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Re: Pete Fountain

Author: seabreeze
Date: 2018-06-24 09:55

Pete hadn't yet gotten rid of toupee Welk made him wear on the TV show. His improvisations came naturally as part of the jazz street marching band tradition he grew up with in New Orleans. In late 1940s and early 50s New Orleans, any one walking down a street beating a bass drum or crashing a pair of cymbals would be joined by people playing other instruments, and lo and behold, a band would be born. All as natural as the milkmen and the icemen delivering their wares in the morning or the street vendors yelling "fresh oysters, sweet potatoes, strawberries off the vine--come an get 'em." The rhythm and phrases were to some extent, ready made. Pete learned them by ear as a kid, and later formed the "Half Fast Marching Club" to strut his stuff on Mardi Gras. Musical traditions of this sort are like language; you pick up the whole formed patterns, you don't analyze the grammar and syntax. Pete is echoing the sounds of his own neighborhood, back of Warren Easton High School on Canal Street and creating and extending them within that framework. The local musical culture was created by innumerable New Orleans clarinetists before Pete--Irving Fazola, Leon Rappolo, Sydney Bechet, Larry and Harry Shields, Barney Bigard, Al Nicholas, Ed Hall and many whose names have been lost or never were widely known. He is speaking their language--an idiom to which he was born. To anyone outside the New Orleans locale that produced this tradition. Pete's performance must seem incomprehensible. But he is singing the old songs in his own way, just as the epic writer Homer retold the old myths that he had heard a thousand times. Pete was a continuation of the old New Orleans jazz clarinet style with his own unique sound and melodic turns added to be sure, but still a continuation. In this particular performance, Pete's high register phrasings dominate much more than usual. He seems to have caught a good grove up there that night.

Post Edited (2018-06-25 08:47)

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