Word: jazzmen
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Their goal was ambitious: to extend the language of jazz even farther than the progressives and, at the same time, restore its old freewheeling gut-blues intensity. Drawing on African primitivism, Mediterranean and Asian folk music, and sounding at times like Viennese atonalists, the new jazzmen vary tonal centers, when they are used at all, as often as they do moods. Basic rhythms, unavoidable before, are often merely implied or forgotten entirely now. But as Ornette Coleman says, "When it's done with taste and love, hardly anybody wouldn't like...
They bought him some teeth and a cornet, and threw together a band of unknown black jazzmen from New Orelans. In the fall, the old men gathered in a piano warehouse to make some home recordings because the professional studios in the city refused to record Negroes. When the crude recording machine was warmed up, Bunk stomped off the first number, "Make Me a Pallet on the Flood," and the "revival" of traditional jazz began...
THERE WERE OTHER great bands playing there, too. In 1961, someone had discovered that there was a whole city full of traditional jazzmen. Some were almost unknown; others had been forgotten, lost, or given up for dead. Some had never played for white audiences before. Some had led proud, full bands before the depression. Nearly all of them had played with the greats of New Orleans jazz in their youths--Armstrong, Edmund Hall, Johnny Dodds, King Oliver, Sidney Bechet. These were just fellow musicians to these old men. There were only a handful of active musicians when Preservation Hall opened...
...money on it." Joe Louis had been a hero of his younger days. Now it was the aging Patterson, struggling for a comeback, that he identified with. George had always followed the fights devoutely, and his own son had been a fine middleweight for a time. Boxers and jazzmen were the great folk heroes of that culture. In George's youth, long before black men were allowed into other fields of sports and entertainment, the fighter and the musician were looked upon with reverence and awe. These men, who could beat the hell out of white men with impunity...
...group, and now--at 80--he was hospitalized with stomach cancer. Drag was a delightful little man, a creole who spoke little English that was intelligible, and a lot of creole French that no one understood but him. He had grown up--like many New Orleans jazzmen--in a French speaking family, and seemed to personify the blend of Latin and African cultures which had made New Orleans and its music so unique...