Klarinet Archive - Posting 000525.txt from 2000/05

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Bass Clarinet CDs (was [kl] Hi)
Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 09:09:53 -0400

I wrote,
>A stylistic innovator, Dolphy got booed off the stage
>a few times by ambushed audiences. ;-) He participated in the "Third
>Stream" fusion of jazz and classical with Gunther Schuller.

Kenneth Wolman wrote,
>>This surprises me somewhat. He was playing around the same time as guys
>>like Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Ornette Coleman. Unless they got booed off
>>the stage too.

The booing incidents happened to Dolphy several times. He also played for
some audiences that wouldn't have been caught dead booing out loud. They
practiced the inner art of silent booing.

He would go onstage at one of these basically classical venues, where
sometimes they'd bring on some jazzmen in the interest of "expanding our
knowledge of different cultures" -- translation: as the animal act. (We're
talking late 1950s here, Jim Crow time, when there wasn't much *real*
cross-cultural mixing in the USA *except* between jazz musicians and serious
jazz fans.) Anyway, a classical venue, such as a symphony orchestra
subscription series, would invite some jazz musicians into a pickup band with
classical soloists. (They didn't call it a pickup band, of course; it was an
all-star ensemble or some such doodah.) Today's classical audience is far
more cosmopolitan, I think, and fusion gigs are common and unremarkable now,
but back then, that part of the classical audience willing to go on a daring
adventure to hear some jazz (but only on their own turf, or maybe on vacation
in a New Orleans "Dixieland" tourist trap, not in some smoke-filled jam joint
in a darker part of town...) probably expected to hear something like George
Gershwin.

So Dolphy would stand there with his bass clarinet, play along with the
group, make nice and lay back (bop-bop grunt, bop-boppa grunt grunt) but when
it got to be just about his turn to take a chorus, his eyes would kind of
start to gleam and a little cat smile would sneak into the corners of his
mouth, and when his turn came, he'd rip into one of his ferocious
triple-forte post-bop neo-psycho-wild-man fusillades. Just shake folks up a
little, ya know. Pretty funny at the more hoity-toity venues to watch
blue-haired women purse their lips with determination and clap their little
white gloves ever so politely afterwards, while the men next to them would
sit grimly and silently for a moment with half-incredulous, half-resentful
expressions, faces pink above necktie garottes, mouths all set to deploy into
booing formation -- but then the men would glance at the women and dutifully
clap, too.

But at the looser gigs that attracted fans of Big Band swing who hadn't heard
free jazz, yeah, sometimes they'd boo the hell out of him. I think he loved
it. I don't know about Kirk, but the same thing happened to Ornette Coleman
(who's still alive and performing).

Lelia
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The devil made me do it the first time... after that I was on my own!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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