Dixieland revival. Your feature artists on this week’s Greg Poppleton Phantom Dancer are all (but one) broadcasting from San Francisco in the 1950s. They are Jimmy Dorsey (in a radio transcription), Muggsy Spanier, Kid Ory and Turk Murphy – all part of the Dixieland revival that went worldwide from the late 1930s into the 1960s (in Australia).

The Phantom Dancer, your non-stop 2 hour mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio, is produced and presented by 1920s-30s singer and actor Greg Poppleton can be heard online from 12:04pm AEST Tuesday 21 April at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/

The last hour is all vinyl.

DIXIELAND REVIVAL

Was a movement of the late 1930s to the 1950s (in the US) reviving earlier improvisational jazz. It was a reaction to the arranged music of swing orchestras. The traditional front lines consisting of trumpets, trombones, and clarinets, and ensemble improvisation over a two-beat rhythm.

The term “Dixieland” was applied to early jazz by traditional jazz revivalists, starting in the 1940s and 1950s. The name is a reference to the “Old South”, specifically anything south of the Mason-Dixon line. The term encompasses earlier brass band marches, French Quadrilles, biguine, ragtime, and blues with collective, polyphonic improvisation. While instrumentation and size of bands varied, the “standard” band consisted of of a “front line” of trumpet (or cornet), trombone, and clarinet, with a “rhythm section” of at least two of the following instruments: guitar or banjo, string bass or tuba, piano, and drums. Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars was the band most popularly identified with Dixieland during the 1940s, although Armstrong’s own influence during the 1920s was to move the music beyond the traditional New Orleans style.

SOUND

The definitive Dixieland sound is created when one instrument (usually the trumpet) plays the melody or a recognizable paraphrase or variation on it and the other instruments of the “front line” improvise around that melody. This creates a more polyphonic sound than the arranged ensemble playing of the big band sound or the straight “head” melodies of bebop.

The Dixieland revival in the late 1940s and 1950s brought many semi-retired musicians a measure of fame late in their lives as well as bringing retired musicians back onto the jazz circuit after years of not playing (e.g., Kid Ory and Red Nichols). Many Dixieland groups of the revival era consciously imitated the recordings and bands of decades earlier. Other musicians continued to create innovative performances and new tunes. For example, in the 1950s a style called “Progressive Dixieland” sought to blend polyphonic improvisation with bebop-style rhythm. Spike Jones and His New Band and Steve Lacy played with such bands. This style is sometimes called “Dixie-bop”. Lacy went on to apply that approach to the music of Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, and Herbie Nichols.

Muggsy Spanier

CHICAGO STYLE

“Chicago style” is often applied to the sound of Chicagoans such as Jimmy McPartland, Eddie Condon, Muggsy Spanier, and Bud Freeman. The rhythm sections of these bands substitute the string bass for the tuba and the guitar for the banjo. Musically, the Chicagoans play in more of a swing-style 4-to-the-bar manner. The New Orleanian preference for an ensemble sound is deemphasized in favor of solos. Chicago-style Dixieland also differs from its southern origin by being faster paced, resembling the hustle-bustle of city life. Chicago-style bands play a wide variety of tunes, including most of those of the more traditional bands plus many of the Great American Songbook selections from the 1930s by George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin. Non-Chicagoans such as Pee Wee Russell and Bobby Hackett are often thought of as playing in this style. This modernized style came to be called Nicksieland, after Nick’s Greenwich Village night club, where it was popular, though the term was not limited to that club.

Turk Murphy at Club Hangover

WEST COAST REVIVAL

The “West Coast revival” is a movement that was begun in the late 1930s by Lu Watters and his Yerba Buena Jazz Band in San Francisco and extended by trombonist Turk Murphy. It started out as a backlash to the Chicago style, which is closer in development towards swing. The repertoire of these bands is based on the music of Joe “King” Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and W.C. Handy. Bands playing in the West Coast style use banjo and tuba in the rhythm sections, which play in a two-to-the-bar rhythmic style.

Much performed traditional Dixieland tunes include: “When the Saints Go Marching In”, “Muskrat Ramble”, “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue”, “Tiger Rag”, “Dippermouth Blues”, “Milenberg Joys”, “Basin Street Blues”, “Tin Roof Blues”, “At the Jazz Band Ball”, “Panama”, “I Found a New Baby”, “Royal Garden Blues” and many others. All of these tunes were widely played by jazz bands of the pre-WWII era, especially Louis Armstrong. They came to be grouped as Dixieland standards beginning in the 1950s.

Your Phantom Dancer Video of the Week is ‘Yes Suh!’ 26/Jul/32 NYC., THE RHYTHMAKERS: Red Allen (t) Jimmy Lord (cl) Pee Wee Russell (ts) Fats Waller (p,v) Eddie Condon (bj) Jack Bland (g) Pops Foster (b) Zutty Singleton (d) Billy Banks(v). Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjD11EaQNSY

21 APRIL PLAY LIST