96
WILLIAM YOUNGREN
Characteristically, this is an excellent description of Hodges' blues play–
ing; but the comparison with Parker is very misleading in its implica–
tions. Balliett doesn't actually say that Parker's blues choruses lack the
"classic" virtues of Hodges' and are, by contrast, thin, opaque and full
of extraneous matter rather than
mots justes.
But without further clari–
fication, that's the conclusion the reader draws, and he goes away think–
ing--quite wrongly, to my mind- that only an ear not attuned to "classic
balancings" but satisfied with mere technical fireworks would prefer
Parker to Hodges.
There are many more such distortions, and they seem to fit into a
pattern.
It
is not simply that Balliett thinks his readers will already know
about Armstrong and Parker, and will need rather to be told about the
virtues of unfamiliar musicians like Thomas and Hodges- for he is not
at all grudging in his praise of Bix Beiderbecke, Fats Waller, Duke
Ellington and Billie Holiday, all of whom are now probably as familiar
as Armstrong and Parker. I think the reason for much of Balliett's lack
of critical balance lies in his sense that his readers will probably be more
familiar with New Orleans-Dixieland jazz and bebop-as represented
respectively to many people by early Armstrong and Parker- than with
the kind of jazz he himself has most affection for and is most anxious to
acquaint them with, the small- and big-band swing of the thirties-as
represented not only by Thomas and Hodges but also by Waller, Elling–
ton, Holiday and, for Balliett, in a way by Beiderbecke as well: "Some
Beiderbecke aficionados hold that the ideal Beiderbecke record date
would have included the likes of Frank Teschmacher, Eddie Condon,
Joe Sullivan, and Gene Krupa. But what of a Beiderbecke session at–
tended by, say, Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, Coleman Hawkins, Earl
Hines, and Chick Webb?"
As Balliett often points out, it was the arrival of bebop and the
revival of Dixieland that put the "lyricism" which he rightly admires in
the great swing musicians out of fashion and the musicians themselves
out of work. He is often led to confuse a musician's value with his role–
real or imagined- in this process, and he therefore finds it hard to praise
Dixieland and bebop musicians unstintingly, easy to overpraise swing
musicians, and necessary to distort the facts of a musician's or a band's
development now and then. Armstrong must be seen as having "per–
fected a soaring lyricism . . . that still seems boundless" in the early
thirties, only after he had "abandoned New Orleans style," in which he
had never been at home anyway because of his inability to become "a
comfortable ensemble player." And Pee Wee Russell's recent playing
must be seen as his best because it is only recently that he has finally
"escaped his Dixieland bondage" : a "confusing fact about Russell
is
