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Ancient & Modern
22/01/23 - Just to let folks know that, despite our long standing booking to appear at the Glossop Jazz Club on April 20th, I discovered purely by chance on your website a few days ago that another band has also been booked for that date: We’ve been booked for this date since March 2022, because we stepped down from our July 2022 booking to allow another band to do it, one that was understandably disgruntled that their Covid cancelled gig in 2021 had not been renewed in 2022. It was fair to do that, as we were immediately promised the gig this April. But, the club now says, after nearly a year of no contact, that despite a good audience reaction at the last gig there in March 2022, we are too serious (!), and put in some “mainstream” tunes (Undecided, One Two Buckle Your Shoe, Sweeping The Blues Away, and another one) amongst the other well known warhorses. I say all this purely to suggest that bands check their bookings, just in case it happens again. I have told as many of our followers as I can so hopefully the others will see this. Other gigs can be lost if this happens, and that is not fair. - Jon Critchley. 22/01/23 - Hilarious posting from Jon Critchley about his band being "too serious" for Glossop Jazz Club. What did they expect, Sid Milward;s Nitwits, Spike Jones City Slickers? - David Davis. 22/01/23 - I was amused by Jon Critchley's remarks about his band being admonished for playing some modern numbers. After a recent jazz club performance of the Harmony Hounds, a band which plays both standards and classic tunes from the jazz age, I was approached by a member of the committee after the gig who informed me that they were worried as to how we would go down as the audience preferred New Orleans and Trad! In my innocence I thought that the band had been well received but we were not rebooked. Perhaps our greatest sin was not to have a drummer or a trombone player. - Colin Turner 23/01/23 - Phil Buckley was a lucky bugger!! Right place, right time!. The band concert, however was 1959 not 1958. Unfortunately, I was too young to see George at these concerts, but the recordings certainly capture the adoration the audience had for George and then later for the band. I only got to see George a bit later when he toured with Barry Martyn's Band. - Pete Lay PS: Fully support Ann Lord's and Jon Critchley's views. 26/01/23 - With regard to Jon Critchley, Jeff Matthews and Colin Turner's posts about some bands being too modern, I was told a story some years ago about a certain well known, very traditional, jazz club just outside Huddersfield. Apparently a band turned up to play there one evening, and whilst they were setting up the reeds player took a saxophone out of it's case. As a result of that half of the audience got up and walked out. I see it's still going on then! - Laurie Cooper. We had a similar experience when we booked Digby Fairweather Speakeasy at our club. The keyboard player set up first and was warming up with a modern tune, when a couple walked out saying they had heard enough. The rest of the band were still unpacking - Fred 27/01/23 - Very interesting discussions on your News page, re-Dixieland/Trad v ''Modern''! At Eagley Jazz club we have regulars who won't attend unless the band has a trombone and/or if there's a sax player. Similarly, we've had new attendees walk out at the intermission because ''It's all Trad''. We do our best to satisfy everyone and have realised that ''you can't please all of the people all of the time!'', although we try our best. Dixieland/Trad Jazz musicians are becoming harder to find, as are Dixieland/Trad fans (something to do with demographics!), so it's inevitable that there will be a drift away from ''pure'' Trad, unless there's a welcome revival of the genre. Until then, it's adapt or go under. Ann Lord 27/01/23 - Back in 1972, as a young teacher in Birmingham, I was approached by an older colleague. 'You're a string bass player aren't you? I've got a spare ticket to see Charlie Mingus at Ronnie Scott's. Would you be interested?' 'No, thank you', I replied. 'I don't like modern jazz.' Needless to say, I've been kicking myself ever since, both at the missed opportunity - this was Mingus's last visit to Britain - and the crass stupidity of such a generalisation. Fortunately a live recording of that concert has recently been issued as a three CD box set: 'Charles Mingus, The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott's'. It features a number called Pops - a wonderful, respectful tribute to Louis Armstrong in which a gravelly-voiced Mingus sings 'When the Saints Go Marching In' (with a bit of 'Mack the Knife' thrown in) in a swinging arrangement that would bring the house down in Glossop, just as it did at Ronnie's! Allan Wilcox The correspondence from Jon, Jeff, Colin and Laurie prompts me to report on lunchtime jazz organised by Alan Bramley at Dringhouses, York. At any time there are different bands booked for each of the next fifteen to twenty weeks, all playing in a more or less traditional style. Not infrequently musicians with a more modern centre of gravity appear and fit in well. In recent weeks attenders (I hope Autocorrupt doesn’t change this to attendees) have numbered nearly a hundred, the average age appearing close to my four score years. This week we were entertained by Tuba Dudes from East Yorkshire, led by tubist Vince Turton, his quintet embracing two trumpeters doubling on guitars, a trombonist and a drummer. Their repertoire was very much from old standards, impeccably played and (for me) much enlivened by the vocal renditions of seldom-featured verses. However third number in was Take Five, and also delivered, not from the traditional canon, were Caravan and Flamingo. Nobody from the audience shuffled out. At other jazz clubs it has seemed to me that the most vociferous commentators (in both praise and condemnation) are often those with the narrowest taste. Perhaps they have entered the jazz world from a revivalist position (Johnson, Lewis, Colyer) or BritTrad (Barber, Ball, Bilk) and never listened further. While many recordings from the mid nineteen-twenties onwards have featured six or seven piece bands, there have been marvellous waxings of trios and quartets. Yesterday I listened (again) to Jelly Roll Morton’s trio version of Wolverine Blues – absolutely fantastic (to me). Much of Sidney Bechet’s work was in quartets and quintets – no drums, and not always banjos. Hoping that this mini-rant doesn’t make me basso non grata, best wishes to you, Barbara and all readers, John Muskett 29/01/23 -
I must agree with a Jeff Matthews
about narrow minded bookers and
audiences. To me the beauty of jazz
music is the fact that bands and
musicians develop their own
individual sounds and repertoire.
This is totally different to the
classical world where the musician
is trained to play someone else’s
music as accurately as possible.
Unfortunately it seems to be also
happening in jazz music colleges at
the moment - turning out wonderfully
talented musicians who all sound the
same! Chris Walker 30/01/23 - We have some stick in the muds who don’t like anything but trad in OZ , I run a band called The Phoenix Jazz & Swing Band which is well received in Adelaide South Australia, I changed the name to the original Phoenix Jazz band so people know what we play, some mainstream stuff and hot Dixieland, they can take it or leave it. Derek Dalton 03/02/23 - An amusing email from Peter McGuire of jazz-clubs-worldwide fame. Peter writes, "Amused to read the postings about the continuing 'mod v trad' nonsense. I trust this might amuse you".
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