[Dixielandjazz] the Dixieland Jazz dispute revisited

[Marek Boym]

I must defend the revivalists!
Reactionary or not, the West Coast revivalists created a sound of their
own.  True, based on the old masters, but so was the music of later
generations of musician, including Hacket's.   The British revivalists,
too, ended up creating a style of their own, even though some British bands
were closer to New Orleans than their American counterparts.  Take the
"three B's" of British trad (Barber, Bilk, Ball), for example: each
developed a different style, easily recognizable.  Only Barber had a
pianoless band; Bilk started with such a band, but later added a piano
(when I bought some early Bilks, I was genuinely surprised that the band
was painoless); Ball, although featuring a banjo, tended more towards later
styles of traditional jazz.  It should be added that most British bands had
a double bass rather than the tubas of the American revivalists.  At its
worse, British trad sounded like a banjo with instrumental accompaniment.
in general, traditional jazz as we know it today (it's not necessarily a
complaint), including the early New Orleans revival is something invented
by white critics or musicians.  People like Bill Russell decided that a New
Orleans band should include a banjo and a brass bass, and insisted on using
them.  The musicians supplied what was in demand - business is business!
Some of the famous New Orleans banjo players didn't even owned banjos when
they were "rediscovered," and were persuaded to get them.  And the New
Orleans saxophonists were persuaded that theit instruments "did not fit the
style."  It was only when people like BArry Martyn and listmate Paige van
Vorst came around that playing New Orleans bands were recorded the way they
really sounded, with saxophones instead of, or in addition to, clarinets.
I don't like the prevalent pigeonholing; therefore I favour "traditional
jazz, even though the term was apparently first used by Turk Murphy to
describe his style, because it is a very wide term.  to me, it includes
swing as well.
Cheers,
Marek


On Mon, 28 Oct 2019 at 22:19, Charles Suhor <csuhor at zebra.net> wrote:

> The last three issue of *Syncopated Times* have included lively exchanges
> over use of the term "Dixieland Jazz," based on the reasonable point that
> "Dixieland" is inherently is associated with images of the Old South.
> plantation life, slavery, etc. The November issue includes two pages of
> readers' views, including my ambivalent one, below. —Charlie
>
>
> I appreciated Joe Bebco’s thoughtful views on the term “Dixieland Jazz”
> and the exchanges that followed. I totally agree with Bebco that musicians
> who don’t want that tag applied their music should be respected. I fact, no
> practitioners of any art should be saddled with labels that they don’t
> approve of.
>
> But we’ve been dealt a  confusing, stilted hand as we inherited the
> “Dixieland Jazz” term, with its racist associations. I was born in New
> Orleans in 1935 and grew up when the term was simply functional--the
> coin-of-the realm name referring to a style that arose after early New
> Orleans jazz. To oversimplify, musicians had moved away from rapid vibrato
> and ricky-tick phrasing of non-jazz (and some early jazz) musicians. The
> “Dixieland” style was being wonderfully realized in New Orleans, Chicago,
> New York, and elsewhere by Sharkey Bonano, the Bobcats, Art Hodes, Eddie
> Condon units, Ben Pollack, Muggsy Spanier, Armstrong’s All-Stars, and
> innumerable other groups.
>
> The music wasn’t “revivalist” in intent or style but a fairly recent
> evolutionary development. The terms“revivalist” and “trad" didn’t even
> appear until around the mid-forties, mainly through the British bands that
> were enamored of Oliver, Bunk, and Bechet--similar to West Coast conscious
> revivalists like Bob Scobey and Turk Murphy. I had a few of their records,
> but Dixieland players and many critics saw the revivalists as reactionary
> or outright corny. (Bobby Hackett remarked, “It’s certainly funny hearing
> those youngsters trying to play like old men.”) A rash of bands with tubas
> and banjos in the rhythm section, varying hugely in quality, emerged in
> following decades and continues today. A more inventive revivalism flowered
> only in recent years with groups like Tuba Skinny.
>
> The “Dixieland” term came to be increasingly (and justifiably) regarded as
> offensive. I’d welcome a new term, but “traditional jazz,” “classic jazz,”
> “hot jazz,” “New Orleans jazz,” and “Chicago jazz” are either too general
> or limiting, or they already have other popular meanings. Any new term
> would have to gain a foothold in the jazz community and ultimately, in
> general usage. I believe that my choice, “post-foundational/pre-swing jazz”
> gets to it, but it’s a mouthful.
>
> As a historian, I’ve had to deal with the fact that the “Dixieland” term
> is embedded in the literature of jazz. I dealt at length with the problem
> in my 2001 book, *Jazz in New Orleans--The PostWar Years Through 1970. *I
> didn’t presume to settle the matter but set out operational definitions so
> that readers would know what I was talking about when I discussed kinds of
> jazz. I acknowledged the “Dixieland" dilemma but had no other term to
> communicate the fundamentally identifiable sub-genre which, through
> accidents of history, a came to be called “Dixieland Jazz.” I’ll continue
> to use the term with a short explanation of the historical context, or when
> a musician or band self-describes with it.
>
>
>
>
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