"LJS" <ljschenck@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:7422c3da-d429-4b9b-af60-0c0c78b12051@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Sorry - who learned from whom? Armstrong certainly learned from
Oliver
>> (ie black from creole) as he always acknowledged.
>
> I never said that he didn't. Only that neither of them were there when
> Jazz began.
That's the point Oliver *was* there when jazz began. Read Schuller - the
chapter entitled "the beginnings" and there are pages and pages about
Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. It recorded first in 1923 but was known to be
playing in an establishment called the Big25 (not I think a brothel) in
Stroryville from about 1915 or 16, though Schuller points out that it was
only supposed to be playing jazz at that point and its style was almost
certainly not as it was in 1923. In the closely scrutinised reminiscences
of the early jazz players, the indications are that *no-one was playing
jazz
much before the first recordings of the oDJB in 1917, and 1915 is about
the
earliest date which could be sup****ted by any evidence at all.
> They both learned the music from generations before then.
No they didn't. Oliver grew into it with the rest of them; Armstrong
learned as he acknowledged throughout his life, primarily from his mentor
(as most texts describe it) Oliver.
>>...The Creoles were Americans not Europeans. The whole
>> point of the word "creole" is that it refers to mixed race - not
>> "predominently European". Look at pictures of the people I listed -
>> they
>> don't look a bit European.
>
> Creoles were only Americans when the U.S. bought Louisiana.
In 1803 as I remember it. This is getting truly bizarre.
> You are
> talking about a much later time than the beginnings and roots of Jazz.
Define "roots" how you like. It might be the first day an african hit two
sticks together. But I am talking about jazz. And *all* the evidence
points to a date of around 1915. In particular i am talking about the
musicians in new Orleans who played it, many of the best of whom were
Creole. (The *earliest* anyone has supposed jazz to have existed was
1985, but the academic texts studying its history have effectively
debunked
that idea as a fantasy.)
[Irrelevant stuff about Haiti snipped.]
> The aristocratic Creole people did not play for
> the funerals nor did they work playing music for the guests at society
> parties on the plantations. It just wasn't that way. (As I hear tell)
Well read someting about it instead of "hearing tell". The "all creoles
were aristocratic; aristocrats don't play at funerals; so creoles couldn't
have played jazz" argument is just so full of holes, and flies in the
face
of all the evidence. I have a record collection packed to the brim with
creoles playing jazz.
> You don't know what New Orleans Creoles are! You may be talking about
> Haitians, but the New Orleans Creoles are not the same people. This is
> also, quite a bit afar from the art songs that were examples of Creole
> music.
Forget your bloody spurious Haitians. There was no jazz scene in Haiti in
1917. I am talking about JAZZ.
>> You're the one who keeps bringing slavery into it. I haven't mentioned
>> it
>> except to deny that slaves played jazz.
>
> And you base that denial on what?
For one thing that slavery was abolished in the USA after the civil war in
the 1860s, and that there is no evidence for the existence of jazz before
roughly 1915-17. (Half a century later.)
>> >> If Jelly Roll Morton was not the first jazz composer, then who was?
>
> This is a quote about Jelly Roll.
> "His business card referred to him as the Originator of Jazz, and
> during his life he was regarded as a source of rare historical
> information, despite his penchant for hyperbole."
Yes that is all well known - which is why when I realised you knew so
little
about early jazz that I started putting smilies after my reference to it.
> He wasn't even born
> until the late 1800s.
What do you mean "wasn't even"? It was about 1885 IIRC which puts him
slap
bang in the first generation of jazz musicians.
> He was educated and he could write music.
Yes.
> He
> wrote tunes and he spread Jazz around quite a bit.
Yes. An his band was absolutely superb as were is piano solos.
> In addition to a
> composer he was a business man.
Yes.
> His father actually banned him from
> the house for playing the "devil music" as this disgraced his family.
> Yes, disgraced his "Creole family".
Fats Waller certainly had the same experience with his (black) family a
little bit later, and so did many other jazz musicians. This is not new.
Yes it was called "the devil's music" (and in particular did not, as you
claimed, have anyting to do with churches). But parental attitudes have
not changed to new and raunchy popular music, be it Elvis Presley (whose
fans alll disgraced their parents of whatever colour). I disgraced mine
by
liking the Beatles.
> He wasn't disgracing his family
> for promoting the Creole culture, but for playing that Devil Music.
Listen to yourself for heavens' sake.
> The originators of Jazz were not educated.
ROFL!!!!! You make a new one up every day! Like everyone else in te
population: some were some weren't. A lot of the early clarinettists in
new Orleans took lessons from a guy called Lorenzo Tio, who taught them to
play in that style, as was IIRC a professional educated teacher.
>They couldn't write or read
> music in general.
The joke is getting worse! This was a myth - a slight put about by
white
folk to denigrate the blacks (if that is an appropriate word in this
context) and their music. A few were not good readers, but again the
evidence points to the fact that very many were. You wouldn't have got
far
in Fletcher Henderson or Duke Ellington's bands in the 1920s without being
bloody good readers, and some of those musicians were righet there in the
early days o new Orleans.
> The Creoles could
These racial stereotypes woud be funny if they weren't so tragic.
> and the younger generations picked
> up on it. If you understood the culture in New Orleans, this would all
> make sense to you.
The evidence points tothe fact that I understand it (as it impinges on the
origins of jazz) a lot better than you do. All you can come up with is
unsup****ted racial stereotypes, ridiculous generalisations, and ideas like
someone in Britain cannot know anything about music in New Orleans. (Which
last of course also bars all Americans on this group from knowing anything
about European composers from Gabriele to Wagner and beyond in both
directions).
> It is more that I was born in New Orleans, ...
Then you should be truly ashamed of some of the statements you have made.
>.... By the time
> you are talking about, the white musicians were spreading Jazz as
> well.
Yes. The first generally acknowledged jazz recordings were by white
group - the ODJB. Bix Beiderbecke (perhaps the first truly great white
jazz musician - I'd have to rack my brains for someone earlier) IIRC was
inspired by listening to the Louisiana 5 - contem****ary with the ODJB
though
I am not sure that what they played is generally considered jazz, and it
must be 15 years since I played my recording of them.
> Jazz originated in the very special culture and society that was
> (and still is despite attempts to get rid of it) New Orleans.
Yes.
> It is
> not of any one culture It is from the mix that grew here.
Yes.
> By the time
> you are ascribing as the beginnings of Jazz is only when people
> started to make money at it and it started to spread throughout the US
> and then the world.
No. That came a little later - largely from the transfer up river in the
1920s.
> Who originated it?
The people whoplayed it originated it - it is in improvised art. And
very
many of he best were indisputably of Creole origin. I have named a few.
The Creole origins are also there for all to see in band names and song
titles.
>There
> are no records of what person said, "I will invent Jazz today".
A number including Morton, but not only him, claimed it afterwards.
Their
claims are all taken with a pinch of salt.
>There were no re****ters
> around taking notes.
Re****ters? - of course there were. And none of them re****ted jazz.
And
musicians who lived until much later were there. W C Handy was touring in
the 1890s, published the first Blues in sheet music form in 1912, and was
asked about jazz. But came up with nothing. Great jazz musicians, later
talked of themeselves as starting to "embellish melodies" around 1917.
> There were many factors. Some attribute it to the
> music on the plantations....
Again that is Blues. NO convincing attribution of jazz to the plantations
has aver been made AFAIK. Read Schuller - he really is very good on
this.
> First in the field...
Read the reminiscences of the people who were actually there and played
jazz!
> Now, if you ask, who spread the
> form to other parts of the world, well then we are getting into what
> you are claiming as its origins. If you ask who advanced the music and
> recorded it, well then we are talking about the era that you are
> referring to.
I repeat: there is no evidence at all that jazz existed much before it
was
first recorded in 1917 and a lot of evidence that it didn't.
> I believe that Jelly Roll Morton is said to have sold lots of sheet
> music and spread his writings of what he heard, but it was going on
> long before he was born.
I'm afraid that's rubbish. Is there areason why you have no evidence for
this?
> The fact that he could do this is evidence
> that it was going on before him.
There is no logic at all in that statement. It just showed that jazz
was
popular (though it was never as popular in sheet music sales as Ragtime).
> He heard it, he liked it,
Who did he hear it from?
No he played ragtime and blues, and started improvising as the rest of
them
did at that time. and by 1926 he had turned it into the absolutely superb
Red Hot Peppers recordings.
> he had the
> intelligence and the education to do something very im****tant with it.
Yes, yes, whereas, according to you, all other jazz musicians were stupid.
This is getting really ridiculous.
> He may have helped bring it into the world, but the seed and
> incubation was started long before then and the Creole culture
You keep saying these silly things with no evidence. Listen to te
recodings; read the books. Read the memoires.
> Research Jelly Roll Morton...
I did that years ago, and I'm trying to tell you about it, but you keep
coming up with ridiculous racial stereotypes.
> The Creoles eventually became quite big in the spread and
> development of Jazz, but they did not originate it.
So there you go again. I keep asking you: who played jazz before
King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Alphonse Picou, A J Piron,
Alcide Nunez,
Omer Simeon, Kid Ory, Freddie Keppard, ....
Who composed it before Morton?
Give me some evidence for all these statements you are making which run
completely contrary to all the texts.
>> > When Sidney Story created the Storyville
>> > district, in the late 1890s Jazz was well established and with the
>> > added money legal status of the clubs, the music flourished.
>>
>> Your evidence?
>
> Evidence that the music flourished in Storyville?...
No. Evidence that jazz was played there before 1915.
> WC Handy was a blues man.
WC Handy was a band leader and cornettist, interested in the music of the
Southern States, which he toured extensively. As such he was interested
in
the Blues and first published it in sheet music form - but what was
written
was more like rag time than bues.
> I think he was mostly in Alabama and then
> moved to Tennessee...
He tourd the whole south.
> Gunther Schuller? I
> won't even address this here.
Why not. It was for a long period, and possibly still is, by far the most
respected text book on the origins of jazz. And he do***ents all his
references.
> He would have had to rely on the
> available research for his sketchy writings of the origins I think he
> started about the time of JRM IIRC, or maybe he went back to Scott
> Joplin and Ragtime.
He goes back much further than that. (Chapter 1 is all about African
music
in Africa.) He examines very carefull claims that there was any jazz
before the recordings and comes up with 1915 as about the earliest
sup****table date.
> Go to Chapter 10 its on page 365. It talks about a lot of things. Most
> interesting is the statement that the term Jazz did not appear in
> print until around 1912
Then it is confused. IIRC 1912 was the date Handy published Memphis
Blues.
But it wasn't Jazz.
> and until this time there was no reason to use
> the term. In 1915 a Tom Brown's band Played in Chicago and was billed
> as "Brown's Dixieland Jazz Band, direct from New Orleans, the Best
> Dance Music in Chicago".
I supose the term "Jazz" may just have existed then but 1917 is usually
the
first given as the first reliable date. "Jass" might have been slightly
earlier. http://www.redhotjazz.com/browns.html
gives the name as "Tom
Brown's Band From Dixieland". [This looks like a reasonable site BTW.]
What brown's outfit played in 1915 may have been jazz (as it is now
understood) but may not have been. Handy refers to "novelty music" in
this
period with no hint that it was improvised in any way.
> Two years later Nick LaRocca opened with his
> band in New York.
And as I have said, he made the first jazz recordings with ODJB in 1917.
> There is then a blank in the book as is often the
> case in Google books, but if you think that all of this happened all
> of a sudden and it was just created then, you have a poor sense of
> timing.
You have still given me no evidence for jazz before 1915.
> If is very difficult to trace things when no one cared.
LOTS of people cared. Musicians of the period have been interviewed - it
isn't quite the dark age you imagined.
>There were
> other things on people's mind, but if you look further into that book
> (or maybe earlier, I don't remember, you may have to look for 'jig-
> piano' to locate the specific sections, but this was a style of piano
> that had evolved from the blacks on the plantations and spread through
> out the Southwest and even up the coast maybe around the mid 1800 or
> sooner. Who really knows. ...
A lot is really known!
> This style of piano
> was a ragged type of piano that was played "houses of ill
> repute"
I am talking about jazz. There is lots of do***entation of ragtime and
related styles from the 1890s onwards, but no jazz.
> This would have been the music that Scott Joplin was influenced by
> when he played in these establishments and contracted his disease...
Joplin dd not play jazz. He played ragtime (which he also wrote down and
published). This is a classical art form whose syncopation was one of the
ingredients adopted in jazz, but it is not jazz.
> He
> was, I believe, the first person that wrote down this music and had
> the the education to put this style into a form that was acceptable to
> the public.
ROFL.. Ragtime piano was incredibly popular, and not just Joplin. When
teh first ragtime publication was made (Maple Leaf Rag in 1899) the music
was already very well acceptable to the public: it sold in spades.
>W.C. Handy would probably have heard this music as well in
> his travels. Blues, after all, was also part of the mix that
> eventually become blues.
Of course - an a lot of his publications are very reminiscent of Ragtime.
But NOT jazz.
> Black music was going on since before they were brought to the US as
> slaves.
But NOT jazz.
> There were blacks playing music on all the plantations, not
> just in New Orleans.
But NOT jazz.
>When the slaves were freed around 1861, their
> music started to flourish. No one called it Jazz.
It wasn't jazz.
> It wasn't until
> Storyville that some say the term Jas started to be used at all and we
> all know what this term meant! No, Jazz music was around since at
> least the mid 1800s.
Mid 1800s??? Evidence? There is NO evidence for Jazz before 1915.
> It did not use the term Jazz. Maybe that is why
> WC Handy didn't mention hearing it
Nooooooo! People are not so stupid as you seem to think. They asked him
about the music. He would have understood terms like polyphonic
improvisiation.
>or maybe he did not frequent the
> houses of ill repute.
As far as history records he did not, but that would not have stopped him
hearing jazz if it existed.
> I don't know and I don't care.
This is clear. I do, and have done for many years.
> The music was
> there in the slave days.
You're making this up!
Evidence? There is NO evidence for Jazz before 1915.
> Nick LaRocca and his family is still fighting
> over the origins of a tune or two with one of the Creole families (at
> least they were 20 years ago)
Quite possibly. So what?
>When his grand son, a trumpeter, was
> telling me about this, I managed to not point out that they both stole
> it from the every day Black musicians of the day.
Pity - he might have told you something different.
> Believe what you want to believe, but if you want to know the truth.
Truth?? (When peole tell me I need to know the truth, they usually hacve
it from a private line to God.)
Evidence? The picture you opaint is just so far from anything you have any
evidence for.
> Research about the life in the plantation south and especially look
> deeper into life and culture in New Orleans. You have read some books.
> I have grown up with this culture.
In 1915?
> There is more to it than you have
> discovered so far. The book that I cited is a good place to start.
> There are a lot of footnotes if you really want to know how this all
> got started. But if you think that Jazz just magically appeared around
> 1910 or so, you need to turn back the hands of time a bit in order to
> get closer to its true origins. Yes, the Creoles jumped on the band
> wagon, but they were not even the first ones to jump on that wagon.
> The poor originators of the style died unknown. Sorry, that is the way
> life is in the Big Easy.
Where is your evidence for jazz before 1915?
Who did King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Alphonse Picou, A
J
Piron,
Alcide Nunez, Omer Simeon, Kid Ory, Freddie Keppard, ....
learn from?
Who composed jazz pieces before Morton?
(The answers are well do***ented: "each other" and "essentially no
one".)
Dave
--
David Webber
Author of 'Mozart the Music Processor'
http://www.mozart.co.uk
For discussion/sup****t see
http://www.mozart.co.uk/mozartists/mailinglist.htm
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