[Tradjazz] Tradjazz Digest, Vol 7, Issue 4

[Bill Barnes]

Benny Goodman like Kenny G? Boy, is that a bunch of bullshit.!!!!!!! I 
suppose that's also supposed to apply to the Dorseys, Artie Shaw, Woody 
Herman etc.                              Bill Barnes
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Barbone" <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
To: <tradjazz at list.okom.com>
Sent: Friday, February 16, 2007 9:28 AM
Subject: Re: [Tradjazz] Tradjazz Digest, Vol 7, Issue 4


> GeoHunt1 at aol.com wrote:
>
>> To Steve Barbone:
>
>> I don't believe any jazz musician ever got rich.  Buddy Bolden went into 
>> an
>> asylum just when his band was getting popular.  Bunk Johnson quit music 
>> when
>> someone stomped on his horn during a bar fight.  Joe "King" Oliver died
>> penniless while working as a janitor in Savannah.
>>
>> But, Steve, how about Louis Armstrong?  He was in movies and his All 
>> Stars
>> played all the big auditoriums.  Was he rich?  Maybe not, he never moved 
>> from
>> his modest home in Queens.
>
> Hi George:
>
> True, though Louis left an estate of over a half million dollars when he
> passed. That would be about 2 million today. If not rich, close. To him,
> that house in Queens was a palace. BTW, other jazz musicians lived in 
> Queens
> for a while including Basie, Gillespie, Milt Hinton, Lena Horne, Clarence
> Williams, Eva Taylor, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Kenny
> Davern, Hank D'Amico, Jimmy Durante, and many others. Jackie Robinson also
> moved to Queens while playing with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Scott Joplin is
> buried in Elmhurst Queens and Louis Armstrong in Flushing Cemetary. And
> though no where near any of them in musical stature, I too lived in 
> Flushing
> Queens for 28 years.
>
> I believe Condon was referring to his experiences in the 20s & 30s where
> most "real" (his term) jazz musicians did not have many gigs. In effect, 
> at
> the height of what was supposed to be the jazz age, they were not working.
>
> By the 30s, Louis was also having a bit of a hard time. He damn near went
> broke (which is why 3rd wife Alma left him) because he could not get a lot
> of gigs. He ending up fronting a dismal bunch of "jazz" bands that were no
> where near as creative as his earlier efforts. The "jazz" he played in
> Movies pales by comparison to that which he played in the 1920s. Same with
> Oliver's work in the 1930s. King O was also having lip trouble by then.
>
> Louis's greatest popularity came after 1947 when he shifted to the All 
> Star
> format from those stultifying big dance bands. Also due, perhaps to radio
> and TV exposure etc., but this popularity came at a time when trad jazz 
> was
> no longer "America's Popular Music" as so many describe the 20s and 30s.
>
> Basically, Condon's book chips away at the myth that Jazz was America's
> Popular Music back then. His opinion was that Whiteman, Goodman, Gershwin 
> et
> al, were like the Kenny G of today. Not Jazz.
>
> And that he, Davison, Bechet, Wettling, Gowans, Schroeder, et al were jazz
> musicians but not at all popular. His foray into his own club after WW 2
> changed that somewhat, but that was well after the Jazz Age ended.
>
> Yes, we play the music because we love it. But then we don't play the 
> music
> if there is no audience.
>
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
>
>
>
>
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