The record changer (Jan 1955-Dec 1957)

"The Revivalists have made a start in the right direction." — Turk Murphy's Jazz Band in 1954. However, it is obvious it is only a matter of years before these players cease to exist. When they pass away so will the vitality of Dixieland. The vitality has persisted simply because non-eclectic individuals set within a rewarding experience of their own do not change after they have reached a certain period in their lives. In the functioning of any culture we always find the older artists in an art lag of their own, independent of their culture's progress; the instinct to rapid, change is the concern of the young men. This same phenomenon prevailed when the earliest New Orleans musicians did not shift over to the style of the incoming Dixielanders. Now in their turn the Dixielanders, ripened in the styles of the late twenties and early thirties, do not move into Progressive or Revivalist attitudes. Thus each new jazz style has been implemented by the oncoming group. The fact that active Dixieland has been with us so long, cannot therefore mislead us into believing that it can hang on. It is sheer delusion to believe that a living Dixieland, in contra-distinction to a revived, can continue to be a part of our present day musical experience. Where the talented material in the late twenties went naturally into Dixieland, today potential material for an expanding Dixieland will blend naturally into Progressive-Bop or neo-classic Revivalism. Let us face the fact that when the last great players have passed away. Dixieland as we know it will have passed also. As for the situation facing the Revivalists, curiously the very act of revivalism itself implies perhaps the newest attitude within jazz — that is3 an attitude founded upon critical and eclectic choices within the past based neither upon popular nor modern trends and contradicting both the persistence of the present day Dixielanders and the modishness of the moderns. Actually it was the enthusiastic appreciative insights of the record collectors which seem to have inspired the first young musicians into active recapture of the past. This was a new audience which had cultivated listening practices geared to rejection as well as acceptance. Although major divisions of opinion soon split the ranks wide, nevertheless out of this situation sprang the new jazzman: the Revivalist. Heretofore the perennial jazzman had been immersed in developing what he fancied to be the forward moving jazz of his own period. He exploited the outlets open to him with little thought of retaining past values. The Revivalists, on the other hand, took on a collector's atti tude. They turned back to redefine t i special jazz qualities they felt other jazz i sicians had carelessly lost in their march J ward. Therefore a situation has been rea> t where teen-agers both here and abroad i der the far reaching influence of the J lector have recaptured old New Orleans J music and can play it for us in the flesh Once again, can this situation continu ( long? I hardly think so. The Revivalists i not help moving ahead from the poir i which they pinned down their retreat. 1 restlessness of Western culture which i torically forced early jazz to move int i middle jazz period will likewise force,! future Revivalists to move ahead in the^j! viving. History will repeat itself — and, if I thing, "advance" more quickly. Howeve i spite of no foreseeable protracted futur i improvising Revivalism we still are indt < to the present Revivalists for the opport i to hear their fine music. Theirs is of a g 9 ally high standard because they can ad i significant music without dependence jl virtuoso personalization of the past, for tj New Orleans jazz had a strong overall I which was self-sustaining with or wi<$ virtuosi. It is this strength persisting < when great soloists arc lacking, this si J playing-off-straight on a good blues v <