Indigenous Music
Hentoff, Nat
INDIGENOUS MUSIC Nat Hentoff Singing, Strutting Horns Jazz was not born in New Orleans—it has many homes—but the Crescent City played a large, flavorful part in laying down many traditions of the...
...Wild Bill Davison did not come from New Orleans...
...George Buck has issued another celebration of the New Orleans heritage, a reissue of The Jazzology Poll Winners/1964 (GHB-200...
...Everyone in the world should know this...
...But that music could come on you any time like that...
...The city was full of the sounds of the music...
...Trumpeter Kid Valentine's improvising was hot and strong, the kind of horn that could lead a parade or, for that matter, several parades at once...
...If my music makes people happy, I will try to do more...
...The sounds of men playing would be so clear, but we wouldn't be so sure where they were coming from...
...But I never heard either ride over the other...
...Like Jim Robinson, he too is the unbridled spirit of jazz...
...It is a challenge to me...
...Davison plays with enough gusto to face down a thunderstorm...
...When I play sweet music, I try to give my feelings to the other fellow...
...There were, for instance, marching bands that could break your heart with the poignancy of the dirges they played on the way to a funeral and then make it joyously whole again as they swung the mourners back into life on the way back from the cemetery...
...It was like a phenomenon, like the Aurora Borealis...
...These were collectively improvising ensembles—though some read parts from time to time—in which soloists, while important, did not dominate the music...
...Like all jazzmen of his generation, Bill was influenced in one way or another by certain New Orleans sounds, notably Louis Armstrong's, but despite his being categorized for years as a Dixieland man, Davison is temperamentally in the swing-era mainstream...
...The tracks range from "All of Me" to "Rose Room," but the style throughout is down-home New Orleans-plenty of melody, plenty of punch, and plenty of room for giving your feelings to the other fellow...
...Soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet had an equally fierce drive and sound, and years ago, I often heard the two play together...
...The Last of the Line/The Eagle Brass Band (GHB-170) was recorded in Los Angeles, not New Orleans, but most of the key participants—in their sixties, seventies, and eighties—served their apprenticeships in New Orleans marching bands...
...The front line consists of three of the most compelling soloists in the deep history of New Orleans jazz...
...George Lewis, a clarinetist who sang on his instrument, played with a penetrating intensity and innocent intimacy...
...Bechet has gone, as has Jim Robinson...
...You can hear some of those sounds in a wondrously evocative new release on George Buck's GHB Records (3008 Wads-worth Mill Place, Atlanta, GA 30032-5899...
...The lusty, exhilarating (and exhilarated) trombonist was Big Jim Robinson...
...Not that he couldn't fit in easily with a New Orleans marching band...
...Danny Barker, the banjoist and guitarist, has described that presence: "A bunch of us kids, playing, would suddenly hear sounds...
...Now eighty, Wild Bill still tours Europe and gets booked at home, too...
...Bill has a finely disciplined sense of dynamics...
...And on the ruminative, rueful, lyrically reminiscent tracks, the playing is so mindful of the infinite variety of losses that make up this life that the music could make even a landlord cry...
...The medium- and up-tempo pieces abound with the delight in jaunty, loose-limbed, pungent music-making that has always characterized classic New Orleans jazz...
...It's not that he shouts all the time...
...Robinson once said, "I enjoy playing for people that are happy...
...Also, as Al-den Ashforth points out in his justly enthusiastic notes, there is a long tradition of New Orleans jazzmen emigrating to Los Angeles...
...The sessions were recorded outdoors in the music courtyard at UCLA, creating the proper spacious ambience for such bold, vibrant themes and variations as "Just A Little While to Stay Here," "Fallen Heroes," "High Society," and "Abide With Me...
...He's originally from Defiance, Ohio, and apparently took the name of the town to heart, judging by the way he plays cornet...
...INDIGENOUS MUSIC Nat Hentoff Singing, Strutting Horns Jazz was not born in New Orleans—it has many homes—but the Crescent City played a large, flavorful part in laying down many traditions of the music...
...Not many jazz musicians have Davison's sheer force of emotion—whether on swingers or delicate ballads—and it's a wonder his horn doesn't crack or bend under so much pressure...
...But whatever he plays— from the gentlest of reveries to a swashbuckling good-time tune—pulses with a life force that will not be denied...
...but it's good to know that tonight, somewhere in the world, Wild Bill will get up on the stand and knock the hell out of the notion that an octogenarian can't swing...
...Backed by an unusually sensitive pianist, John Eaton, and a crisp ensemble composed of guitarist Steve Jordan, bassist Jack Lesberg, and drummer Cliff Lee-man, Davison selects a series of standards and takes possession of them...
...This set, named after a poll George Buck conducted among vintage collectors of vintage music, is full of singing horns and a rhythm section that also has a touch of the human voice in its phrasing and rhythms...
...It was like being in a club with two typhoons...
...If everybody is in a frisky spirit, the spirit gets to me and I can make my trombone sing...
...So we'd start trotting, start running—it's this way,' it's that way.' And sometimes, after running for a while, you'd find you'd be nowhere near that music...
...So was Wild Bill...
...That's always in my mind...
...Bechet, the firestorm of New Orleans, was accustomed to riding through and over any other horns on the same stand...
...I heard him one night, not long before he died, at Preservation Hall in New Orleans and he was the glowing spirit of jazz...
...It was the gloriously heterogeneous presence of the band as a whole that made the New Orleans air pulse with anticipation...
...George Buck has released one of Davison's most fully realized albums in some years: Wild Bill Davison's Lady of the Evening (Jazzology J-128...
Vol. 50 • April 1986 • No. 4
