What is "Trad Jazz"?

Lu Watters was a west coast trumpeter who started a jazz band in San Francisco in 1939.  It was a band in the Dixieland tradition but...

1) Had no players that weren't "white."

2) Wasn't from Dixie

3) Had Tuba and Banjo in the rhythm section.

Lu was emulating King Oliver's band, which featured two trumpets (The other trumpet, besides himself, was Louis Armstrong.)  He also picked up tunes from Coon-Sanders and McKinney's Cottonpickers.  He liked Tuba!

Lu had Bob Scobey, who later had his own band, and Turk Murphy, who established a Saloon in San Francisco called "Earthquake McGoons" and played there with his own band for many years.  These San Francisco bands established the Tradition and still carry it forward.  

Dixieland.  Of course, jazz originated in New Orleans.  Jelly Roll Morton liked to say that he invented jazz, but it had many roots.  After some of the players migrated up the river, from Kansas City to Chicago, they began to call it "Dixieland."  And it began to mutate!   Louis Armstrong's bands often did not have a bass because his wife Lil had such a strong left hand, and bass was pretty hard to record!  The Original Dixieland Band (a bunch of white guys) didn't have a bass.  In many new Chicago bands, the upright String Bass replaced the tuba.   And, the guitar began to replace the banjo.  Ultimately, the music lost its original feel -- changed from "bounce" to "swing."  The bass went from "two-beat" (two out of four) to "four-beat", (four out of four)  You can hear a good example of that here, with "Four or Five Times."  (Listen to the last -- Benny Goodman -- version.)

Trad Jazz.  Characterized by the rhythm section:  Drums, Piano, Tuba and Banjo, which play a two-beat form; Tuba is playing first and third beats, banjo plays 'relentless' four beat, Piano plays something which my friend Tom O'Boyle describes as 'cat-house piano'.  The drums (at least as the Nighthawks describe them) use a lot of Splash Cymbal or <gasp> a washboard.  (The top-hat was not in common use until about 1930.)   Splash technique was perfected by Carleton Coon; a good  example (perhaps extreme, but humorous) can be heard here.   

The tradition was most publicized by the Firehouse Five plus 2.  This band was my first influence -- I bought a banjo so I could play along! Their records are still among my favorites. 

There is a notion around that "White players can't play Dixieland, or jazz" for that matter."  Of course that is a base canard.  Perhaps I didn't play jazz for the first few years I tried, but eventually, I got the hang of it, and I have often been accepted as a player in bands where I was the only 'whitey'.   The same is true of my son Tim.     

This page and all pages Copyright, Good Time Music, 2008.  All Rights Reserved.