"LJS" <ljschenck@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:64f4605e-a302-4e51-8347-0a67cc5ef5ba@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> No it doesn't. But if you live there and you are part of the community
> and you speak to a lot of old people that come from long lines of
> people that were there before the recordings that you heard were ever
> even a possibility, you certainly know a bit more than someone that
> has been there only twice and that relies so heavily on a limited
> amount of research done by someone else that had only sketchy and
> biased sources of information.
You really don't get it, do you? This period has been the subject of
very
extensive historical research, since the days when the pioneers were
actually alive and interviewed at great length by proper music hstorians.
and there is an immense amount of recorded jazz from 1917 onwards, and
NOTHING before that - although there are plenty of ragtime, and other
non-jazz recordings from significantly earlier.
The sources of information available to the researchers was a lot less
sketchy than what is available now, and the recordings are as they made
them - real musical evidence. I really don't know why you see fit to
denigrate, my knowledge of the era, and especially not that of your
compatriots who have researched it, thoroughly, using evidence available
to
them from the 1930s onwards, which no longer exists. Every sentence you
utter, makes it clear that you know a lot less than they did.
I have never claimed that the source of my knowledge was the two visits -
they were just curiosity. And of course I did listen to the last, though
rather tenuous, contact with the old days - a great tourist attraction.
> I spoke to musicians who's fathers were
> well established players at the turn of the century and their grand
> fathers were part of musical families way before then.
This surprises me considering the ignorance of early jazz which you put on
show here. Who?
> When one is
> interested in the evolution and the heritage of their profession,
> being there does make a difference. You can read about it all you
> want. It can not substitute for reading about it, interviewing people
> about it and living and working in the culture consistently since the
> mid 40s.
The point is you can *read* the interviews which were done decades ago -
interviews of the players who were there. and you can listen to their
music, though it is clear you have never done so.
> As to the European influence on the music, you either mis read what I
> said, took it out of context or there was an error in my writing!
There are lots of errors in your writing - little else in fact on this
subject.
>The
> European tradition of education did play a big role. It gave the
> Creoles the education necessary to read and write the music that was
> already going on there and it gave some, that you mentioned like
> Joplin, and Handy,
Neither of whom were Creole AFAIK and neither of whom had anything
significant (directly) to do with jazz.
> etc the education to take the music they heard and
> "correct" it to fit into the European language of music that allowed
> it to be acceptable to the American and European culture. Any
> reference to
Can you get much more partronising? You are talking about geniuses -
people who were better musicians than you or I will ever be.
>> There was no jazz in 1803 and absolutely nothing like it. It's first
>> exponents were born three or more generations later. If you're
talking
>> about roots that far back, you may as well credit Mozart and Beethoven
>> with
>> jazz, and credit Chopin with ragtime, or point out that my great
>> grandfather
>> was into Rock and Roll.
>
> You are sticking to the absurd notion that it just happened to appear
> on one day when it was recorded!
I have never said that. The best evidence is that the music which we
call
jazz did not exist before 1915, and was first recorded in 1917. At which
point it was developing very rapidly, and two years was an eternity. The
contrast in style between the ODJB's 1917-19 recordings, and anything else
shortly afterwards (Paul Whiteman, Joe Oliver,....) is enormous. It was
obviously an art form developing at an amazing pace: you only have to
listen
to it to understand that.
>In spite of citations that I have
> provided concerning people, bands, descriptions of the music and
> anything else that you need to see that this just wasn't true!
What citations?
> Really
> Dave, you seem to think that one day Jelly Roll just woke up and said,
> "Hmm, I will go down and record the first improvisational recording of
> music that is entirely new and has nothing to do with the past."....
He just recorded what he wanted to record. Tell me then - who else has
recorded anything like that before hand? What is your evidence that
anyone
was playing like that significantly before he did? When he was
interviewed (in 1939 IIRC) he clearly said that no-one was.
> It just didn't happen that way. The early recordings were a ***ulation
> of decades and more evolution and mixing of all the aspects of life in
> New Orleans.
But not of decades of jazz.
>There as music at the funerals since before anyone can
> remember.
And there were marches - but not jazz.
> There was blues taken from the African music,
How far the blues goes back is very obscure - it probably wasn't as long
as
you think. But in any case it was not jazz.
> this was
> crafted by use in the churches, there was Caribbean influences of
> rhythm and dance and melody from the VooDoo services.
There is certainly a Latin influence but nothing significant I can
remember
to do with voodoo.
> There was
> marching bands that were part of the social clubs formed by the freed
> slaves as well as the Creole families, there was music with the Mardi
> Gras parades there was music in the Opera houses, there was music
> everywhere...
But no jazz.
> The music was spread by many in its earlier stages and in its
> component parts. Way back before there were recordings.
But no jazz.
>The reason
> that it was such a hit, was that sophisticated people in Chicago, New
> York and other parts of the world had heard about this music, they had
> talked to people that was down in New Orleans and thus when Jelly Roll
> (I think that was the one you mentioned, we have so many early greats)
> and the other bands were recorded by the recording companies, they
> were well established.
Yes they had been doing it for a few years. A decade or so if you're
talking about the Red Hot Peppers recordings of circa 1926.
> The market was hot to hear this sound that was
> already called Jas in the whore houses and was already a part of the
> music scene for a long time in New Orleans.
No - what we now call "jazz" had been going only a very short time.
However
much you want to romanticise it.
> The early recorders
> discovered Jazz.
The people who played it on the early recordings were inventing it.
> It was not created with these recordings. Musicians
> were playing it long before they were exploited by the recording
> industries.
Not for long. One or two of the record companies were quite quick, once
the riverboats hit Chicago.
>T hink about it Dave, its not only the tons of
> do***entation that I provided,
All you have done is rubbish the academic studies, the interviews of the
musicianss who were there at the time, and point to one or two internet
sites which give scant sup****t for their assertions (which do not in any
event show that jazz existed before around 915).
> it just could not have happened the way
> you ****tray the inception.
I didn't happen the way you say I ****tray it, that's for sure. But then
I
didn't say it did.
...... Jazz from the era of 1915 through today.
> BUT, that was not the beginning of the music.
All the evidence says it was teh beginning of what we know as "jazz".
> It was the beginning of
> the "recorded history" of our music.
The recorded history of the popular music of the day goes a lot further
back
than the first jazz recordings of 1917. But no-one recorded jazz
because there wasn't any.
> The end result? Well until fairly recently, most of the research was
> in these romanticized and less than perfect accounts of what actually
> went on.
No. There were one or two very respectable academic studies of who
Schuller's is one. There are others.
> Just because there was no interest outside of New Orleans while Jazz
> was in its infant stages does not mean that it did not exist.
There was lots of interest outside New Orleans - so much so that it spread
very rapidly to rather distant (and to me obscure) places like Daven****t,
Iowa, as well as to New York, Chicago, and California.
>Even in
> its simplest forms, it is a very complex form of music when you get to
> the actual sound and how and why it all works. It did NOT just occur
> overnight in the first two decades of the 20th Century.
So you keep saying, but there is no evidence for anything we might call
"jazz" before that, and a lot of evidence that there wasn't anything.
>> Actually I didn't. You're making it up.
>
> I believe that you said several times that there was no Jazz before
> the recordings that you have.
No - I said there is no evidence for jazz more than a couple of years
before
them.
> And you said that there was no Jazz in
> Storyville and that it was all a creation of (I may have the wrong
> person here) Jelly Roll Morton.
What are you rabbitting on about now? Jelly Roll Morton worked in
Storyville. And yes he was one of theearliest pionneers of jazz. His
statement that he invented it has to be taken with a pinch of salt - but
no-one has shown it to be that far from the truth (especially if you omit
the "single-handedly".)
> I see. So you HAVE NOT read the do***entation that I sent you.
Do***entation? There were a few web links to a few simple articles, which
you interpreted by assuming that everything they advertised a "jazz" (or
"jass") to get the crowds in was in fact jazz (as we would recognise it
today).
>Until
> you do, you will not see how your research is out dated.
I'm afraid, it cannot now be updated by interviewing people who are now
dead. And there is still no evidence in anything you have shown me that
jazz existed before about 1915, and a lot of evidence that it didn't.
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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