Klarinet Archive - Posting 001009.txt from 1998/07

From: Bill Hausmann <bhausman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Benny Goodman/Jazz Clarinet
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 23:29:56 -0400

At 10:54 AM 7/24/98 -0700, Lisa Clayton wrote:
>
>>The short explanation is that "Swing" is one of the named forms that
>>occurred during the gradual development of jazz. It was the predominant
>>form between Dixieland and Bebop, or between the early 1930's and
>>mid-to-late 1940's. And I tend to agree with you. Swing is less
>>contrapuntal, yet conversely more organized, than Dixieland, yet more
>>melodic than Bebop and most of what came after. It's MY favorite.
>
>Not to put too fine a point on it, and with the caveat that I'm no more
>than an enthusiastic jazz fan with too much time on her hands, I do want to
>point out that pre-swing music wasn't known as Dixieland back then.
>Technically, what we think of as "Dixieland" now was actually more or less
>created in the 40's. It does have its roots firmly in the traditional jazz
>of the 20's and early 30's, and folks like Bunk Johnson, Kid Ory and Louis
>Armstrong heavily influenced both traditional jazz and Dixieland jazz.
>During the 20's/early 30's, the sound was just known as "jazz" and that
>term actually encompassed quite a bit of pop music in general, not just
>what we've come to think of as "real" jazz.
>
Basically true. What the early jazzmen played in the 19-teens and twenties
was merely called "jazz" at the time. But by the 1940's, when a need
developed to differentiate what they were playing then with what had gone
before, bebop players used the term "dixieland," usually in a disparaging
manner, to refer to the older pre-swing style. The term probably
originated from "The Original Dixieland Jass (sic) Band" of the 19-teens,
by then considered pretty corny. Those early years WERE the "Jazz Age,"
after all, and the term "jazz" was used for almost everything, musical or
not. Very little that Paul Whiteman performed was actually jazz, yet he
was the "King of Jazz." Jazz in the 30's and 40's was a very heavy
influence on popular music, but not all jazz was popular, and certainly not
all popular music was jazz. But I digress. Basically, the continuum of
jazz, as I see it, was Ragtime, Dixieland, Swing, Bebop, Cool...(it goes
on, but I don't get too excited about the rest of it). And it IS a
continuum. The transitions are not sudden, but often almost imperceptibly
gradual, and the divisions arbitrary and overlapping. Kind of like other
types of music, eh?

Bill Hausmann bhausman@-----.com
451 Old Orchard Drive http://www.concentric.net/~bhausman
Essexville, MI 48732 http://members.wbs.net/homepages/z/o/o/zoot14.html
ICQ UIN 4862265

If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is too loud.

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