The record changer (Mar-Dec 1947)

of a great many good reasons: he may not happen to come from New Orleans ; he may 1 not have gone through any of the experiences that went into the making of New Orleans jazz ; he may dislike it; he may consider it old-fashioned ; he may not be able to rind a job in which he can play it; or he may find that he can make more money out : of a different kind of music. None of these reasons, not even the last one, may be interpreted as an indication of poor musicianship, and none of them justify the critics in attacking him on musical grounds. Let us select a social comparison : if you take objection to, say, the evils of feudalism, you can't start by attacking the individual aristocrat for his lack of moral fibre in failing to become a good sober businessman ; instead you'll have to start by challenging the whole system which gives rise to the misuse of feudal power. Similarly, if you take objection to the kind of music that happens to be popular today, you can't start by attacking the individual musician for his lack of stamina in failing to play the kind of music which you think he should play ; instead you will have to attack the whole set of conditions which make bad music popular. Socially, economically and esthetically speaking, sweet music, swing music and such novelties as bebop are facts of much greater importance on the contemporary scene than jazz — not because a large audience is a proof of musical value, but because the fact of a vast musical ignorance is more significant ; than the existence of a small group of people who are sensitive enough to understand good music when they hear it. One reader misunderstood this whole argument and attacked < it as "a mixture of oriental fatalism and social Darwinism" ; but, of course, it is the very opposite : an interpretation of history which makes action not merely optional but obligatory. But it shifts the margin for action from the musical field (where planned economy is impossible) to the social field (where it is) : instead of criticizing the individual musician, it proposes that our criticism should busy itself with the conditions which make bad music a paying proposition. What today's jazz critics are doing instead is a job of carpentry to provide the muslin cians with a pair of ideological crutches. v Metronome and its hangers on who are tied up with the so-called modern musicians invariably pat them on the back and thus provide them not only with good publicity but with a framework to prop up their own selfesteem as well. The so-called critics, on the other hand, who are tied up with the collectors' magazines and the recording companies and radio programs that feature New Orleans jazz and its variants have a way of coming out fearlessly in defence of their own brand of music. To describe either of them as bona fide critics might well be considered as a libel on the honorable tradition of musical criticism. Before we can take any of these "critics" seriously we should therefore ask them to i prove that their criticism has ever done anything else than confirm a musician in a \ course he would have taken anyway. That is j the test demanded by their own premises. ( Only when we find that their criticism has > actually caused a perceptible migration of i musicians from one camp to the other, only then can we stop considering such criticism as a rationalization of personal taste. As things are today in the music business, musicians have to make up their minds whether they want to be poor and honest or rich and maybe not quite so honest; if they are dissatisfied with this state of affairs, as they well might, they will have to work towards a change in the whole set-up of the (Continued on Page 14) AUGUST, 1947 J. Russel Robinson was born in 1892, the year that saw the publication of "Michigan Water," one of the first rag tunes. At an early age, he began to take lessons on the piano. This formal instruction didn't last very long, because Russel was more interested in making people dance than learning a lot of classical music. He and his brother formed a piano and drum team,, and played for dances while they were still in short pants. Robinson remembers that he started playing in theatres in 1906. The big feature of that day was the flashing of a colored light upon the screen, while the piano player whipped into some appropriate ditty. "I can still remember," he says, "some of the tunes and the wonderful titles yet. There were such classics as 'I'm Tying Up the Leaves So They Won't Fall Down, So My Nellie Won't Go Away,' 'Cheyenne,' 'The Sweetest Story Ever Told,' and 'Red Wing.' " "I was born in Indianapolis, and my brother and I played around that town until about 1908. That year we started on a tour through the South that took us to such towns as Macon, Montgomery, New Orleans and Memphis. In New Orleans, I visited many of the honky-tonks and listened to the 'professors,' but didn't find much of interest. Most of the playing was crude, and had little musical content or inventiveness. My brother and I were the hottest musicians around . . . white or black. "It was while we were in Memphis in 1910, that I met W. G. Handy for the first time. This first meeting was to develop later into a very interesting and productive association. "One of the tunes that I played a lot while touring the South was Scott Joplin's 'Maple Leaf Rag.' I was asked to play it many times because I was one of the few piano players who could read the music and play the tune the way it was written. I think it is one of the finest tunes ever written . . . the King of the Rags, and in my way of thinking,' nothing that Joplin or any of the other rag writers wrote ever came close to it. Because I was so impressed with 'Maple Leaf,' I sent Stark, who was Joplin's publisher, a tune of mine called 'Sapho Rag.' Stark sent back a check for $25.00, their top price. I wrote that this would be satisfactory if they would also send a thousand copies of the^ number, since I knew they were in the printing business too. I took these copies and sold them in ten cent stores and made a lot more than they paid me. They liked my work, because I was one of the few people who could write out the complete piano part. Most of the rest of the composers could hardly write a lead sheet, let alone the entire piano score." Later in 1911 and 1912, Robinson sent other rags to Stark. For each of these he was paid the same $25.00 fee. "I remember one tune of mine called 'Shadows of Flame.' It was a waltz ballad which Stark publi^he'l For some reason jazz chronologists and r'storians insist that the name is 'Shadows of Fame,' and kept wanting to call it a rag." Robinson's first royalty check came from a tune which was inspired by a Negro baptizing in Macon, Georgia, which he witnessed. It was called, "I Feel Religion Coming On," and was published by Southern California Publishing Company. Another tune which Robinson sent this company was the well known "Dynamite Rag." In 1913, Russel placed a tune with Seidel Music Company (Indianapolis), for which he received an advance royalty. Later, he asked for another advance, and was told that this was impossible, but that Seidel would pay $25.00 for an instrumental tune . . . how soon could Russel write it? "I said," Robinson relates, " 'Where is a piano ?' Seidel took me to his music counter at Block's Department Store. I sat down and beat out 'Eccentric' as fast as I could play it. Maybe you remember that that is one of the tunes which helped the Wolverines along, and the record of this tune which became the pivot on which Bix and Trumbauer swung to fame. Incidentally, the tune is 34 years old this year, and its publisher is coming out with a new Jimmy Dale arrangement of it." After this Grand Tour of the South, which ended in 1914, Robinson spent a couple of years around Indiana where he made some piano rolls for the old Imperial Piano Roll Company., Later he went to Chicago, where he joined a band, then playing at the Casino Gardens. This band, headed by the Brunies brothers, Henry and Merritt, was called the "New Orleans Jazz Band," and as Russel remembers, styled themselves as closely as possible after the records of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. While Russel was playing at night with the New Orleans Jazz Band, he put in some of his daytime hours making rolls for the U. S. Piano Roll Company. "Sometimes," he says, "I'd make as many as ten rolls at a stretch. Q.R.S. heard of my work and sent 7