[Dixielandjazz] tuba skinny

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Glorious, delightful, fresh! 
Whatever might be said by anybody else, say even somebody unenthusiastic about Tuba Skinny, this music is infinitely better than the pastiches people had to endure in the past, work less appreciated in Europe because there was more freedom from distorting vulgarisations, populist delusions about the history of jazz which projected on the years c.1920 onward the sort of cheap imitations of a "Dixieland" style dating from no earlier than when the Commodore recording company, as it says in the little celebration package of not that many years ago, developed on the back of an enthusiasm for older jazz kindled by the depression -- when people with not much money bought second hand recordings when they couldn't afford the new, and discovered -- for example -- what a number of the older big band sidemen had done before Artie Shaw and Woody Herman turned up in the later 1930s. 
I remember one New Orleans civic celebration, and references to Louis Armstrong, and then a band appearing doing the deadly clarinet, trombone, trumpet business, with all the historical accuracy of associating Jack Johnson, pugilist and latterday hero, with the music of 1929. Passionless pap it was, and probably the stuff there was pressure on bands to record, for the dupes of "Dixieland". Not so much rhythm sections as metrical chuggers rather more like the engines of the riverboat than the musicians audible above decks.
I remember hiding out in a house which had been pretty well handed over to some of the students who rented rooms in it, looking after it while one of them celebrated turning 21 (mid-1970s). Birthday boy was telling me -- they were generous with drinkies -- the music they had was staling on them. I found a cheap LP of Little Walter, the Blues Harmonica Master, and suggested they put it on. The number of times guests taped it were so nice it was illegal. I gather that sort of thing happened around 1938 Amazing the appeal music can have when people don't know or care that it isn't new. 
Robert R. Calder
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