HISTORY OP DIXIELAND JAZZ SERIES CONCERT VOL. .,.. (\I... l') HAL RUNYON FRANK GILLIS DICK PENDLETON KNOCKY PARKER FRANK CHASE BILL PEER WARREN THEWIS GEORGE TUPPER Trombone Piano Clarinet Piano Sau Sax.Clarinet 8anjo Drums Bau _j 0 > NOTES ON DOC EVANS' HISTORY OF JAZZ SERIES- VOL.3 I en There is almost as much of the white American YOUNG MEN WITH HORNS: THE CLASSICISTS: DOC AND KNOCKY (1957) ILi 0 Midwest$ there is of the Negro South in classic BIX AND TESCH (1927) Paul "Doc" Evans and his friend, pianist John -a:: 0 jazz, which is only natural: like the chestnut tree Not a great deal remains to be said of Bix: his W. "Knocky" Parker, are atypical jazz musicians ILi 0 of the poet Yeats, the "great rooted blossomer" of playing, the music he wrote, even bis fatal alcohol- of the old school. They are college-educated: Doc en ism, have been unduly idolized, unduly attacked. earned his B.A. at Carleton College, Northfield, 111 the Mississippi river and its tributaries (pushing N across the New York-Hollywood "course of em- A best-selling novel of the 1930's, Dorothy Baker's Minnesota, in 1929; Knocky has an M.A., is work- < ing on his Ph.D., and 'is presently chairman of the N > pire" of the entertainment industry) has been the Young Man With a Horn (later made into a boked- c( z up movie), was inspired by his life. In more recent English department at Kentucky Wesleyan Col- .., nesting-place of jazz. years, some critics of jazz have called him second- lege. Doc taught high school English for a year Ul Its songbirds have been of all colors, but the mu- rate. after graduation. Knocky played with hillbilly IL :c sic they have made has been one integrated chorus His was a special gift, a lyrical approach to jazz bands before going to college. 0 - as revealed in the present recording of excerpts Both have played with the great and near-great (I) that was heavily tinged with the French composers - from the last two of six open-air concerts played at Debussy and Ravel. His comet tone was unique, in jazz; both are walking encyclopedias of jazz lore; > .... the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, pure - it has been said that it was as though the both are stylists, who can recapitulate other styles. 0 In persuasion, both are classicists.· ~ ::0 in the summer of 1957 by Dixieland cornetist Paul notes were struck with a mallet, not blown - and 1- < "Doc" Evans·and his Twin Cities band. jazz cornetists such as Red Nichols, Doc Evans, As applied to jazz, "classic" is a relatively new 0') These final concerts underline that moment in and Bobby Hackett have paid tribute to this style term. In brief, it means the kind of music that Doc 0 in their apprenticeships. and Knocky play: traditional jazz, Dixieland. It -::c .,, the history of traditional, or classic, jazz when fully- denotes a way of playing: faithful rendering, in the developed white artists began to emerge from the The best of Bix is to be found in some of bis col- . (o c. lective improvisations with C-melody saxist Frank manner that the music was intended to be played. elm-shaded streets of the river towns of Missouri, Trumbauer (as in the presently-recorded Singin' It means always a music of the group, band and z > Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and N the Blues), and with a pickup group of many of audience together, rather than a music of the indi- Ohio. There were leaders among them, notably the vidual for the individual alone; or as a New Orleans ~ N the best white jazzmen of the time, "Bix and His ILi cometist Leon Bismarck "Bix" Beiderbecke of Gang" (commemorated here by At the Jazz Band jazzman put it, "I always want people around me. (I) Davenport, Iowa, and clarinetist Frank Tesche- Ball). It gives me a warm heart and that gets into my 0 111 macher of Chicago, both of whom died in their The saxophone was new to jazz; Bix and bis music ..." 0 ::u twenties, but not until they had established an Gang used it in its bass form, replacing the usual There is a warm heart in the music that Doc and Q -111 ideal of personal attainment (as opposed to the tuba or string bass, as was the fashion in white Knocky play: (I) group ideal of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band "New York Dixieland"; while in Chicago, the prac- Climax Rag, an assertive stepchild of the Mauve I and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings). titioners of white "Chicago style" - following the Decade, introduces Parker here as an acknowl- < It was an ideal largely based on the music of example of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings - used edged master of the sleeve-gartered stock-in-trade • 0 New Orleans, but with certain subtle ethnic changes tenor sax, and as one of the melody, not rhythm, of the honky-tonk "professors." starting to creep in. For Bix and Tesch could no instruments, which appreciably altered the balance Coal Cart Blues is a loving retrospect of the New r of the old traditional ensemble. (I) more rid themselves completely of their common Orleans environment that gave us Louis Arm- German ancestry than the Negro could completely For there was a style in Chicago now, a "school," strong. rid himself of Africa; and thus a 19th-century Euro- and its nominal leader, philosopher, and most origi- with its last series of interpo- .,.. nal musician was dead-serious, thin, bespectacled Bugle Call Rag, .,.. pean concept of melody and harmony, of "art" lated breaks, always been a great crowd-pleaser ~ . Frank Teschemacher, soon to be killed in an auto has music, of the virtuoso instrumentalist, enters jazz accident. Around him clustered that group known for Evans, as it was once for the New Orleans with Bix and Tesch - enters, to be assimila~d (if as the "Austin High Gang," who conceived of jazz Rhythm Kings. in such a short time as they accomplished that as something of the joyous free-for-all, driven by Gin Mill Blues, a Joe Sullivan composition, is assimilation for themselves) by an act of will and a hell-for-leather 4/4 beat, that is.heard here in the the tune that made Knocky's reputation when he talent, of sensibilities strained to the breaking favorite and typical Chicago tunes, Sugar and I was playing in bis home state of Texas. It is a tune point. Found a New Baby. · reminiscent to Evans, too; evoking the days of bis But not all broke; followers of Bix and Tesch So they had, and stuck with her. - as witness in first fame when he was playing at a now-vanished carry on, as does Doc Evans, one of those white Twin Cities 1'01ldhouse with the great Sullivan ..... our time the direct, legitimate heir of Tesch, clari- bini- I\) jazzmen whose careers also began in the 1920's. netist Pee Wee Russell, for whom time has stood self. It is heard in Sullivan's style .•• here is the ..... (With him as guest artist on the first side of this still and who has made it stand still for others~ One meaning of the blues for which whit.e jazzmen so ..... record is Frank Chase, young Chicago bass saxist man, one horn, one ghost epitomize Chicago style: long hungered. and clarinetist in the style of Tesch. Dick Pendle- eccentric, wailing, uninhibited. It is like Chicago, Because the blues are jazz, the warm heart of ton, regular clannetist of the Evans band, plays where the men of Storyville came to plant their jazz. And jazz is warm life itself. the alto and tenor saxes heard.) music amid the aspirations of another race. Notes by RUBSBLL RO'rH .