This is a guest article by Luke Albao of Washington, D.C.  He was gracious enough to do a four part series on the Boilermaker Jazz Band, one of the Lindy Hop communities best swing bands.

Introduction

A couple years ago, I met a woman who was a doctoral candidate at a university in DC. When I found out she was writing a book on jazz, I prepared to hit her with rapid-fire questions, as I tend to do when I meet experts in any subject. But, knowing that jazz is a vast category that includes (at least, according to the Library of Congress) both Jelly Roll Morton and Kenny G, I began with a necessary bit of reconnaissance: Was there a particular type of jazz she liked? She closed her eyes and smiled. “Oh, you know,” she answered. “The classics.” The classics, she said! I leaned in. She continued: “You know, Miles, Trane. The good stuff.”

Now, I have never contested the idea that Miles and Coltrane are good. It’s when people spoke of them as if they were without context, as if they popped out of thin air with nobody coming before them, that I took exception. With the righteous indignation I can only call Faltesekian, I used to bemoan such ignorance; I was genuinely sad that jazz fans neglected the genius of pre-War jazz, but this sadness was tempered by that certain feeling of superiority that comes with mistaking a subject’s unpopularity for proof of its esoteric elitism.¹

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1. The inflated language of the preceding sentence may be proof of my predisposition to esotericism. It is an embarrassing character trait, yes, and I could have just made a reference instead to Comic Book Guy, but I will let it stand, since I have done much to outgrow such douchery [except where excessive wordiness is concerned], and since I believe there might be a point to be made. [↩]

Filed Under: Band Reviews, Musician Interview | Wednesday, January 28th, 2009