[Dixielandjazz] OKOMological InnFestications

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

I welcome the pianist with his distinctions between, well, I suppose what Hugues Panassie called THE REAL JAZZ, and what other folks would call jazz when he wouldn't. The point about Panassie was well made by Stanley Dance, to the effect that however one might frown on his disapproval of quite a lot of stuff, the man had and was driven by a very good "ear", meaning he could hear differences in musical character and value, such that some people who dismissed him as over-exclusive weren't so muc tolerant as a little or more cloth-eared. He's worth reading! 

as for the more cloth-ear'dly exclusive (alas some of the judgments of the in some respects great Brian Rust, not to mention him whose name I know not, who deplored Coleman Hawkins' falling away to tenor saxophone when his real genius lay with the long horn associated with Adrian Rollini, Joe Rushton et -- pronounce the last syllable on the bottom note of the piano -- al. 

There is a mildly amusing poem called     THE PURIST which I must dig out of a stray copy of an English jazz mag from 1949 or 1950 (before I was born!). Here, anyway, infra infraque dignitatem, are a few verses to the sister of the central figure in that poem, which as I recall pretended to the autobiographical. Of course given the slowness of granting due rights to woman, Banjolillie's stringed instrument will be idle tomorrow (Monday) and the only music in earshot of her washboard will be a worksong she (stylistic descriptor) moans while raising a lather on a pair of shorts even Bart Simpson wouldn't suggest anybody but a goat ate. 
Robert R. Calder 

BANJOLILLIE 

She'd a temper, and if you wanted to spark 'er  just play some very rapid Charlie Parker, 
  for she surely loathed any master of bop, with each bar she twitched more,  unable to stop, her mood getting darker and darker  . . .  

  As for how that was finished and done 
  you'd not know. See it start, you knew you'd to run... 
And the guys who tried on her 'Trane recorded live 
didn't according to witnesses survive. 
And there was a "less musical than Attilla" Hun. 

She had this thing how Pearl Harbor began 
a blitz on the truly American --first it was Zeros from up in the sky 
then the bombs came from drummers with hats too high 
and a sound like her mother with pot and pan ... 

It maybe seems self-indulgent and silly 
but I liked at a distance dear Banjolillie 
if not quite her "why does all newer stuff suck?"One has to allow that she didn't lack pluck --till the dear old ... replied to her "Shout 'em, Aunt Tillie!" 

RRC


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