Swing, in it's Okla-Tex and NOLA forms.

Having made my musical life for so long in Texas/Oklahoma and now living in New Orleans, I'm confronted regularly with so called "jazz" music. Seems that having played Texas Swing for so long, I've been exposed to a great big chunk of the core material that makes up the standard repertoire of the Non-African American dance music "scene," here. But unlike just about every musician I encounter here, I don't have a college degree and I didn't study music formally. I don't read music, well enough that is to sight read on a gig at any rate. And no one ever taught me any of these tunes, I had to learn them on the bandstand. It's been a STEEP learning curve, I tell ya. And the keys that they play in here are mostly in Eb, Bb and Ab, which is good natural keys for trumpets and clarinets. Bet they're HELL on the tenor banjo or fiddle which play best in keys without flats, and having to re-learn all the classics in a new key has been a real challenge. A fun one, but still. I have a LOT to learn here and it's been very humbling and affirming as I make the changes to become a working New Orleans musician.

This is what a Texas Swing band looks like.

One of the aspects that I really loved about the "Texas Swing" approach was that it was founded by dance band trained folk musicians, "breakdown" fiddlers and such, who were exposed to African-America music styles who then clumsily, but honestly, reconfigured the music to suit themselves and their audience. Milton Brown, Cliff Bruner and Pre-War Bob Wills recordings always sparkled with this new concoction of melding the established traditions of Anglo-American dance music and the aspirational sounds of the Black "hot music" bands that they would run into. It's not for no reason Milton Browns' sides were cut in here in New Orleans. Steel man Bob Dunn was a hot jazz Trombonist before he pioneered the brand new instrument that came to dominate Texas Swing to this day. It's was "swinging," but it wasn't "Jazz." It was something all its own.

Nice hat, but he's not from Texas.
Actually a Jew from Rhode Island.

It wasn't until WW2 and just after did the "hillbilly" guys start playing with the instrumental and arranging sophistication of not only the great Black dance bands (Ellington, Basie) but also the White City-boy bands like Woody Herman and Stan Kenton. Here and then the "Texas" sound start to fade replaced with the now California based "Western Swing," essentially "jazz" played with cowboys boots. It's not my favorite development, but listening to the best examples of it show just how far the Texas boys had strayed from "Boil Them Cabbage Down." (Tex Williams' amazing note for note rendering of Stan Kenton's "Artistry in Swing" as "Artistry in Western Swing" is as fine as an example as you will find.) This is where guys like Ray Benson and his Asleep at the Wheel start listening and take from there. Seriously. He told me so in person, "that old hokum stuff from before, it's just not cool." Which explains his personal version of the music which for good or ill has become the de facto standard of the form in it's present and entirely de-contextualized version.

How refreshing it was to find this video of just some band leaping into a fun tune, no different really from any the groups I saw growing up as a kid in Oklahoma on say, the Jude and Judy show on WKY-TV or playing the weekly square dance where my folks club "the Norman Thunderbirds" would dance. A hot NOLA standard too. 

Enjoy:

 

Submitted humbly is my personal version of Texas Swing music:

"Free Jazz"

....or whatever that meant to Bad Livers

Maestro

I've worked with many many wonderful jazz musicians over the years, in many many wonderful situations. But for some reason, none of these cats ever once considered me a "jazz" man nor ever hired me to play improvisational or spontaneously composed musics.* I was always "the bluegrass guy" or the "klezmer guy" or the "polka guy" or worst of all "the Trad guy." Was I incapable or that level of craft? Maybe so. But please understand however that even I realize that I was entirely responsible for that opinion of me and must take full responsibility for. I sure went out of my way to let folks know what opinion I held the "self expressive" free jazz and jam band musics I had encountered. Talked my way into a box I reckon. Hell, I take exception to the very term "jazz," but that's another blog post entirely.

But recently I was reminded of my short lesson with Buell Neidlinger, (this gets its own story soon)  who I met in Pt. Townsend Washington at a Bad Livers show. And from that recollection I was led to remember the dreamlike state and entirely unspoken level of total creative "freedom" that I felt and expressed onstage musically for a great many years with my Bad Livers musical partner Danny Barnes. Only now through the filter of time can I get a good picture on what a gift it was to share music in that way. Damn glad I left myself kvell a bit about it. It's good to give yourself a break, if you can.

I present the attached video for your consideration. For contexts sake, bear this in mind. This was videoed in 2009. Aside from a single 45 minute set at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival the year before, this was the first time we stepped onstage in 9 years. 8 of those with no communication of any kind, at all. When we last worked with each other, Bad Liver shows had evolved into a 2 hour stream of consciousness presentation of musical dexterity and humor, anti-academic alternative histories and narrative delivered unironically entirely informed by the deep traditions of Southern elocution and storytelling and a really great stand up act, honed by a decade of 200+ dates a year on the road in front of mostly confused, sometimes charmed but oft unpleasant audiences. 

For our 2nd set this night in SF. We just walked out, looked each other in the eye and started. It starts with Monk and ends with Narciso Martinez, much like one of our mix tapes in the rental car, usually board tapes from my "Overnight" shift on KUT Radio for a decade.  Nobody ever trusted me more than Barnes. I'd take a bullet for him, even today. For reals.

Years earlier, we tried to capture that live show vibe on tape by setting up a couple mics in my old wooden house in Austin (nestled in the Ridgetop neighborhood, hence the name.) My little pal Lance the Wonder Korgi wrapped himself around the mic stand at my feet and we hit record on a DAT machine. Got a call from my old pal Dan Foster, and Lance speaks up a few times, but other wise it's just exactly what we presented live for at least the prior 3 years. We called it "The Ridgetop Sessions," and it's still available today on CD Baby. (yeah, the Mad Cat Trio CD got re-issued too!) :

 

 

 

 

 

 

* I make the notable exception of composer/percussionist Aaron Alexander, who did in fact put his trust in me and made a member of his "Midrash Mish Mosh" ensemble in 2004. He and his compositions loom large in my psyche and I am forever grateful.