love at first sound.  A year later I bought the next release “Best of the Dukes of Dixieland” (Decades later, thanks to the kindness of Tim Laughlin, Jim Snyder, and Mike Sizer, I was finally able to pin down Mike Sizer as the clarinetist on the unlabeled album – exciting stuff.)

As a result of my excitement over those two albums, my (amazing) band instructor ordered in some Dixieland “charts” – all written out in nice, tidy, neat…(ahem)…arrangements.  

(Insert moment of awkward silence here…)

Copenhagen, Struttin’ With Some Barbeque, etc.  Somehow, we found volunteers to meet before and after school to form our own little band.  We worked hard, and played at nursing homes, business openings, school concerts, community events, and even the school’s music competitions.  We loved it, and the crowds loved it.  

We were on top of the world.

Then, the inevitable happened…a male flute player from the concert band approached us after one of our fun evening performances.  “My dad lived in New Orleans and he says that what you guys play is NOT the REAL jazz they play in New Orleans.”  (After pulling the verbal dagger from my heart…I may have muttered something intelligent like, “Well, duhhhhhh!” – though I had no real way of knowing – other than the fact I knew we were no “Dukes of Dixieland”, and his comment stung as only the truth can.)  

After graduating, and heading off to college, I found the atmosphere to be not merely intolerant of clarinetists pursuing jazz of any kind, but downright militant.  I was informed that I should just switch entirely to saxophone if I wished to pursue any type of jazz.  Furthermore, other students were forbidden to join any “trad” or “Dixie” group that I might try to form.

I had been the “all-state clarinetist”, the “1st chair Tenor Sax player”, the “guy on scholarship” – yet I couldn’t play a single note of early jazz correctly.  Yet that had been my  primary goal every year from the age of sixteen onward, and I knew with every fiber in my being that the flute player’s dad was right.  

Because of that history, I’m always excited (and admittedly almost envious) when I see kids reaching out and showing a desire/ability to play early jazz.  Maybe they aren’t ready to cut their first CD/Digipak, and maybe they’re not playing like Pete Fountain and George Girard did at the age of 16 & 17…but they’ve found the music and are trying to follow it using whatever they have at their disposal – fighting the education system and other roadblocks along the way.  Having even a single musical friend can help these kids launch.  Sometimes all it takes is a person saying, “Hey, don’t hit the high hat like that every time – try it this way.” – and the world changes.

For me – my questions were usually stupid, and the answers painfully obvious to a pro…yet totally hidden to me.  (“Yes, Fuzzy…that is an elephant in the room.”  “Oh – okay, I guess I see it now…hmmm, not sure how I missed it before…would you please ask it to set me down now?”)

I’m really hopeful that these camps will help foster those relationships and provide that “friend.”  One of the nice things about the New Orleans camp, is that these kids are special attendees of an otherwise all-adult camp…so they are surrounded by potential mentors.  

Warmest Regards,
Fuzzy

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ml.islandnet.com/pipermail/dixielandjazz/attachments/20170620/762b3c81/attachment.html>