Post 516: HOW TO MANAGE A JAZZ BAND

It's tough being a band manager. That's why I think it's the duty of all members of a band to support their manager in every way they can and to appreciate his efforts on their behalf.

What do you think is the most important skill a band manager needs? Playing an instrument outstandingly well? Wrong. If you want to run a band that attracts plenty of worthwhile gigs, your business skills are likely to be more important than your musical skills.

In my view, here's what a band manager needs.

1. Man management

Recruit the right musicians and keep all members of your band content and well-behaved - and happy to be part of the team.

2. Customer-relation skills

Courteous and meticulous attention to customers' comments and correspondence.

3. Common sense

For example, don't waste time quoting a fee the client obviously can't afford. Don't play music inappropriate to the occasion.

4. Musical expertise

Obviously essential, but less important than business skills.

5. Optimism

Don't be disheartened by knocks and setbacks. Always smile and look cheerful on stage.

6. Policy

Costume, style, repertoire, etc. Read my blog post about this by clicking here.

7. Willingness to devolve

Let other members of the band be the Musical Director and the Announcer if they are better qualified for these duties.

8. Business and marketing skills

Publicise your band in the most effective ways. And always have business cards available. 

9. A sense of humour

An obvious help - especially in the jazz world.

Here's another bit of advice. Communicate with your audience!

I remember a classical music concert at the Wigmore Hall in London. At the start, amidst applause, the musicians walked on to the stage, and without a word took their seats, played their two pieces, bowed and went off. After the Interval, exactly the same procedure occurred.

The musicians were some of the best in the world. Their playing was sublime. But throughout the two hours of the concert, nobody spoke one word to the audience. This is a convention with some classical music performers, but I think it is a pity. 

I have attended some classical concerts where the musicians have told the audience something about the music and have given a few other bits of information about themselves and where else they will be playing. On one occasion The Wihan String Quartet pleased the audience with a question-and-answer session.

In traditional jazz, too, when you have been booked to give a formal concert and your audience is politely seated, listening attentively to all you play, I think it is important for the band leader - or someone acting as spokesperson/announcer - to have a few words with the audience between tunes.

Speaking to the Audience:
Kenny Ball was a jazz musician who
set a good example.

This is good for achieving a rapport and is also helpful in letting the audience know something about the tunes, the history of our music and about the band.

It is inexcusable to take no notice of the audience between the end of one tune and the start of another, as I have occasionally seen bands do. Why do some bands not even tell the audience the titles of tunes with which they may be unfamiliar?

Remarks to audiences don't have to be profound or scholarly. They can be relatively trivial. For example, you could say which towns the musicians come from. You could say where you have been performing recently. You could tell them it's the banjo player's birthday. Little scraps like this help to establish a good relationship.

And don't feel compelled to tell jokes. There's no need to do so unless your timing and delivery are good and the jokes are of a kind that will not give offence.

Speaking to an audience is not easy. So regard this as another skill you need to develop. It may even be worth practising things you will say.

Something else to avoid is the poor discipline we often witness. Between tunes, members of the band on stage talk among themselves and guffaw at each other's comments - while the audience is left with no idea what is going on.

And there's no excuse for the band members to argue among themselves about what to play next, while the audience sits waiting. From the audience's point of view, this kind of behaviour is irritating. But some bands are guilty. Cut it out!

Post 334: THE CALIFORNIA RAMBLERS; OR, THE ONOMASTIC CHALLENGE!

So you need a name for your band. You will probably settle for something local and alliterative – such as The Stratford Stompers. Perhaps you would like to use a different name occasionally – for the more sophisticated gigs – The Palace Beach Serenaders, for example.

But surely your band won't need more than two names?

I hope not. But there was throughout the 1920s a band that was said to use over a hundred different names in its various combinations and manifestations!

Some of The California Ramblers

This was The California Ramblers. In those days, the main reason for using different names was of course to get round legal contractual commitments to various recording studios. (For some interesting information about this and similar practices, see the comments at the foot of this article.)

Incidentally, their principal name was hardly appropriate. The members of the band had little or no connection with California (most came from Ohio) and they were based mainly in the New York area. Over the years, the band – which was largely studio-based – made a huge number of recordings, many of which were of high quality and extremely popular at the time. They drew from a wide pool of musicians. Their stars included Adrian Rollini and Tommy Dorsey.

The band's most famous pseudonym was The Golden Gate Orchestra. Others included The Little Ramblers, The University Six, Cotton Blossoms Orchestra, The Goofus Five, Ed Blossom and His New Englanders, The Five Birmingham Babies, Ted White's Collegians, Palm Beach Serenaders, The Vagabonds, The Varsity Eight and The Baltimore Society Syncopators. You can find many delightful examples of their work on YouTube.

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My good friend Carsten Pigott, who has a vast collection of 78 rpm records and vintage gramophones, has kindly sent me these further comments about 'working for labels':

Your text is spot on; and, although many jazz (and dance) bands, both in the US and here recorded under a variety of pseudonyms, for the reason you give, the California Ramblers are probably the best example - and a great favourite of mine, in any case.

My 78 collection contains many records with pseudonymous accreditation. I try to label and file them under the name by which the band is best known. Brian Rust's unsurpassed discographies of vintage jazz and British and US dance bands - sadly no longer in print (and second hand copies now sell for small fortunes) - are still the finest tools available for unravelling the true identities of all those groups that recorded under more than one name.

A side issue, not directly related to your text, relates to the sometimes quirky decisions musicians made over which labels to record for (other than when recording for a multitude of labels using multiple aliases). There was quite a significant price difference between the major ones (e.g. HMV, Columbia, Decca) and the budget ones. Some musicians stuck with the more expensive labels, reasoning that the prestige of an expensive label reflected their own status as top musicians. Others took a more pragmatic and 'commercial' approach, opting for the budget labels (which, with luck, would sell more records and bring in more income), particularly after they'd already established themselves on the full-priced records and/or on the stage and radio. Examples that spring to mind are the wonderful Australian baritone, Peter Dawson, who insisted on recording for the 'plum' label on HMV (not exactly cheap), rather than the even more expensive red label that was designated for classical music. Sir Harry Lauder decided to go with Zonophone, the budget HMV brand, but only on condition that their green label be made red for any of his records. Jack Payne, after leaving the BBC and the Columbia label, signed up with the budget Imperial label, but on condition that the Imperial crown trade mark at the top of the label was replaced by an image of his face and a facsimile of his signature! Collecting 78rpm records offers up a wonderful field of fascination!

Post 281: KEEPING THE MUSIC ALIVE - A YOUNG MAN'S VIEW

When you come across an Englishman who is still in his early 20s and who enjoys playing traditional jazz and has strong opinions about it, you have to sit up and take notice.

Laurence  Marshall (sousaphone, trumpet, washboard, whistles, trombone, vocals) while still at school in Scarborough (on the north-east coast of England) organised the young group that calls itself The Jelly Roll Jazz Band. They are still playing together a few years later.

I found the opinions of this young man well worth noting.

I sort of got into trad jazz around the time I was getting into the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. I was into magic and art and stuff, and I think trad jazz is just good fun.

We initially set up the band for a church fayre. As I wanted to play sousaphone, I borrowed a tuba and wrote out some march cards with tunes on that I'd picked out from listening to bands and from what sheet music I could get hold of. We soon started busking - I eventually bought a sousaphone. We did a lot of busking, and trad was perfect as the repertoire we played was happy and upbeat and lots of people know the tunes in the backs of their heads. It always made us some pocket money and it's very fun music to play as you can do whatever you want really. 

I don't think it's particularly intellectual or academic music, which draws me even more to it. It is about making a good vibe, and as buskers we're good at that - we have a laugh and muck around and enjoy the more abstract instruments such as the spoons and washboard. So really it wasn't that I got into trad: it got into me.

It is just a music which I think suits certain people, as I feel it definitely has an ethos to it. We all get a lot of enjoyment out of playing it, and listening to other people who like doing the same sort of stuff as us. 

I now play full-time - mainly old jazz, r'n'b, and novelty music as well as everything else. I like to stay open to a lot of music, unlike a lot of trad fans. I've had people walk out of trad jazz clubs because there was a violin in the band. I think this is the reason a lot of young people don't get into trad - because of some of the narrow-minded older people who work hard to put people off. These people have no ownership of it. Although they came up through a trad revival in the fifties, this was all just copied. Neither the fans nor the musicians had anything to do with the origins of the music, and in fact did little to develop the genre. This is why fans should be open to creativity and development within the genre. Otherwise they are pinning it down, saying it has been made so now let's box it up and look at it in a reminiscent way, back to when we had "our" revival. 

But if trad is to attract a younger audience, young musicians playing this style must be celebrated and the ways they change and embrace the music must be encouraged, or we are just trying to remake a remake. I think a big thing for clubs would be to lose the word 'jazz', as a lot of people misinterpret that as meaning atonal, eyes-down, non-entertaining and non-inclusive. But trad is the opposite to that, and it seems popular as a jazz sub-genre because there are many young people who enjoy the associated fashions and swing dancing. 

As a musician I enjoy the accessibility and the room for self-expression. I enjoy the effects and trickster ways in which you can play your instrument, and the ways in which gags and a bit of goofing around only add to the music. 

This is a bit of a rant, but I think that the trad community needs ranting at, as although what I have said is not true of everyone (I have had wonderful times and seen nothing but encouragement from many clubs), it does apply to those who are stuck in their ways and do not offer a welcoming, open audience for bands, new fans and dancers and who therefore may put off young people. I suspect many of these kinds of people don't want young people in 'their' clubs, but without breaking down age barriers and integrating, the music will be buried with its audience. 

We should all love trad together and embrace how the music is living and breathing now in our modern society, so that we can all share a lot of stories of past gigs, future ideas and silly lyrics, and have a good knees-up.

What a lot of wisdom from young Laurence!

Post 269: POLICIES AND STYLES FOR TRADITIONAL JAZZ

Art Work by my friend Peter Bunney
www.peterbunney.com

Is it better to have a small repertoire and to play all the tunes really well or to aim at a wider, more adventurous and more risky repertoire? What makes the range of jazz bands so appealing is that every band has its own policy on repertoire and style of presentation. 

For example, where I live, I get to hear five local bands and there are big differences in their policies and styles. Let me tell you about them.

BAND A

This long-established six-piece band has a wide repertoire. It plays many 'easy' standards but it also likes to include rags and classics from the early 1900s, and Jelly Roll Morton and Sam Morgan numbers. So some of its tunes are complex and require all the musicians to know the structure, with the various strains and key changes. The players dress in casual clothes. Typically, you can catch the band playing, for example, Hiawatha Rag, Blame It On The Blues, Ory's Creole Trombone and Big House Blues. The musicians get together to rehearse - but only three or four times a year, as they are scattered over a wide area. The band attracts a fair number of gigs, including some at jazz clubs.

BAND B

This six-piece band (sometimes five-piece) keeps the repertoire simple. The players wear black shirts but no ties. It specialises in easy numbers - mainly using basic chord progressions, pulsating 12-bars and tunes such as Make Me a Pallet on the Floor, C Jam Blues, Don't Go Away Nobody, Georgia Grind and Redwing. It has a rocking rhythm section including a powerful four-to-the-bar young string-bass player. There is much use of simple riffs by the front line. The music is often entirely improvised - the leader suggesting a theme for a 12-bar - and away they go. The band attracts very few gigs (perhaps it should market itself better), but audiences love it. Feet tap, people dance and nobody goes to sleep while this band is playing. From the musician's point of view, the music is not much of a challenge, but they make people feel they've had a good night out.

BAND C

This Band always dresses smartly: DJs and bow ties. For public performances the band (five-piece and sometimes only four-piece) always picks its playlist from the same forty 'simple' songs, such as Bill Bailey and All of Me. It's easy for the musicians: they know the tunes so well that they play on automatic pilot. You can count on them always to play When You're Smiling, Five Foot Two, Doctor Jazz, Down By The Riverside - in the most familiar keys. You don't hear them play anything fresh or complex. I bet the playing has become stale for the musicians. But the band is marketed well and gets some of its bookings through an agent and probably attracts more private gigs than the others. Maybe that proves something. 

BAND D

This six-piece band (with a regular monthly pub gig but not much else) never has a rehearsal and never prepares a playlist. It dresses casually. It offers a mixture of jazz standards and ballads (sung usually by the trombonist - a decent singer), mostly in the conventional keys. It's the kind of band that might play Indiana, St. Louis Blues and Fly Me To The Moon but never Chrysanthemum Rag or Kinklets. It's a typical English pub jazz band - experienced elderly musicians making reasonably good music but not getting many gigs and certainly not making any money!

BAND E

This band is distinctive in that it has a very talented lady singer as well as five accomplished instrumentalists. The band dresses smartly, in white shirts and bow ties. The leader seeks out music that is harmonically challenging and more interesting than run-of-the-mill traditional jazz tunes. Of course, the band nevertheless plays a few simple jazz standards (certainly no multi-theme pieces) but mostly it backs the singer - often in sophisticated songs with rich harmonic progressions and in 'awkward' keys - to suit her. You find them performing Blues in the Night or Black Coffee or Every Time We Say Goodbye or What a Difference a Day Made. It's hard work for the instrumentalists but more rewarding than playing on automatic pilot. I believe this band does not have many gigs but it is usually well appreciated.

I could try to draw conclusions from all this but I think you can draw them easily enough for yourself. Repertoire, costume, marketing, style of playing and of presentation: all bands have to make their own choices.