Great albums from the classic jazz and Dixieland revival (1939 onwards)

[gmonahan]

Lu Watters and Turk Murphy were fairly serious white players in the revival--so serious the music can sometimes sound like it was collected for a museum--but Good Time Jazz preserved most of their work, and Watters even got a fairly nice box.

 

[JSngry]

The clips on the Davenport site are really, REALLY lame btw.

But the Jim Cullum band played with spirit often enough.

 

 

[Rabshakeh]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Stiff is relative... whatever else those guys were or were not, they could be as boisterous as they wanted to be. And boisterous is a core element of so much of this stuff.

Knowing how to land a beat is crucial for most of the jazz that we all like, but not for all jazz and certainly not for all music. Boisterousness and raw excitement is something too.

I don't really care whether Black Flag or Charlie Feathers can swing. They have their own rhythmic power. Same goes for some Dixieland, I guess.

1 hour ago, gmonahan said:

Lu Watters and Turk Murphy were fairly serious white players in the revival--so serious the music can sometimes sound like it was collected for a museum--but Good Time Jazz preserved most of their work, and Watters even got a fairly nice box.

 

Some of those arrangements are enjoyable though. 

Interesting that these players are at the heart of the genre in the eyes of most Dixieland fans, but have barely showed up here.

Edited March 30 by Rabshakeh

[JSngry]

26 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

Knowing how to land a beat is crucial for most of the jazz that we all like, but not for all jazz and certainly not for all music. Boisterousness and raw excitement is something too.

It took me a long time to appreciate, never mind understand,  but that "white" way of landing a beat is its own kind of swing, at least when it is. It's different, sure, and it's not "black". God knows there's a difference, but not necessarily a "deficiency". THAT only occurs when outright imitation is attempted. The Hirt record that I posted, the other players are actually quite facile, expressive players. They can all play!

Let me throw another name out there - trombonist Bob Havens. Featured for years on the Lawrence Welk show and for year I thought he was some cornball. But later on in the Welk show, there would be some kind of "jazz" features on the show, and Havens caught my ear then as somebody who could actually play jazz. Come to find out, he was a highly respected trad/swing player who went full time into that world after the Welk gig ended.

Not at all rambunctious, but...why would it be in that time/place?

26 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

Interesting that these players are at the heart of the genre in the eyes of most Dixieland fans, but have barely showed up here.

What is there to say? Well-played (enough), lively (enough), and then what?

There it is, it ain't never going to be any different than that.

[ghost of miles]

Mosaic’s Condon Mob Sessions set was mentioned early in this thread, and it’s well worth seeking out for fans of this genre—it kicks off with a standout 1940 Bud Freeman date and includes just about everything that Jimmy Dorsey’s late-1940s “band within a band” Dixieland unit recorded. You also get a fine run of Lee Wiley sides.

And speaking of Dorseys, the Clambake Seven records from Tommy’s orchestra are enjoyable as well. There was a 2-CD set issued by Jasmine many years ago that gathered together quite a lot of that material.

[JSngry]

Bud Freeman had his own thing. A strong thing, not a follower but a creator. Sometimes you find people like that in this type of music, players with their own voice.

Wild Bill Davison was another one. Flayva!!!

 

[Rabshakeh]

4 hours ago, JSngry said:

Stiff is relative... whatever else those guys were or were not, they could be as boisterous as they wanted to be. And boisterous is a core element of so much of this stuff.

Do you know about Jim Cullem Jr.?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Cullum_Jr.

I liked that Super Satch record. The more famous Hooray for Hoagy, a little less so.

3 hours ago, gmonahan said:

Lu Watters and Turk Murphy were fairly serious white players in the revival--so serious the music can sometimes sound like it was collected for a museum--but Good Time Jazz preserved most of their work, and Watters even got a fairly nice box.

 

Something about these two did really capture someone’s imagination for a while, though.

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

What is there to say? Well-played (enough), lively (enough), and then what?

There it is, it ain't never going to be any different than that.

There is something more than that.

A lot of time and energy put into refining something that once happened into something that is a free-standing style.

In their case, the emphasis seems to be on the group’s arrangements. 

Maybe not a million miles from the way that Marsalis and co turned the Plugged Nickels sessions into Black Codes.

[JSngry]

31 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

Maybe not a million miles from the way that Marsalis and co turned the Plugged Nickels sessions into Black Codes.

Is that supposed to be a compliment? Like that was time well-spent?

[Rabshakeh]

6 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Is that supposed to be a compliment? Like that was time well-spent?

Half and half.

Both turn a moment into a style. That's something, isn't it?

[JSngry]

Many things are "something".

[miles65]

My favorite Bud Freeman and his Summa Cum Laude Orchestra.

Edited March 30 by miles65
typo

[JSngry]

 

@Chuck Nessa Did you produce this one?

[Chuck Nessa]

I coaxed Bud back from London for the 1981 festival and he decided to spend the rest of his life "back home". That band was Doc Cheatham, trumpet; Bud Freeman, tenor sax; Dick Hyman, piano; Milt Hinton, bass; Bobby Rosengarden, drums. Bud wasn't aware of the local players when he returned so we hired a band he was familiar with.

My last year as festival chairman was 1984, so I was simply an audience member in 1985. By this time he was comfortable with some later Chicagoans.

 

Edited March 31 by Chuck Nessa
Third edit for more of the story

[Big Beat Steve]

20 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

His theory was that there were seven "styles" of classic jazz.  Three historic and four revivalist. They were:

Historic

- White New Orleans (ODJB, NORK, etc)

- Hot dance (non-jazz or partly-jazz white and black pre-swing dance orchestras)

- Downtown New Orleans (Oliver, Armstrong, De Paris, etc). 

Revivalist

- Chicago style (Eddie Condon, Wild Bill Davison, etc)

- Uptown New Orleans (Bunk Johnson, George Lewis)

- West Coast revival (Lu Watters, Turk Murphy, etc)

- British trad (Ken Colyer etc)

Obviously any taxonomy has glaring holes. Even within revivalist terms, this one makes no allowance for ragtime players or Bix-enthusiasts (surely a major feature in Dixieland world). It also ignores that stylistic middle ground between swing, trad and blues that I suspect is the one area of post war classic jazz that most of us on this forum actually really do enjoy.

 

Actually this categorization is interesting, give or take the blurring of the "boudaries" between each style (as you mention ...). At any rate, a case can be made for this kind of subdivision, at least "for convenience's sake".
I feel somewhat uneasy about some of the definitions, however:

i) "Hot dance" orchestras as one style of classic jazz is very apt, but I wonder about labeling these bands "non-jazz or partly-jazz". Granted that there always have been fans and/or discographers who drooled about almost any (mostly white) non-jazz and not even partly-jazz 1920s dance band documented on records that in their opinion qualified as "jazz" just because of the presence of 8 or 16 bars of a "hot solo" (preferably by a name soloist). Which of course is seriously skewed because the same yardstick would never have been granted to comparable "dance" big bands from the Swing era. There were many that were sweet, corny or mickey mouse-ish most of the time but did have capable hot soloists too and did occasionally cut loose and swing with the best on some of their flagwavers. Yet they would never have rated even a "selective" entry in jazz discographies (contrary to 20s dance bands that overall did not muster a higher jazz content either). Was this shift of criteria due only to the scarcity of real JAZZ dance bands (with a mostly hot repertoire preserved on records) in the 20s? Somehow I doubt it.
OTOH at least among Black dance bands or orchestras of the pre-Swing era there were quite a few that were much more than "partly jazz" only but would not fit the "downtown N.O." category either. So that "Hot dance" criterion would have to be extended IMO to cover anything from "non-jazz with occasional hot solos to fully-fledged jazz bands".

ii) Among the Revivalist styles, I take it that "British trad" is a category that popped up there because of the (U.S.) author's unawareness of most of what happened across the Pond. In all truthfulness this should read "European and Australian trad jazz". There WERE discernible stylistic differences and subcategories, after all, that sometimes could even be categorized by country. I realize subcategorizing this one any further would lead way too far, so at least this "main" category should extend beyond Britain. Not to mention that some acts would not easily fit that overall category anyway, such as the Kustbandet from Sweden.

Edited March 31 by Big Beat Steve

[Rabshakeh]

5 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Actually this categorization is interesting, give or take the blurring of the "boudaries" between each style (as you mention ...). At any rate, a case can be made for this kind of subdivision, at least "for convenience's sake".
I feel soewhat uneasy about some of the definitioons, however:

i) "Hot dance" orchestras as a classic jazz style is very apt, but I wonder about labeling them "non-jazz or partly-jazz". Granted that there always have been fans and/or discopgraphers who drooled about almost any (mostly white) non-jazz and not even partly-jazz 1920s dance band documented on records that in their opinion qualified as "jazz" just because of the pesence of 8 or 16 bars of a "hot solo" (preferably by a name soloist). Which of course is seriously skewed because the same yardstick would never have been granted to comparable "dance" big bands from the Swing era. There were many that were sweet, corny or mickey mouse-ish mostof the time but did have their hot soloists too and did ocasionally cut loose and swing with the best on some of their flagwavers. Yet they would never have rated even a "selective" entry in jazz discographies (contrary to 20s dance bands that overall did not muster a higher jazz content either). Was this shift of criteria due only to the scarcity of real jazz dance bands (with a mostly hot repertoire preserved on records) in the 20s? Somehow I doubt it.
OTOH at least among Black dance bands or orchestras of the pre-Swing era there were quite a few that were much more than "partly jazz" only but would not fit the Downtown N.O. category either. So that "Hot dance" criterion would have to be extended IMO to cover anything from "non-jazz with occasional hot solos to fully-fledged jazz bands".

ii) Among the Revivalist styles, I take it that "British trad" is a category that popped up there because of the (U.S.) author's unawareness of most of what happened across the Pond. In alltruthfulness this should read "European and Australian trad jazz". There WERE discernible stylistic differences and subcategories, after all, that sometimes could even be categorized by country. I realize subcategorizing this one would lead way too far, so at least this "main" category should extend beyond Britain. Not to mention that some acts would not easily fit that overall category anyway, such as the Kustbandet from Sweden.

I should say in Wyndham's defence that the shoddy descriptions in brackets are mine, and not his. 

With respect to "Hot Dance", he makes some of the points that you make in his article on the style: https://syncopatedtimes.com/texas-shout-3-hot-dance/. That includes the difficult choice of where one draws the line between jazz and not-jazz - is it a band's repertoire? Style? Rhythmic sense? the occasional solo? - as well as the divergent approaches that seem to be adopted towards classifying white and black groups.

On the British trad point, his approach seems very strange. He concentrates on Ken Colyer, which is maybe not the the first person that the term 'Trad' brings to mind to a British reader. I get the impression that "British trad" was a category of US and Canadian dixieland bands playing the then-thrivin Dixieland festival circuit that adopted Colyer's attempt to emulate the 'New Orleans Uptown' sound of George Lewis and Bunk Johnson, including what Wyndham considers to be Colyer's ensemble's incorrect / innovative use of the banjo. I don't think he is talking about the European trad scenes in general so much as this derived style as viewed from the point of view of the US: the only recent group that he mentions as playing in this "British trad" style is the Climax Jazz Band, who are Canadians.

I suspect that Wyndham would classify a group like the Dutch Swing College Band as a San Francisco style band, rather than a European trad band.

As for the Australians, I wonder where he would put them?

5 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Not to mention that some acts would not easily fit that overall category anyway, such as the Kustbandet from Sweden.

I don't know of the Kustbandet. What record would you recommend starting with?

Edited March 31 by Rabshakeh

[Big Beat Steve]

5 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

On the British trad point, his approach seems very strange. He concentrates on Ken Colyer, which is maybe not the the first person that the term 'Trad' brings to mind to a British reader. I get the impression that "British trad" was a category of US and Canadian dixieland bands playing the then-thrivin Dixieland festival circuit that adopted Colyer's attempt to emulate the 'New Orleans Uptown' sound of George Lewis and Bunk Johnson, including what Wyndham considers to be Colyer's ensemble's incorrect / innovative use of the banjo. I don't think he is talking about the European trad scenes in general so much as this derived style as viewed from the point of view of the US: the only recent group that he mentions as playing in this "British trad" style is the Climax Jazz Band, who are Canadians.

I suspect that Wyndham would classify a group like the Dutch Swing College Band as a San Francisco style band, rather than a European trad band.

As for the Australians, I wonder where he would put them?

I don't know of the Kustbandet. What record would you recommend starting with?

Regardless of how US-centric this author may be and what meaning he put into this personal "Ken Colyer" category, any classification of the styles of the entire field of traditional jazz needs to include the European scene too - at least as ONE of the substyles. The European traditional/classic jazz revival scene not only of the post-war years but even way later up to more recent decades played a significant role in "carrying on the flame" (and no, they weren't all copycats). It just was/is so that a lot happened outside the USA and the Traditional jazz revival definitely has not been a US-only affair anymore for quite some time. And not least of all the revivalist traditional jazz scene in Europe provided sympathetic backing (and livelihoods) to many U.S. expats (Albert Nicholas, to name just one, for example, or - right up to his death in 1998 - Benny Waters). (And I'm saying this despite the fact that European revival jazz is nowhere near my top listening priorities)

As for naming Ken Colyer first and maybe as the only one in what appears to be a "British" category, this may be due either to the almost legendary role of Ken Colyer as the "purist" among early Brit Trad Jazz exponents, including because of his visits to the US where he absorbed every note, sneeze and cough of his idols in almost folkoristic proportions (which may have endeared him to certain American jazz historians and scribes in hindsight).
Or it may really be a case of unawareness of others (Chris Barber? Humphrey Lyttelton? Just two who no doubt had a larger impact in the long run). Awareness of them might have led Wyndham to reassess this category.

In general, and (sorry for this, Rabshakeh!) as an OT side note (at the risk of alienating some here ), I often am underwhelmed by US music scribes who are called upon to cover in any depth a "revival" subculture flourishing to a large extent outside the USA. Often their blind spots as to what was going on in these "far away" countries are such that you wonder where in fact they are NOT "sightless".

Case in point: The Rockabilly subculture that has been going on all over Europe since the 70s/80s and has evolved in many directions and new facets. FWIW it also provided a new lease of stage life and belated musical apprecation to many US artists who had recorded in the 50s/early 60s (but in their home country had been relegated to playing hick C&W gigs in the sticks by the 80s). There is a basically very nice book called "Rockabilly - The Twang Heard 'Round the World" with contributions by (a.o.) Greil Marcus, Peter Guralnick, Robert Gordon (all no slouches). As the book title implies it covers the European side to some extent - both "then" and "now" ("revival"). But as anyone familiar with this subculture will see from the artists chosen as a cross-section of the European scene, the authors' awareness of the facts - beyond some major acts presented nicely - was cloudy, to say the least. The "then" French acts they chose give a slanted picture and mysteriously include a minor also-ran but bypass bigger artists who did make a splash. And their look at what they term the "Worldwide Revival" by post-1980s bands (shown through a cross-section of album covers) are arbitrary and random and do look like some record shop owner threw a stack of record covers their way when they asked him "Hey, what European bands ARE there, after all?" Amusing for European readers in the know but confusing for those discovering this aspect for the first time.

In short, this Ken Colyer thing does not come as that huge a surprise to me. Still I find it odd that he should be singled out as someone who inspired the playing/emulating habits of US bands enough to warrant a separate stylistic category. I think you will agree that this blows up his importance - even in the European Traditional Jazz revival - in a skewed way.

Finally, as for the "Kustbandet" ("The Coast Band"), I have listened to quite a bit of their music online but can't point you to any specific album. They recorded a lot from the mid-60s onwards. I suggest you check out their discography here (page 20 onwards in this file) ...

http://old.visarkiv.se/jazzdiskografi/jazzdiskografi_K.pdf

... and see what combinations of tunes appeal to you most. However - their records may be hard to come by outside Scandinavia (or in fact Sweden) so you would have to rely on Discogs sellers. Which may make things uneconomical "just for the fun of it".

 

Edited March 31 by Big Beat Steve

[Rabshakeh]

On 3/31/2024 at 3:59 PM, Big Beat Steve said:

Regardless of how US-centric this author may be and what meaning he put into this personal "Ken Colyer" category, any classification of the styles of the entire field of traditional jazz needs to include the European scene too - at least as ONE of the substyles. The European traditional/classic jazz revival scene not only of the post-war years but even way later up to more recent decades played a significant role in "carrying on the flame" (and no, they weren't all copycats). It just was/is so that a lot happened outside the USA and the Traditional jazz revival definitely has not been a US-only affair anymore for quite some time. And not least of all the revivalist traditional jazz scene in Europe provided sympathetic backing (and livelihoods) to many U.S. expats (Albert Nicholas, to name just one, for example, or - right up to his death in 1998 - Benny Waters). (And I'm saying this despite the fact that European revival jazz is nowhere near my top listening priorities)

As for naming Ken Colyer first and maybe as the only one in what appears to be a "British" category, this may be due either to the almost legendary role of Ken Colyer as the "purist" among early Brit Trad Jazz exponents, including because of his visits to the US where he absorbed every note, sneeze and cough of his idols in almost folkoristic proportions (which may have endeared him to certain American jazz historians and scribes in hindsight).
Or it may really be a case of unawareness of others (Chris Barber? Humphrey Lyttelton? Just two who no doubt had a larger impact in the long run). Awareness of them might have led Wyndham to reassess this category.

In general, and (sorry for this, Rabshakeh!) as an OT side note (at the risk of alienating some here ), I often am underwhelmed by US music scribes who are called upon to cover in any depth a "revival" subculture flourishing to a large extent outside the USA. Often their blind spots as to what was going on in these "far away" countries are such that you wonder where in fact they are NOT "sightless".

Case in point: The Rockabilly subculture that has been going on all over Europe since the 70s/80s and has evolved in many directions and new facets. FWIW it also provided a new lease of stage life and belated musical apprecation to many US artists who had recorded in the 50s/early 60s (but in their home country had been relegated to playing hick C&W gigs in the sticks by the 80s). There is a basically very nice book called "Rockabilly - The Twang Heard 'Round the World" with contributions by (a.o.) Greil Marcus, Peter Guralnick, Robert Gordon (all no slouches). As the book title implies it covers the European side to some extent - both "then" and "now" ("revival"). But as anyone familiar with this subculture will see from the artists chosen as a cross-section of the European scene, the authors' awareness of the facts - beyond some major acts presented nicely - was cloudy, to say the least. The "then" French acts they chose give a slanted picture and mysteriously include a minor also-ran but bypass bigger artists who did make a splash. And their look at what they term the "Worldwide Revival" by post-1980s bands (shown through a cross-section of album covers) are arbitrary and random and do look like some record shop owner threw a stack of record covers their way when they asked him "Hey, what European bands ARE there, after all?" Amusing for European readers in the know but confusing for those discovering this aspect for the first time.

In short, this Ken Colyer thing does not come as that huge a surprise to me. Still I find it odd that he should be singled out as someone who inspired the playing/emulating habits of US bands enough to warrant a separate stylistic category. I think you will agree that this blows up his importance - even in the European Traditional Jazz revival - in a skewed way.

Finally, as for the "Kustbandet" ("The Coast Band"), I have listened to quite a bit of their music online but can't point you to any specific album. They recorded a lot from the mid-60s onwards. I suggest you check out their discography here (page 20 onwards in this file) ...

http://old.visarkiv.se/jazzdiskografi/jazzdiskografi_K.pdf

... and see what combinations of tunes appeal to you most. However - their records may be hard to come by outside Scandinavia (or in fact Sweden) so you would have to rely on Discogs sellers. Which may make things uneconomical "just for the fun of it".

All of this makes sense. Save that, as I said above, Wyndham's position seems to be a deliberately parochial one. He is not claiming to be surveying all forms of classic jazz revivalism, and is only looking at the categories of bands on the various circuits that he classes as revivalist.

As mentioned, I think his view of the European bands is not so much that he is ignorant of them (maybe he is and maybe he isn't), but rather that the bands in question would already fit into one or another of his categories regardless of geography. The main thing that seems to qualify "British Trad" as a genre for Wyndham is the difference in the banjo's role. Not geography.

I assume that if one attended a Dixieland festival event in 1982 (which I certainly did not, being non-existent at that stage), there would have been American bands that described themselves as playing "British trad", but not bands playing, say, "Dutch trad", or equivalent. That isn't a comment on the strength or existence, or lack thereof, of non-UK scenes. It is just a reflection of what I take from Wyndham’s article to be the contemporaneous American reception of overseas developments.

I hope that, in any case, I am not being seen to suggest that I agree with this seven-part classification. I find Wyndham's seven point scheme most interesting for the way that he compartmentalises the various New Orleans scenes. As regards the revivalist scenes, a reading of his articles shows him as a narrow devotee to Dixieland in the Lu Watters style, albeit he takes an allegedly open-minded approach when writing his articles.

But the truth is that there is such a vacuum of commentary or recommendations in this area that it is something that I have at least paid attention to. Perhaps I might not have done had it been on a better covered area of jazz.

Edited April 2 by Rabshakeh

[gmonahan]

On 3/30/2024 at 3:41 PM, miles65 said:

My favorite Bud Freeman and his Summa Cum Laude Orchestra.

That was a *great* band!

 

[Rabshakeh]

As I mentioned in the Listening To thread, I've been digging pretty deep into the "white" New Orleans revival's records, off the back of @JSngry 's comment in response to the Wyndham categorisation that I posted above. I mean artists like Al Hirt, the Dukes of Dixieland, Sharkey Bonano and Pete Fountain.

This is not an area that I have ever bothered with, despite the fact that it seems to have been one of the biggest-selling scenes in the revival, going by presence on the second hand market. My methodology for finding these albums was to go to discogs and search 'Most Collected' in the Jazz/ Dixieland category. Records from this scene far outnumber other categories of trad / dixieland when it comes to presence in collections, with Louis Armstrong being their only competitor. That is despite the fact that they are rarely mentioned even in the limited discussions of the subgenre.

It does seem to be its own style. It is quite separate even from the Firehouse Five / Turk Murphy type of Dixieland, which I assumed would be the blueprint for them before I started to explore. Drilled stiffness as a virtue. Lots of kitsch comedy. Very little blues (or, if present, blues apparently learned from swing era records). Lots of New Orleans tourist schlock. All those terrible album covers on Capitol or Audio Fidelity with their white backgrounds and hilarious hijinks.

Not really much to like although sometimes the hard arrangements are enjoyable in small doses. I'm not surprised that these records don't get discussed much, because they really are not that good. More a genre of 50s kitsch than a style of music. It is perfectly explicable why one would focus on Eddie Condon, the DSCB or Kid Ory, and not even bother to talk about the Dukes of Dixieland.

More sinister is the racial edge. Obviously this is something that is present throughout jazz, including dixieland, and throughout wider culture in some form or another, but so strong here. The likes of Lu Watters and Ken Colyer seemed to see themselves as reviving the original sound of jazz focusing on its Black and Creole origins, as embodied in King Oliver / the Hot Sevens or the likes of George Lewis, respectively. But the New Orleans White scene in contrast sometimes tries hard to erase those origins and instead to stress continuity with the "real" original white jazz of the Original Dixieland Jass Band or the New Orleans Rhythm Kings (unsaid: the likes of King Oliver and Louis Armstrong were not the "real" originals). Liner notes carrying this message are common.

Also common are names and covers that pun on the "Dixie" name tag, often in pretty queasy ways, with confederate military imagery and terminology.

A strange flip side of this is that there are not many examples of the two New Orleans scenes of the time collaborating. George Lewis and his colleagues were Right There. Ken Colyer crossed the ocean to play with them. But for the Assunto brothers or Al Hirt they basically don't exist. Examples of them even playing with Black musicians are few and far between - perhaps the only famous example being that Louis Armstrong record with the Dukes, which I think is unlistenable. I think that a few had mixed bands when it came to playing live (including a young Ellis Marsalis) but on record that is not visible.

I don't think that enough is really made of this. Many histories of the genre treat Dixieland as deriving from the well meaning but blinkered progressive viewpoints of East and West Coast revivalism, which was then misunderstood or found patronising by younger musicians. But this stuff is, from any objective standpoint, really really reactionary at its core, as well as being musically of pretty minimal interest. And this too is a central part of what the revival was.

Not sure why I would find any of this surprising. Perhaps if I had lived through this stuff originally it would have been top of mind that this is a large part of what Dixieland was actually about, not Left Bank intellectuals or Emile Barnes records. Once I had spent a week or so with this stuff I began to feel that not even mentioning it in the context of a thread like this would not be right.

Edited April 7 by Rabshakeh

[Rabshakeh]

Two examples: 

Obviously, both groups' names, the records' titles, and the covers. The Rebels' album also has an alternative cover that has a stylised confederate flag on it. This is not the hot jazz revival trumpeted by John Hammond or played at CND marches. 

Note the stress on the "true Dixieland sound" for the Rebels record. The liner notes (available on discogs but I can't post here in readable quality) point out that this sound that they play was the original jazz played by the ODJB and the NORKs, before Condon degraded it. A tiny one-line reference to Black marching bands, but no mention of Bolden, Armstrong etc. It goes out of its way to erase the Black origins of hot jazz.

---

Edit: Having written the above, and having listened to the Rebels record (I had only heard the Dukes one), I am actually not sure that this album is from New Orleans at all. It seems to be a producer's record, by Enoch Light (I assume an @Teasing the Korean favourite). The musicians are either not mentioned or are fictional. Looking up the group on Allmusic suggests that the group might actually have included Milt Hinton and Panama Francis. If that is the case, then it is an interesting twist, and would account for the strange non-trad rhythmic underpinning of the record.

Edited April 7 by Rabshakeh

[Niko]

just a tiny comment on a detail, the lack of collaborations: I've been under the impression that fans of traditional jazz are not fond of albums that mix musicians from different subgenres of their music... like when you read about e.g. that first Jazzology album by Tony Parenti (this one) people will point that it is good even though the frontline has Jimmy Archey next to Wild Bill Davison etc and there's the danger of things not mixing well... 

btw, this is a fairly nice album from the mid 60s that consciously mixes some of the different New Orleans scenes of its time and I'm sure it's not entirely without irnoy that it was recorded in a jazz museum

[Teasing the Korean]

6 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

It seems to be a producer's record, by Enoch Light (I assume an @Teasing the Korean favourite). 

Not a fan.  I unloaded most of my Command albums decades ago.  That said, I do like Enoch Light's crime jazz album The Private Life of a Private Eye and a couple of his Now Sound albums, including Permissive Polyphonics and Spaced Out.  I held onto those three. 

[JSngry]

6 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

Not really much to like...

There ya' go.

[Big Beat Steve]

Rabshakeh, I do admire your perseverance in exploring all these facets of post-war (and later) white dixieland/traditional jazz revivalism. And I understand your feelings about those "Dixie for (rebel) Dixie's sake" records. Your quote from the liner notes of that "true Dixieland sound" by the Dixie Rebels is hilarious. Eddie Condon "degrading" the "true" spirit of classic jazz (latter-day aka "Dixieland")?? My oh my ... Makes Rudi Blesh and Hugues Panassié sound like all-out modernists by comparison!

Records like that certainly were plentiful in the USA in the 50s and (early? mid?) 60s for consumption by what I'd call the "fun jazz" faction. Reviews of such records cropped up evey now and then in Down Beat (maybe when the reviewers needed some lighter occasion to let off steam😁), and the general assessment varied between lukewarm receptions but kudos to the musicianship, even if it was all common stuff, and puzzlement as to what the point of note-for-note recreations could possibly have been.
FWIW, DB gave the Dukes of Dixieland LP you showed 2 1/2 stars and reviewer Dom Cerulli said "After the third track I was all set to pack up and go marching around the breakfast table. It's that type of happy Dixeland .."
And would you believe - "your" Dixie Rebels LP did manage to gain a 3-star ("Good") review by DB and reviewer George Hoefer!
The lineup was given as "Big Jeb Dooley (tp), Lou McGarity (tb), Kenny Davern (cl), Gene Schroeder (p), Milt Hinton (b), Cliff Leeman and Panama Francis (dr). A virtual all-star lineup. And the involvement of Enoch Light was indeed mentioned. One focus of the review was on the quality of sound reproduction: "The striking-back feature apparently is a crack at such bands as the Dukes of Dixieland that have made it on sound reproduciton. The rebels claim theirs is the true Dixieland sound. The mistake on this record is the repetition of the tired Dixie tunes that have been recorded over and over from the 1920s to date by the greatest instrumentalists in the business.   [And yet they awarded it 3 stars??]  The most impresisve soloist on these sides ias tormbimist mcGarity, whose horn is good to hear again."
Well well well ...

I am not sure I have much by the Dukes of Dixieland and the like among my records But still don't feel I missed out on something crucial. And those Firehouse Five + Two LPs (10 and 12") I've let myself be lured into picking up now sit in an easy-listening corner outside my music room. These somewhat caricaturesque Dixieland bands don't do all that much for me (and I am surprised you found they rate that highly on the "most collected" charts on Discogs) even within the Traditional Jazz (I refrain from using the term "Trad Jazz" as somehow this has strictly British connotations for me) REVIVAL. If I feel like letting myself be entertained by such "fun dixieland" I'd rather stick with our unpretentious German "Beer Jazz" trad bands such as the Old Merry Tale Jazz Band. 😁

But hats off to your thoroughness in covering these various aspects of white reivivalists.

As for the OTHER artists you mentioned early on in your recent post, I'd say that Pete Fountain WAS the real deal after all, and certainly no reactionary. And I'll concede that others who claimed that Al Hirt had his strengths in some of his recorded output were right (I've heard too little by him, except his bigger hits which did not move me much). As for Sharkey Bonano, I'll freely admit that his Sharks of Rhythm of 1936-37 so far were enough of a taster for me (as a very slightly more oldtime-ish variant on the Louis Prima New Orleans Gang theme).

So ...Overall your impressions confirm that I do not need to feel any qualms about maintaining the Condonites in all its aspects at the core of my post-WWII White Traditional Jazz listening and collecting, and beyond that a sampling here and there will do.

[AllenLowe]

I would tend to ignore anything recorded after, maybe 1955, in order to get an accurate aural picture of the times.

Don't forget Kid Rena, one of the first to record in the revival.

Tons of Bunk Johnson, inconsistent but some moments of real beauty; I would pick up the Decca sessions for a start.

Some else mentioned American Music, Bill Russell's label, I think, and almost everything on that is worthwhile.

Tom Brown (trombonist, not so known, but may have even been playing jazz in Chicago and elsewhere even before the ODJB). He recorded in the 1950s

Johnny Wiggs, fine trumpeter, distinctive player and even more distinctive for being an active supporter of MLK; also had a clear Bix influence.

Sharkey Bonnano

Paul Barbarin, great drummer.

Lizzie Miles, a singer who, at her peak, was, IMHO, the equal of Bessie Smith.

Ann Cook, singer, who recorded in the 1920s with Louis Dumaine, and then later on for American Music after, IIRC, she got out of prison for stabbing someone. She became a church lady.

Big Eye Nelson.

Geroge Lewis.

JELLY MORTON - get the General Recordings of his solo piano, amazing, brilliant stuff reissued on Commodore. Made just before the revival, as, sadly, Morton died too soon, but gives you a clear picture of what a more progressive New Orleans player was thinking about.

Louis Prima - few people realize what a terrific trumpeter he was before he became a star.

Irving Fazola - beautiful clarinetist. One of the best. Died young.

I am sure there is lots more; I would avoid Al Hirt and Pete Fountain. That's really tourist music, though both were excellent musicians.

Edited April 7 by AllenLowe