All that Jazz!
If you enjoyed the Fling’s Jazz night, maybe you’d like to know more about where it all started. The story of British jazz begins with the record Livery Stable Blues, by the (all white) Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917.
The London Times was disparaging, “The
object of a jazz band apparently, is to provide as much noise as possible. The method of doing so is immaterial, and if music happens to be the result occasionally, so much the better.” Not terribly promising!
The first jazz ‘star’ to visit these shores was Sidney Bechet, the clarinettist and soprano saxophonist and helped us develop a taste for jazz.
Louis Armstrong visited Britain in July 1932. He used local musicians as support on his tour. It was the first chance for fledgling British jazz musicians to play with someone of Armstrong’s calibre. He was influential in shifting British jazz away from the smooth white sounds of Bix Beiderbecke, towards hotter black American vibes.
By the time Duke Ellington and Coleman Hawkins arrived, the British Ministry of Labour and the American Federation of Musicians had embarked on a dispute which would set the cause of jazz in Britain back several years. The Second World War brought an unexpected consequence though. There was a renewed interest in the work of black jazz musicians, partly as an anti-racist rejection of fascism.
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By the early fifties, musicians like Ronnie Scott, Johnny Dankworth and Charlie Parker were getting regular air time, and Ronnie Scott’s jazz club opened in London.
Shortly after this, jazz fell victim to the new rock ‘n’ roll craze. Fortunately, the long running dispute with the American Federation of Musicians finished in time for Beatlemania. This boosted the British jazz scene by allowing ‘labour-swaps’ of our own pop musicians with American jazz players.
Throughout the Seventies jazz-rock fusion became commercially dominant. British free-jazz and trad-jazz struggled to develop amongst the pop scene. It was only in the eighties that a brief jazz revival was sparked by the likes of Courtney Pine and Tommy Smith.
Back in the Nineties the general feeling was that the best of jazz had happened in the past and in America, yet by the turn of the Millenium jazz suddenly reappeared, led by mainstream acts Stacey Kent, a New Yorker settled in London, Clare Teal and Jamie Cullum. In addition, musicians such as pianist Matthew Bourne and trumpeter Alison Kerr are flourishing. It seems Britain has finally found its jazz voice.
There is a Jazz Night every Monday at the Westlands Hotel. Why don’t you drop in and listen for yourself?
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the.wire@btinternet.com
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