Now for something not so very different. During a stint at the important SIMA residence at Strawberry Hill Hotel, Mark Simmonds had traditional jazz tapes playing before his appearances and between sets. Some listeners were dismayed. I was not. Sidney Bechet’s playing had more in common with Mark’s than with many of the cranky jazz players who scorned the music that SIMA presented, and the collective ethos of classic jazz was one of the inspirations for the avant-garde. While the traddies, as, fondly or dismissively, they came to be known, had their own prejudices, in their music they pursued the same convergence of individual feeling and style with group spirit that has informed all creative jazz. Indeed, all music in which improvisation has given the individual player a personal voice within the whole, and the possibility of changing or influencing the direction of the whole as it evolves.
This is particularly true of traditional forms, where the instruments have defined roles but also much freedom within those roles. When I first heard traditional jazz I was taken and shaken by the way things seemed to explode in several directions at once. We are used to this apparent chaos now, and it took the New Thing or Free Jazz to bewilder and exhilarate us in the same way. But there is something in all great music that never wears out.
Taking their music into pubs and halls or playing in back rooms, organizing festivals, playing on beaches and from the backs of trucks or the wide open touring cars of old, the traddies created the contexts in which subsequent developments have been heard. In the early days of the serious traditional jazz revival movement in Melbourne, they were often aligned (paradoxically as it may seem) with modern movements in painting. Sidney Nolan, Graeme Bell and others combined in joint concert/exhibitions. When modern jazz and rock and roll arrived they became the old guard, but in many ways they had created a context for them too.
I began listening to jazz seriously in the rock and roll era, and my growing record collection included Louis Armstrong, Bill Haley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, Graeme Bell and Eddie Condon. Somewhat isolated at the time, I was only dimly aware of hostile factions. I heard Bob Barnard, Ade Monsbourgh and others in dance halls and pubs, and every Sunday heard the modernists Brian Brown, Keith Hounslow, Keith Stirling, Stewart Speer and others at the Jazz Centre 44 at St Kilda. That this music was so readily and cheaply available was a great boon. Anyone who was serious about playing listened to everyone who played, whatever the idiom. I still listen to classic jazz. Some it is raw and emotive, but some can also be delicate and subtle. Also remarkably compositional, often involving several strains.
Some of the traditional players remain good friends of mine. They are great musicians. Ask Mark Simmonds. Today some young players have begun listening and sometimes playing with the wonderful Geoff Bull band at the Unity Hall pub in Balmain on Friday nights. In Melbourne Julien Wilson and others go and listen to the traditional bands. This is as it should be.
Much later, SIMA was formed in order to give exposure to exciting movements in contemporary jazz that are not so easily heard. One notorious writer went to extraordinary lengths, involving demonstrable duplicity, in order to discredit this project. One clown kept nagging that SIMA should also present James Morrison and Don Burrows, who were outside the organisation’s charter and budget and scarcely lacked exposure. Today the traditionalists also lack the exposure they once had, and are often taken for granted. One place you can hear them gathered is at the Southern Highlands Classic Jazz and Ragtime Festival on April 11, 12 and 13 at Clubbe Hall, Frensham School, Mittagong.
If you are heading down there or feel like a drive, I recommend it. Anyone under 18 is admitted free.
For full details go to www.australianclassicjazz.com
Footnote: I have been sent a copy of Bill Boldiston’s Sydney’s Jazz and Other Joys Of Its Vintage Years. For all ancient readers who can remember Sydney’s Rowe Street, there is a brief history of that wonderful lane here. Also a three-CD attachment with recordings of Sydney jazz since 1925! This includes the quite astounding recording of Mobile Bay with Ellington trumpeter Rex Stewart and the Graeme Bell band. This was one of the first Australian recordings I bought, and I included it on the CD that was released to coincide with my book Bodgie Dada. I will write some more about this book later.
For information: bell d’Or Publishing, 240 The Mall, Leyra NSW 2780. Mobile: 0421174977.