traditional jazz (dixieland)
Marvin R. Blum
together to play some dixieland. We've located sheet music for a very few
tunes: Basin Street Blues, Mississippi Mud, Lazy River, etc. but need more
numbers to really get started.
Most of the local music stores say the really good arrangements are all out of
print.....that's our dilemma.
Do any of you folks have any suggestions or names/contact info that might help
us?
Thanks for direct email so as not to clutter up the newsgroup.
Bob Blum, Trombone
Houston (TX) Concert Band
Todd Poynor
: We've located sheet music for a very few tunes [...] Do any of you folks
: have any suggestions or names/contact info that might help us?
For Dixieland expertise in general, try tracking down a phone number for a
nearby traditional jazz society. The club in Sacramento, CA is a
particularly active one, so perhaps the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society
could help. Hopefully, they can offer you some advice, since preservation of
the art form is a big concern of theirs.
: Thanks for direct email so as not to clutter up the newsgroup.
Posted and e-mailed; our trad friends deserve a little public airtime!
Todd
Gary Milliken
>A subset of the community concert band I play with is talking about getting
>together to play some dixieland. We've located sheet music for a very few
>tunes: Basin Street Blues, Mississippi Mud, Lazy River, etc. but need more
>numbers to really get started.
>
>Most of the local music stores say the really good arrangements are all out of
>print.....that's our dilemma.
>
>us?
About 20 years ago, I was hired to lead a "Dixieland band" at a newly
opening theme park. On the first day of work, the entertainment
manager said "I've got the music - here it is" and handed me a bunch
of published arrangements. This is the high-school bandleader's idea
of Dixieland jazz, and I told the guy so. If this was to be a "real"
jazz band, we'd have to work out our stuff without any written music.
And we did - it took a while, since half the band was fresh out of
high school and had never done anything by ear before, but they learned,
and the result was good.
Probably the reason that "the really good arrangements are all out of
print" is that nobody really good wants them. They sound like a bunch
of amateurs getting together to play someone else's museum music. To
make the music alive, you have to do it all out of your head - learn the
tunes and standard routines off of records (or better, from hearing others
play it live), and do the rest yourselves. Otherwise it will sound
awful. If after a while trying to make it work, you find that you can't
make it work... well, maybe that's how it was destined to be.
If you absolutely must start from written music (say, you want to play
Lu Watters things with a four-man front line), you should only *start*
with the printed arrangements, and as soon as possible, grow out of them.
Or you could write your own arrangements (which you should also grow out
of), taken off of records of more seasoned groups. Don't worry, they
steal from each other all the time - most such arrangements are stolen
off of 1920s records, anyway.
GM
Carlos May
about half the traditional/classic/New Orleans style/ jazz lovers
on there object to the term "dixieland"...)
Write to pe...@islandnet.com to subscribe or for info.
-- Froggy