[Tradjazz] Trad Jazz

[trevor rippingale]

Greetings Bill Grant,
         After 50 years of loving and playing jazz, I offer the following opinion as I see it from "down-under": your teacher seems to be confusing the term "TRADITIONAL JAZZ " with "TRAD" or  "TRAD JAZZ". To my understanding, these are two quite different things.
       (i) "TRADITIONAL JAZZ" : could be seen as an attempt at an objective, academic, generic definition, which might read something like "American-originated improvised music of the first third of the 20th century, as played until about the early 30s" (when it was subsumed into the swing era). BUT even that is far from a watertight view. Gunther Schuller's book "Early Jazz", should be read for a more expert comment, followed by his subsequent book "The Swing Era".
              .....and by contrast........
      (ii) "TRAD JAZZ" or "TRAD" : Commercially promoted marketing terms, used to promote the "TRAD BOOM" of the 50s and 60s. 
            This took the world by storm , topping pop hit parades around the world with "quasi-jazz", thereby serving the very valuable function of bringing jazz to mass public attention. This was largely a UK-sourced phenomenon : Acker Bilk, Chris Barber, Kenny Ball, Alex Welsh,   Monty Sunshine, The Temperance Seven and others are some of the big names of that era which come to mind,  though they played a range of styles from "pure" New Orleans (as they saw it), to home-grown UK versions of that. Whether any of them (except the Temperance Seven"), exemplify the qualities of "traditional jazz" is at best, a  moot question, though there's no denying the wonderful service they did for public awareness of some areas of jazz.
        Your teacher doesn't seem to be aware of this distinction.
                                        Trevor Rippingale
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bill Grant 
  To: tradjazz at list.okom.com 
  Sent: Monday, October 02, 2006 7:01 AM
  Subject: [Tradjazz] Trad Jazz


  Bill Taggart & Bruce McNichols,

  I've followed your discussions over the  last 2  months, and I am  still having  trouble  when I try to define Trad Jazz for my high school  term paper.  I really need a definitive answer.  I'm convinced that Trad Jazz is only British.  My teacher says  that I may fail if I maintain that position.  Please, all of you in the group, help me!!
  Billy Grant 


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