jazz (jim o'connor)

[Barbara Laurence]

Bix has haunted my life for 55 years.  Cried when I first heard "Sorry" at
age 15.  Over the years I moved up to "I'm Coming Virginia."  Burns made
hash out of the inventor of white jazz (a melancholic rather than blues
sound).  Bix had many "firsts."  The first to break with one-step
Dixieland; the first to record a standard in jazz ("Virginia") one dances
the fox trot tox; the first to study French impressionists (as did Bird and
others  in the 1940s and 1950s); the first to have a sideman who Lester
Young (the most influential precursor of bop) regarded as his model  (Frank
Trambauer); the first white jazz man to play with Louis Armstrong (after
hours of course); the first white player to win Armstrong's great praise;
the star of the first (and last) band to ever win a "competition" in those
days against a black band (his band made mincemeat out of Fletcher
Henderson's band as did Chick Webb of Benny Goodman - which Burns showed);
the first to play after the beat, then before the beat, in extraordinarily
subtle ways.
It's an aesthetic blunder of the first order for Burns to play "Singing the
Blues" from start to finish (with voice over however - Armstrong's West End
Blues deservedly was played from start to finish without a voice over, the
only player and tune so presented to viewers).  Bix didn't play the blues
very well, as close listening to "Singing the Blues" reveals.  So why did
Burns choose this one to play in full, and not "Virginia" which anticipates
all kinds of styles to come and which will break your heart if you let it?
And why was this musician who influenced black musicians perhaps more than
any other white player, given short shrift?  Why call Bunny Berrigan the
"great Bunny Berrigan," while ignoring the cornet and trumpet players who
followed Bix not Louis.  I think there might be two answers: as lister
said, in Europe jazz is still an in part an exploratory enterprise, not
quite a museum (like the rest of Europe).  I'm eager to find out whether
European musicians today will get any play at all.
We heard Wynton M play Ellington with his orchestra in SC a year or so ago.
Everyone played perfectly and no one played with any noticeable feeling.
We were in a museum.
The second reason is that the  program may be very confused about white
jazz players and composers, thinking that jazz = African-American = America
hence white players are anomalies unless they try to play like black
players (as Berrigan tried to sound like Louis,  instead of himself).  This
is so because the program so far doesn't recognize that there is or was
such a thing as white jazz, which I believe disappeared with the death of
Bix.  Another indicator is the discrepancy between all the time Goodman
gets, and one commentator who compares Goodman very unfavorably to Artie
Shaw, who does get a big play as commentator but nowhere near enough of
this music is broadcast.  I'd say there's anomaly here.
Wynton M is a great teacher.  The first program which explained how
different kinds of music came together to make jazz, he did a wonderful job
explaining this.  Don't get me wrong, I've learned more about jazz over the
years from him than anyone else.
Maybe what's happening in this compelling series is: Burns style is
commercial (as a number of people pointed out).  The Civil War style
certainly makes no sense if the subject is jazz.  Wynton M. likes swing,
which was also commercial.  Maybe Burns and Co never made a clear decision
as to how to rate a musician or his/her music.  Do we show more of a jazz
player the more popular, i.e., commercial,  his or her style and type of
music was?  Or do we trust our feelings, individual judgements, and show
more of who we think are the best musicians?  I think the former, so far,
anyway.