Klarinet Archive - Posting 001146.txt from 1998/07

From: "Edwin V. Lacy" <el2@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Benny Goodman/Jazz Clarinet
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 01:24:42 -0400

On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Lisa Clayton wrote:

> The labels, they've always confused me. I've gotten the impression that
> it went Rag, Traditional, Swing, Bebop and then it split into cool and
> free, and then there was a bunch who revived the old Trad jazz sound but
> added a swingy feel to it and it became "dixieland" (Bunk Johnson, Lu
> Watters, Turk Murphy, etc). Then there was M-base, fusion, modern,
> avant garde.

Almost. Remember that the music which we call jazz traces its roots back
a very long way, but that it began to coalesce as something recognizable
as jazz in the 1890's. The first known instance of the word "jazz"
appearing in print occured in 1913, and by the time the first jazz
recordings were made in 1917, the group which did them called themselves
the "Original Dixieland Jass Band." So, the word Dixieland has been in
use a very long time. The "Dixieland Revival" movement of the 1940's is
not the source of the word "Dixieland," as some have implied in this
thread.

Also, it is not quite accurate to think of Ragtime and Dixieland as
following each other in the way stated here. These two types of music
existed side-by-side for some time before the turn of the century. Ragtime
is often thought of as one of the forerunners of jazz, but the first
ragtime compositions were published in 1898, and jazz, in some form, had
already existed for several years by that time. Buddy Bolden had already
become known as a jazz performer by 1895 or so.

"Modern" is a term which should not really be used at all in discussions
of jazz history. The music of every period is "modern" at the time it
exists. "Avant garde" is a similar term, except that a certain body of
jazz music has come to be thought of as avant garde, that being the music
of several late-1950's and early 1960's performers, such as George
Russell, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, and others.

And, it wasn't that bebop split into other types of music, but rather that
bebop gave rise to several other musical styles, and there was a
multiplicity of styles existing simultaneously. Bebop really had not
fully matured until about 1944 or 1945, and already by late 1948 and early
1949 there was a type of music, cool jazz, which came about in part as a
reaction to bebop. Then, almost immediately there was a reaction to cool
jazz, which came to be known as hard bop, which itself led to some other
jazz styles, including funky jazz. (Funky meant something entirely
different then than it does today.) So, during almost all of the decade
of the 1950's, one could hear bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, funky jazz,
avant garde jazz, free jazz, third-stream jazz, and many related kinds of
music.

The so-called Dixieland revival was primarily a commercial venture on the
part of some promoters, agents and record producers, and so unlike other
styles of jazz, the movement was essentially artificial.

Ed Lacy
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Dr. Edwin Lacy University of Evansville
Professor of Music 1800 Lincoln Avenue
Evansville, IN 47722
el2@-----.edu (812)479-2754
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