Word: trad
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...strictly trad...
That U.S.-hip-sounding line, strangely enough, is as British as "jolly good," or "raw-ther." It describes a musical fad that has washed over Britain. "Trad" is traditional jazz, the 1920s variety now in booming revival, and fans are streaming to hear it at stomp centers from Scotland's isle of Arran to an old dance hall on Eel Pie Island off Twickenham in the Thames, where Henry VIII once twitted his mistresses while eating the best eel pie in the kingdom. Bankers, clerks and beardless youths, secretaries, bus conductors, doctors, bricklayers, teachers-the traddists are a class...
Growing out of the Dixieland revival in the mid '50s, the trad jazz boom has soared in the past year. A dozen new clubs are formed each week, new bands constantly spring up, trad numbers are all over the British hit parade, and even the stately BBC has begun to show its hips: a new TV series began last month, called The Trad Fad. With a clear and poundingly straightforward beat that avoids the more intricate mathematics of modern jazz, trad centers in such items as Tiger Rag and Cushion Foot Stomp, but often goes absolutely daft with kick...
Described by one critic as ''a sort of do-it-yourself urban folk music." trad rests mainly on the standard instruments-clarinet, trumpet, trombone-but now and again tosses in a banjo for such provincial classics as Waiting for the Robert E. Lee. Chris Barber's Jazzband founded the movement with a bestselling version of Sidney Bechet's Petite Flew, and now the trad bands are so popular that they play everywhere-not only for jazz clubs and festivals, but also at debutante parties, society dances, on trans-Channel steamers, even waist-deep in swimming pools...
...Acker Bilk, king of the trad men, is a chap with a name that has probably caused Charles Dickens to stir in his grave, tap his foot and smile. A 32-year-old former Somersetshire blacksmith. Bilk acquired his skills on the clarinet in an army guardhouse after he fell asleep on sentry duty. Wearing bowler hats and striped waistcoats Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band are half New Orleans and half Somerset cider, thumping out numbers like Run Come See Jerusalem and Ory's Creole Trombone, while Bilk makes Louis Armstrong-style comments. At last year...