[Tradjazz] Some random thoughts

[Steve Barbone]

DRobert769 at aol.com wrote:
 
> Last line reminds me of the story Chuck Slate told about Wettling. Chuck said
> he said to George, "I wish I had been around in the days when jazz was really
> popular" and Wettling replied, "It never was."

Amen Don, Bill and Bruce.

That fact was made readily apparent in Eddie Condon's first book, "We Called
It Music". And if you asked Condon in the 40s/50s, he would readily expound
on the rejection of "real" jazz in the 20s and 30s.

Condon would claim that there were only about 50 "real" jazz players back
then and they were mostly out of work, starving and wondering what the hell
the jazz age was all about.

Of course, he did not consider Whiteman, or Benny Goodman, or Gershwin or
most folks who were in the "big" bands that got popular, or writing "jazz"
as "real" jazz musicians. And he did not care much for Red Nichols either,
for one reason or another.

What we think of today as the good old days for jazz, Condon, Wettling,
Davison et all thought of as hard times for what they called "real" jazz
musicians. Just like today, they took every gig that came along just to
scratch out a living in music.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone